 What are some online ways to market your cleaning business in the new year? That's what we're going to talk about today. Hi there, I'm Angela Brown and this is Ask a House Cleaner. This is a show where you get to ask a house cleaning question and I get to help you find an answer. Now today's show is brought to us by Housecall Pro, which is the number one service software for service professionals. So if you're a house cleaner and you have a business and you're going to go out in the market and you're going to have clients, then along with those clients come details of the job and then come details of the family and details of the pets and where they keep the key and all these different things that are specific to that job. You got to keep track of all that somewhere. Now as your business grows and you hire people, you've got to dispatch those jobs and you have to communicate that information with all of your employees. So instead of you spending hours and trying to figure out your scheduling and readjusting stuff and the details and sending the details and following up with the customer and then the invoicing and all that stuff, it's all automated once you enter the information. It's all automated through Housecall Pro. It's awesome. Check it out at housecallpro.com forward slash Angela. All right, on to today's show. What are some online ways to market your business in the new year? This is super exciting and I have with us Ray Malasky from Get Cleaning Clicks. And this is a cleaning company that he started for his wife and then he said, wait a second, I have a knack for the marketing. So he did a deep dive into the marketing and he started researching ways that you could get your business to the top of the search engines. And he started looking at different ways from social media and different ways that you could grow your business and get more cleaning clicks. So he's back by popular demand. He already did a show for us before. It was a rave review. And then people are like, have him share with us the online ways we can grow our business in the new year. So please help me welcome Ray Malasky. My name is Ray Malasky. I run a company called Get Cleaning Clicks where we specialize in marketing specifically for cleaning businesses and cleaning business owners. And we offer web design, social media, SEO, Google ads, all for based around the cleaning business. Well, one of the reasons I ask you to join us again today aside from the fact that back by popular demand, I know that we're moving into a new year and there are lots of cleaning business owners that are starting with a fresh slate. And this is the year they're going to make a go of it. And so I would like to talk just for a second about any trends that you see, any changes, what's what's happening on the horizon for 2020 because you've got a pulse on it. You do this all day every day and you you focus for the cleaning industry. So you've got a really good grasp on what we need and what we need to be doing. This year, the huge thing was Google Guaranteed or Google Home Services. So that's a whole nother option of paid advertising. It took guys like me out of the equation, which I'm absolutely okay with because this is a great product for cleaning business owners who are just getting started. Don't have the budget to pay somebody like me and really can just dump everything they want into this one source and maximize the potential of that and grow their business with that alone. And tell us a little bit about that. What is that? If you Google house cleaning near me or house cleaning your city, you'll see three boxes at the top of that Google search and it'll say Google Guaranteed and they'll have the clients reviews on there from that cleaning business. And it's a program where you sign up for Google, they vet you so they check your insurance. You have to do background checks on the cleaners and then you become kind of their army of cleaners and there could be two cleaning companies in that market, there could be 40 cleaning companies in that market that are all Google Guaranteed and it rotates your ads at the very top of Google in these little square boxes with these stars. And people click there, they never even go to your website. It's all on their own platform. They click there, they decide to reach out to you, they contact you through there and Google only charges you for that phone call. It's different with Google AdWords because they charge you for the clicks. Hey, you got this click, it cost you four bucks, it cost you five bucks, whatever your market is and whatever the keyword is depends and fluctuates. They took all that out of the equation. You click there, you call them, it's between $19 and $21 for that call. You're paying for leads. This is Google's answer to home advisor and Angie's list and it's 10 times better than they have ever been for a cleaning business. So if that's the new solution, what happens to the Google AdWords? You have Google Local, then you have Google Ads right underneath that. Still high value, still get great results, still brings in more customers and more ROI for our clients. And then below that you have your map pack and then organic. So what's happening is now that Google Local came up at the top, it pushed AdWords down, it pushed the map down even further and it pushed organic down even further. So it's taking away from that organic traffic and finding a way to monetize it and make it work for local businesses, which I think this was a great thing for the industry. It's not something that's great for me because it's basically digital marketing without needing a marketing company. Well, one of the things that you just said was you will appear in a rotating banner. So I could still do certain things that would then help my organic search and my Google AdWords and things like that so that I can guarantee that I'm not just number 15 on the rotation list, right? You can, yes, because those with a lower budget will get less exposure, obviously. And you could set your budget within there. Let's say you're just starting out, brand new business and you're like, okay, I'm going to give this a go, I'm