Advertise your cleaning business

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  Advertising Ideas 

This webpage lists some ideas for people who want help advertising their cleaning business. For more detailed information obtain a copy of our manual: How to Start a Cleaning Company (And Make It Pay!).

 Use your bills for advertising 

A standard number ten envelope and three regular 8 & 1/2 by 11 inch pages weigh about one ounce. So if you send out your monthly bills with nothing in them but one single page you are wasting an opportunity.

You could be sending out two extra pages of advertising a month with no extra postage cost. This is a great way to promote seasonal offers such as a Mother's Day house cleaning gift certificate or a spring window cleaning special. Or you can use them to announce new services that you are adding like parking lot cleaning for your business clients.

These sales letters don't even have to be from your company. You can trade customer lists with other entrepeneurs in the area. For instance, you could carry an ad from a local dry cleaner and another from a pizza shop owner one month. During that month they would carry your ad along with their bills. The next month you could switch off with two other local businesses.

 Write a great sales letter! 

The thing you need to understand before you create a sales letter for your business is this: people buy because of the benefits you offer. In other words, they buy on the basis of what you can do for them.

People don't buy because of companies and they don't buy because of personalities. So don't try to sell by talking about your company or try to charm them into buying from you. The main goal of your sales material is to tell prospects clearly and convincingly what benefits you have to offer.

 Outline of an Effective Sales Letter 

People will read your headline but if it doesn't interest them they won't read anything else. Therefore you need to use your headline to tell your prospect something important to him. This is the time to introduce the most important benefit you provide.

Use your first paragraph to build on the initial promise you made in the headline. Headlines grab attention, here you can expand on that promise and explain exactly what your biggest benefit is.

People don't make buying decisions just on the basis of cold logic. Use powerful language to engage your prospect's emotion.

Yale researchers say the twelve most persuasive words you can use are:           

save	proven	easy	guarantee
health	discover	results	money
love	you	safety	new

Describe the secondary benefits you offer in an easy-to-follow manner. This allows you to build the appeal of your letter while keeping your prospect's interest.

Sellers often leave out two of the most important benefits they can offer: a guarantee and testimonials. Testimonials don't cost you anything but the time and effort to get them; and guarantees, as long as you do a good job, rarely cost you anything.

Is your letter attractive, well-organized, and easy to read? If it is, that's good, but it's not good enough. It also has to be easy to scan through. Many people won't devote more than a few seconds to decide if an unsolicited sales letter is worth reading. So you need to use your big, bold headline and sub-headlines to convey the gist of your letter in a way that will turn a scanner into a reader.

You have spent all this time and effort convincing your prospect that you are the company for them. Don't fumble the ball at this point. Tell them what you want them to do. If you want them to call then make sure you display your phone number prominently and tell them to call you. If you want them to mail back the post card you included in your mailing, be sure to tell them that. Whatever you want them to do you must tell them.

Along with headlines, people also read Post Scripts. That's true even of the people who just scan your letter. Everybody will read a PS which makes it a great tool for you. You can use it to re-emphasize a key benefit or introduce a final selling point. Whatever part of your offer you want to be sure the prospect knows about, this is the place to put it.

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Copyright © 2003 by The Cleaning Institute.