How to Make Your Cleaning Business Stand Out Online

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Introduction

Hello, everyone. Welcome or welcome back to the Filthy Rich Cleaners podcast. I am your host, Stephanie from Serene Clean. And in today’s episode, we are going to be continuing the conversation about standing out from cheap competition and truly just competition in general, right? Obviously, every single year, every single month, there are new cleaners popping up in all of our local areas, regardless if you are in rural little Wisconsin, like my business is, or you’re in a giant city, there will always be more and more cleaners popping up. So as more and more competition is popping up everywhere, we need to be very aware of this, not because we’re scared, but because we need to, again, always put ourselves into a prospective client’s shoes as to how they’re going to perceive us versus that competition, right? And so there are so many things that we can do related to social media and our outward perception that are very simple fixes that a lot of you guys can implement very quickly. But it does take a bit of effort and forethought that we’re going to be discussing today.

Choosing the Right Social Media Platform

So the first thing I want to talk about when it comes to just the topic of social media and our cleaning businesses is do not try to be the jack of all trades, okay, or the Jill of all trades, whatever you are, don’t try to be at all. And by that, I mean, don’t try to be on all of the platforms, guys, that is very challenging to actually be on all social media platforms and do them all well, right? It’s the same concept of don’t do all possible home services because you’re going to struggle to do them all well. So really honing in on where is our ideal and likely buyer hanging out online and where are they actually looking to make those types of decisions, right?

And so when it comes to the actual platforms themselves, I am still a big fan of Facebook specifically to get residential cleaning clients. I think that that is going to always be the number one, at least for probably the next decade, because our most likely person who is going to hire a house cleaning service is going to be hanging out a lot on Facebook, right? And they may be in local groups, they may just stumble across you, that type of thing. But when we think about the people who can afford a house cleaning, 30s, 40s, 50s, and beyond, right? That’s the age range we’re looking at. And so we should be where our target audience is when it comes to being online.

So I will say Facebook and Instagram are owned by the same people. I’m not telling you not to have a business Instagram. In fact, a lot of people have a lot of success as their business getting clients from Instagram. That has not been our experience, but we also just haven’t poured that heavily into Instagram. When it comes to what I put on Instagram, it’s exactly what goes on Facebook. So when you are in the back end of your business manager page in Facebook, you are able to connect your business Instagram account to that. And you can just check a box and have it post at the same time. Everything that you post on Facebook goes on to IG. And that’s exactly what I do. That is the end all be all of what I do on Instagram. And we literally have never gotten a residential client from IG. So take that with a grain of salt, you may have a totally different experience and have gotten a lot of clients from there. But for the most part, a lot of us are still getting them from Facebook. So that is where I put my efforts in and really focus on it when it comes to leads. And just for six years now, it’s always been Facebook.

TikTok is very popular. And it’s going to just continue to be popular as long as it is allowed to be around. And I know a lot of people have a ton of success getting clients over there. However, having a well done TikTok is so much more work than a well done Facebook page for a business. It’s just really hard for somebody to be in your target area and looking for that. It’s going to be just a lot more difficult. So I’m not telling you to not post on TikTok. We did attempt to do it, I think two years ago. And then we’re just, Facebook’s where it’s at, we’re going to stick with Facebook. And we stop posting on our business TikTok because we’re, this is so much work, and so much creative energy that we’re pouring into this. And the output, the amount of leads that we’re get out of this is not worth the effort, right, that it is, it would just be kind of an ego thing for us to continue or for other cleaning businesses to see our stuff and then take our ideas or whatever.

Again, the caveat is if you guys do a lot of free cleanings where you’re able to videotape a lot of your cleanings, that is a great thing to do. And I would suggest, you know, post it on TikTok for sure. But again, time, energy, and for the most part, the size that you guys are at, it is not worth the amount of gargantuan effort that it’s gonna take in order for you to do that. So if you already enjoy being on TikTok, if you’re adept at it, if you understand it, yeah, go ahead, post on there. Definitely, guys, I’m not suggesting not to do that, but think about, again, opportunity costs. You know, I talk about that a lot on this podcast of, okay, if you’re making that content and you’re putting all this effort into that and you’re maybe not getting that much of a return, meaning actual cleaning clients from this effort, is it the best and greatest use of your time? I would argue a lot of times it’s not, unless you are seeing a huge amount of leads. And I have had a few consulting calls that were kind of the exceptions to the rule because of where they were, they’re in Seattle or Portland and they’re getting a lot of busy young professionals to clean their condos and things like that. That is not my target market at all. My target market is hanging out on Facebook. So that’s where we stay and that’s where we focus our efforts.