going to put 300 bucks as my budget. People knows compared to the other ones that put their money in there. Some people are at 1,000, some people are at 1,500, some people are at 2,000 a month. So they know based on your budget that your ad needs to show about this amount of time to maximize that budget. So it's really all about the money and the budget you set in that campaign, how often you show and the level of competition. Is there anything that we could be doing right now that before we jump on that bandwagon and start paying the, I guess, top dollar so that we can be in the top spot? Is there anything that we can be doing that will help us promote our business moving into 2020? Is it more blogs? Is it more email? Is it less email? Is it more videos? Is there something specific we can do that can help boost the visibility in our cleaning businesses? To be everywhere you possibly can be that your ideal market is at. And where is that? That's, I mean, it's all over the place. So some people it's the grocery store with flyers on the wall and some people it's car magnets when you're driving down the street. The bottom line is it all depends on your budget. And if you have a lower budget, you're going to have to go with more of those local kind of efforts, attend the chamber meeting, put the magnets on, hang the flyers, work up a couple reoccurring customers where you have some kind of revenue and then start spending it on Google, local Google ads, SEO, your website, Facebook, you know, any other channels that are out there. So I keep hearing in the online space consistency. How important is consistency moving through 2020 that you either have the same ads posted in the same spots or that you create a blog post every day at a certain time or every week at a certain time or whatever? How important is consistency as far as creating a visual in 2020? Consistency isn't necessarily how many times you post here or post there. It's just making sure you are posting there, you know, Instagram, it's not anything new for the marketing world, but it's new for small businesses. And people are kind of getting tired of Facebook and all that absorption of over information and Instagram kind of makes that a nice balance because it's image based. It kind of takes away that stress of social media and just make it image based. So at that point, we're talking about branding. You're putting your company out there, you're targeting local customers in your area, so you want to talk geographically about that area, 10 best things to do in my city, something that your customer would be interested in, even if you're not talking about a cleaning service, you're touching them. It's important to make sure that you're there when they need you. And is that branding that you're talking about for Instagram, and I know you also do the Google AdWords and the Facebook ads and all those kinds of things, is that branding something that you can help our listeners with? Yeah, absolutely. You know, here's the thing. So I don't find that branding is important until you're hitting that over $600,000 a year in revenue. Your marketing budget should be 7% to 8% of gross revenue. If you have that budget, you can pretty much absorb that all in lead generation. So lead generation being Google Guarantee, Google AdWords, SEO. Some people have had some success with Facebook ads. That kind of lead generation, where you're pumping leads into your business, these people need the service now. It's filling your gaps in your schedule. It's helping you grow, that kind of thing. So for 2020, then focus more on the lead generation instead of the branding necessarily. It all depends on what stage of what your business is in. So like if you're under $600,000 and you have the time, go ahead, post. Show your business is active on social media, because people want to see that you're alive. But don't dedicate a ton of resources to it, because there's other things that could be more streamlined, take less of your time, and still create more revenue. Now if you're at that $600,000 plus, a million plus, absolutely. A lot of businesses that I talked to when they were at that point, they kind of flatline. They've hit kind of a market saturation, where the lead gen has become less effective because they're so well known. They've been out there for so long, it's not coming in like it used to. So now that's when branding comes important. And now you want to capture that market that doesn't know about you, that one that has been using a franchise cleaning service for five years. And now it's time for you to tell them why you're better, or offer them a better solution. We offer a free strategy session right down on our site, GetCleaningClicks.com. If you Google that, that will pop up. You'll see the call to action to fill out the form. You fill out the form and we'll jump on a quick phone call just to touch base with each other and make sure that our goals are in line. And then schedule a strategy session where we'll actually go in, do a market analysis for you, look at your competition, see what they're doing, and then offer you a solution around that. I love this. Thank you so much. I know that there are so many cleaning business owners. This is the year that they're going to make the huge difference. So thank you so much for joining us today. This was super helpful. And I'm going to leave links in the show notes as well where our listeners can find your information. As always, thank you very much, Angela. It's a pleasure to be here. Alrighty, guys. And that is Ray Molasky from GetCleaningClicks. I'm going to leave links in the show notes to everything that he talked about so you guys can find him, have a conversation with him, and find out how you can take your business to the next level through online marketing in the new year. I'm super excited that we were able to have him on our show today. So thank you so much, Ray, for your time, your attention, and your energy. If you found this helpful, please pass it on to a friend. If we've earned your subscription, please subscribe. And until we meet again, leave the world a cleaner place than when you found it.