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3 Reasons Why Most Carpet Cleaners’ Advertising & Marketing Doesn’t Work

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Mistake 1. Marketing to the Wrong People

Most carpet cleaners target the wrong people. Actually, they typically target some ‘right’ people and most wrong ones by targeting EVERYONE in their geographical area. There are people there who will never use a carpet cleaner because they won’t pay for a service. There are people who only want to pay the cheapest price for carpet cleaning. There are tenants whose sole reason for cleaning carpets is to get their deposit back and they don’t care too much about how clean the carpets are. They just want them clean enough to satisfy (‘fool’?) the landlord. And there are others who want a high-quality service that they can trust and are prepared to pay a premium. Naturally these are NOT the same people. You need to target one specific type of customer (ie. budget, higher-end or premium) and exclude the rest. A price-focused budget cleaning message will not appeal to a premium customer at all. And vice-versa.

Mistake 2. Advertising Like Big Corporations

Big businesses typically do ‘image’ or ‘branding’ type advertising focusing on their company name or logo hoping that when the time comes the customer will remember them. But this is very expensive and cost prohibitive for a small carpet cleaning business. (Coca-Cola’s budget is around four billion dollars!). And sometimes large corporations advertise to impress shareholders or for some other purpose. And does it work? …who knows, is the simple answer!

Here’s what YOU need to do…

  1. Identify WHO your ideal customers are – the ones that you’ll enjoy working with the most, the ones who are the most profitable or who will pay premium prices for high quality work and the customers who will not be a ‘pain in the backside’
  1. Find out WHERE they are - do they read certain magazines or newspapers? Do they attend specific events or seminars? Do they live together in a particular area? Are they gather-able together in ‘one place’ so to speak?
  1. Get in front of them - once you know who they are and where they are to be found, now you can get in front of them. That might mean setting up a meeting, writing an article, giving a talk, delivering a flyer or placing an ad. But you need to get in front of them in some way.
  1. Create attention and interest - your positioning, value proposition and sales argument need to be relevant to your ideal customer (whether that’s budget or premium). You must be able to get their attention and then get them interested and engaged so you can have a conversation with them.
  1. Make an offer to them - it could be a free trial offer or a free audit or inspection. Or some other ‘direct-response mechanism’ that causes them to respond to your offer.

Mistake 3. Marketing by Price

Trying to sell carpet cleaning based on cheap price is quite simple a ‘race to the bottom’. The problem is that there can only be ONE lowest price. If you’ve got deep pockets and don’t care if you lose money short term you can put your competitors out of business…until someone cheaper comes along. (and they will!). There’s no value in a marketing message that says “we’re second cheapest”

 

So, if you can’t be the cheapest, why not build your business to be the most expensive? Everyone is trying to be cheaper but hardly anyone is trying to charge higher prices by giving greater value. At least you’ll have a message to promote.

But once you know who you’re trying to reach and what message they will respond to, it’s so much easier.