So just a little broad kind of discussion on what platforms we should be spending time on. Anything outside of that. I mean, of course, I know that there is things like Nextdoor or all of the local kind of groups. I’ve never used anything like that. So don’t ask me questions. And I know that those are more for specifically going, those aren’t really social media. They are for finding services. So I wouldn’t consider that in this group of things that I’m talking about. So I’m talking strictly, this is a social media thing, right? Anything outside of that, Twitter, LinkedIn, no, nobody’s going there to find a house cleaner, right? So that’s my two cents. I stick with Facebook, post through Facebook to Instagram. And that’s it, guys. I keep it simple. And this is what we’ve done. It’s been very effective. It’s just, again, if you try to, think of, you know, if we’re shooting a gun, if we’re shooting a sniper rifle, and we’re going to hit the target, or we’re hitting using a shotgun and just spraying and it’s not being as effective. In this instance, you just aren’t as impactful because you’re spreading yourself too thin or you’re hiring it out, which is going to be something that we talk about a lot in this episode, is hiring out the social media and the marketing side of things because a lot of people do that and a lot of people do it ineffectively. So my hot take of the episode, I suppose.

The Importance of Consistency in Posting

Okay, so we’ve talked about platforms. Now, let’s get into what the heck do we post onto our social media. The biggest mistakes that I see on people’s social media when I’m doing consulting calls or I’m coming across a cleaning business’s social media in the wild, there’s so many things that are glaringly, ooh, this is not impressive. This is not standing out to me. And again, I put myself in the shoes of a potential customer. So the biggest red flag is simply not being active at all, right? Just not having anything on there. The page perhaps exists, but there is nothing. It’s not been updated. There’s just nothing. It’s a ghost town there. And I know that this, you know, maybe they’re newer, whatever. But the point is we’re talking about how can we stand out, right? So that’s going to be the biggest one.

The second biggest one is they post for a week, every day, and then three months go by. And then that happens again, because clearly the owner got a wild hair up their ass and was, no, we got to post to social media and you can’t keep it up. Right. So consistency when it comes to posting is going to be huge. And I know a lot of you are feeling called out right now. I’m doing this for you. If there’s no hate. All right. I’m just trying to make you aware of how this appears to a client. Right. So even if you can only post three times a week or two times a week, but it’s consistent because when a client comes to your page, I’m coming to your Facebook page and I’m scrolling through and I’m seeing, you know, even just a couple posts a week. Okay, clearly there’s some effort here that is an active business, because for me, my gut instinct when I’m seeing somebody who’s not very active or it’s very sporadic. It’s, are they still open? Right. Are they still doing this? That’s the question that comes in my head is as opposed to when there is an active user and participant on a social media platform, I’m, okay, they care about this. They’re putting in effort. And especially with new content on it, then I know that this is legit, and they are continuing to do the good service that they are touting themselves as.

So that would be the number one thing is, you know, consistency, we are posting on a regular basis, and we are able to keep it up. And I know that this is probably the hardest part for a lot of people is the consistency of it all. And one of my favorite books when it comes to business and sales and all of that. It’s called The Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes. Highly recommend that book when it comes to learning how to procure commercial accounts, how to do outbound sales, and just the whole topic of sales. But in that book, Chet references or says something about being a successful business owner, successful person just in general, but specifically, I think he was referencing sales. But we can talk about this in any area. And the phrase is having pig-headed discipline, right? To do the monotonous thing over and over and over again. And honestly, that is literally the definition of a successful business in a lot of ways, is we are able to do the boring shit over and over again. And with no loss of enthusiasm, I’m just going to blend a bunch of sayings together, guys, to suit my narrative here. But that truly is what it is. It takes a lot of discipline to keep doing the same shit over and over again because it works, right? We don’t have to reinvent the wheel if the wheel is turning, right?

And so I think a lot of times we struggle with this because we get excited and we burst out the gate. We start the marathon and then we get to mile two and realize, oh shit, there’s a bunch more of this, meaning never ending, hopefully if you don’t close. So you really have to have the mindset of can I do this sustainably? And if I can’t, then I probably shouldn’t be taking this on. And I’m not talking about in general business projects and things like that. Obviously sometimes we have to push, there is push periods, but when it comes to this type of thing, consistency guys, we need to be able to keep and maintain this pace when it comes to social media. And that’s why I don’t recommend TikTok because most of us cannot maintain that level of consistent posting that we would have to be able to do to make us successful. I frankly could never maintain an actual great TikTok account for Serene Clean to the level that I would want to be effective, right? I just know myself. I wouldn’t be able to do that, especially because I’m remote. So I really couldn’t do it. That’s really, you need to be on site and taking videos of the cleanings because it’s just, it’s all video, right? And most of you guys are absolutely terrified to take video of anything. So what makes you think you can do it on TikTok, right? You’re not going to be able to. So just don’t waste your time. I know I said, go ahead and do TikTok if you want. But I’m going to kind of correct myself. And most likely, you are not going to be able to do this correctly on TikTok and consistently and maintain that level of effort when shit hits the fan. And that’s the thing. Can we maintain this new process or system or endeavor when shit is going wild in the business? And if the answer is no, then maybe we shouldn’t be taking this thing on, right?

