Hi! I am planning on getting squid forms, but do you guys go door to door or???

Commercial Commercial Commercial

When I started I wasted alot of time putting flyers in residential boxes-For the most part a Major Waste of time especially if you live where winter hits hard.
Focus ON
Commercial Commercial Commercial

Thanks Larry. Ya We get winter here as well And We are going to go after comm.

And remember putting flyers in mailboxes is illegal.

You would be better off doing door hangers.

I started my business in 1990 primarily via fliers in doorways. (not mailboxes). I was selective. I chose high-end neighborhoods, with a high concentration of multi-condominium buildings. I got a good response to this approach. ( 4 to 5 mostly middle to upper income households every 25 feet) People still grappling with choosing effective marketing methods should go and visit www.ocibr.com.

Thanks mark! Im about 2 weeks from buying my machine from you. I went on craigs list locally and was shocked to see other carpet cleaners hwe with ad's that say stuff like "will clean 3 rooms and a hallway for $30", and "$10 per room". I know there is fine print involved, but how do you compete against this crap?

By offering a unique, high-quality service. Go to www.boston.craigslist.org. Click on "household services". Do a search under one of the many keywords that will bring my ads up: organic; environmentally; all-natural; natural; chemical-free;
best of boston; national green pages; angies list; as well as some others. Even note how I do my headline to try and make it stand out from the others.

Hi Mark

How many jobs do you get per month off of craigslist, depending of course, on how long you have been using it.

thanks

dave in indy

indy stone & tile care

It really is hard to tell, since people who find me online can mostly only recall that it was somewhere online. I come up on a lot of searches on Google, Yahoo-search, MSN-search, etc., so most people don't remember exactly how a name came up. I do know that since starting to use Craigslist on a daily or near-daily basis several months ago (maybe going back to early or mid-summer) I have definitely been getting more calls than previously. My son owns his own real estate office in the SoHo area of Manhattan in NYC, and he is sold on Craigslist as a means of obtaining leads for both sales & rentals.

Thanks Mark

dave stahly

Indy Stone & Tile Care

Cold Call Commercial Accounts and become visible on the Search Engines

Target specific businesses(dentists, medical offices, furniture stores, hotels, realtors, etc) create a post card or brochure for each business. If you don't want to purchase a list, go on line and yellow pages and find the name and addresses of all the businesses mentioned abobve. Create a database of all the businesses you found.
Choose a day or time when you will cold call these businesses. Go to mapquest you can create a map route of these business. You'll be surprised, sometimes they are just waiting for someone to ask them to clean their carpets.
When cold calling find out who the decision makers are and collect their business cards. When you get back to the office, put the desion makers names and emails in your database. Send out periodic mailers to those businesses, attention the mail to those decision makers.

Visibility on Search Engines:

Go to google plug in this search " Carpet Cleaning Your city Your State". In the body of this search you will find directories for carpet cleaners(yahoo Local, super pages, yellow pages,craiglist etc)
Go to every single directory that you find in your search and list your company name on their free directory. Ask any satisfied customers to rate your company on on some of these directories.
Start a Google Ad Words Campaign. I havent had any click throughs, but my compnay name is usually 3 or 4 on the sponsored links. From what I understand most folks dont click on the sponsored links, the choose the generic finds instead.
Do a link exchaneg with other carpet cleaners. The more rellevant links you have on your website the more visible you'll be on the search engines. I am in the process using John Brauns http://www.hitmanadvertising.com/links.htm link exchange program. The link should occur next week. He offers this at no chrage right now, he mentioned that he may start charging. I'll let you guys know how that goes. The point is make your company name as visible as possible when folks search for carpet cleaners in your city. I hope ths was helpful.

Sorry about the long response guys.

For those with the ability to "schmooze" a little bit, joining existing business and civic organizations in your area will help you build long-term credibility and visibility. Try not to look like you're not simply involved to get business. Participate in worthwhile activities; chair a committee; "work the room" when they hold cocktail parties and similar quasi-social functions. Be ready to provide a business card, but don't see how many you can push off on people in these situations. There's such a thing as being too "pushy" and turning fellow members off instead of cultivating them as associates.

Thanx Mo, Will do! I also plan to go door to door to businesses also.
J

I agree Mark. You don’t want to be a car salesman. When you cold call your main objective is to meet people. Let them know who you are, what you do, and ask for the business. In my opinion, if you accomplish those three things it was a successful cold call. That strategy takes the pressure off of you to get the sales an off the client to make a decision immdeciately.

Example: On my way to pickup my daughter today. I decided to stop bye a pretty big size hotel. I introduced myself to the Asst. General Manager Lisa XXXXX. Her last name sounded Italian. I asked if she was Italian, because some people think my last name sounds Italian etc. That little chitchat created commonality and broke the ice.
I asked her some open-ended questions.
How do you clean your carpets?
Answer:We used a guy that charged us $10.00/room
How did that go?
Answer: Not very well. He didn't do a very good job. So we bought a portable machine.
I explained my process, drying times, and the causes of wicking.
By the end of our conversation, she gave me the business card for the GM and wrote her name, title,home phone, and cell phone on the back of the card (she didnt have any biz cards available at the time) and asked me for another of my business cards. She asked me to do her personal residence as a trial and if she likes what she sees she would speak to the GM about doing the carpets there.
I charge $15.00 per room with a 10-room minimum. Oh and bye they way, I had visited this hotel three weeks prior and left a brochure with someone that was not very nice but was not an influencer or decision maker.
Funny thing is, Ill probably make more cleaning her three bedroom house than cleaning 10 of her hotel rooms.

If you offer to do a "package" of rooms for a hotel, specify that for the package rate these rooms should all be in a row, or in the same hallway, or in a relatively small cluster. Otherwise, if they are spread all over a medium or large hotel, you'll spend far too much time, for what you are earning, moving yourself and your equipment, supplies, etc. around to all the different locations.

To Mark or anyone else,

I work in a large hospital as a therapist in many different areas. So lots of potential residential customers.
As far as just starting out, I was wondering if I could offer a one-time-only free living room carpet cleaning to prospective customers.

Perhaps I'd have to do five or ten living rooms for free before someone hired me to do the rest of their home. But I was thinking this would be a good way to show the quality of my work and build a customer base.

Well, maybe this is a bad idea? Too much work for the payoff or something. . . Any input is greatly appreciated.

Sincerely,
Jay

Jay,

If you scheduled that many demos, Im sure you'll do the whole house on a couple. You may want to demo one of the bedrooms instead.

Jay, I did some free work for a few friends of my sisters, they were so impressed with the results that 2 of them have become regular custumers, and I have gotten 4 referals so far from them.

Hey Mo and Andy,

Thank you for the responses. So it does seem like a freebee might be a way to get started.

At this point, I'm still researching the carpet cleaning business in general, but I'm sure learning a lot on this site. Plus Mark's start up cost seems very reasonable.

Sincerely,
Jay

Good source of c.c. marketing info at www.ocibr.com.