Because on our worst weeks, Serene Clean’s Facebook is going to post four to five times a week on our worst weeks where everything’s going wrong, right? So if that’s the case, we’re doing something right because we can maintain that level of consistency. So I really want you guys to think about, that’s why I’m narrowing on one and I’m going to suggest that one be Facebook for most of you guys.

Avoiding Generic Content

Okay. So a consistency we’re showing up. Okay. Now what the hell do we post on our social media? Right. And when it comes to standing out, this is where we can really make a big impact. So the big mistake that a lot of people make, if they’re doing it either themselves or they are hiring it out to somebody else, you hire a marketing person who says, yes, I can post to your social media, you know, four to five times a week, whatever, this is what the price will be. And you’re, great, check. I checked the box, it’s done. And that’s the biggest mistake that you can make is treat your social media or your Facebook as just checking the box when it comes to what we should be posting. And that it doesn’t matter what we post, it’s just the fact that we do post. And that is the complete wrong mentality to have. And I can immediately clock that when I’m looking at some social media pages for cleaning businesses because I’m, this is so generic. That is the word I would use to describe it. I couldn’t tell if this is this cleaning business or 10,000 others of them because they’re all using the same stock image and the same verbiage. And there is nothing about this that makes me say, this brand has a personality or they have, again, a perspective.

We want to look at everything that we do as having our brand identity and our perspective and the voice of your business, right? And I know in the last episode, we talked a little bit about that of the branding and cohesiveness and things like that. And this is going to really bleed into our conversation today is how do we make it so apparent what we think about, what we believe in our business, how we behave, how we act, all of these things. We need to have this be apparent in our social media because a lot of times this is somebody’s first interaction with our business. So coming back to needs to slap them across the face that we are the clear choice and we know what we’re talking about and we care about what we’re doing because people want to work with businesses that give a shit about the work that they’re doing. Right. And anything that screams generic or nameless faceless company, it just is not impactful and it’s not going to make me want to pick up the phone or fill out your booking form. Right.

And so I am going to implore you guys, stop using stock images, stop hiring this out and having people just do posts that would work for any cleaning business. This could literally, if I see a post on your page and I cannot discern who, what company this was posted from, then there needs to be some thought there. And we need to change that. We need to stand out because that’s what everybody is doing if they are posting. Right. And so there’s some very easy and simple ways that we can, maybe not easy. There’s some simple ways that we can stand out when it comes to the types of posts that we’re putting on. And I am not suggesting that you guys are making something wildly creative or unique here. That’s not what I’m suggesting necessarily. I’m suggesting that how do we take the everyday cleaning stuff that we put out and put our voice and our spin on it, right?

The Four Pillars of Social Media Content

So I’m going to break our posts down very simply for you guys. And there is no gatekeeping here. Go to Serene Clean’s Facebook page. We will link it down below and you will exactly see our formula. Okay. The first thing that you will notice when you go on Serene Clean’s Facebook page is a very strong level of cohesiveness in branding, meaning there is patterns, there is repeating looks to things, right? There’s templates that are being used so that we are cohesive. So that’s another big issue I see in a lot of people’s social media is it looks like they’re just throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks. And it’s very chaotic. They’re choosing whatever flavor of the day template that they like in Canva. It does not look cohesive. The colors are not all the same. They’re not using their logo on things. It looks maybe like a four-year-old pick something out that they liked that day. And that’s why they’re using this particular layout. Or there’s no layout at all. It’s just raw photos that you’re uploading. And there’s, there is no editing to it at all because on Facebook there, a little bit of polish is nice, right? We do like to have polish and professionalism, but we also want it to have our voice and our tastes on it. So when you look at Serene Clean stuff, it’s very cohesive. We have these patterned templates that you are seeing over and over again. There’s for years and we have updated them and changed them slightly. But for the most part, four years, you’re going to scroll through and see the same types of look to things because we want to have a very strong branding identity. That’s the first thing is establishing this patterned behavior.

So let’s get into the actual types of things to post and how do we stand out in each of those or how I have chosen or believe that we stand out in these areas. You may look at them and be, this looks like shit, Stephanie. And you can think that, but that’s fine. I’m the one talking here. I got that microphone here. So get your own microphone and you can talk about how shitty they look. Okay. So I don’t know why I feel so combative today. It’s a Monday. All right. Before and after graphics, testimonials, employee anniversaries and appreciation, and then funny stuff, right? That’s what we post. That’s all we post. And then some cleaning giveaways smattered in there and some video content smattered in there. All right. That is literally the formula for serene, clean social media. And that’s always what it’s going to be. Okay. So let’s break this down.

Creating Effective Before and After Graphics

Before and after graphics are going to be something that all of you guys probably already are posting if you do have posts, but there’s some things that we can do to improve them. So number one, do not just be uploading raw images of before and afters. Don’t do that. One, it’s easy to steal. Two, it just doesn’t look very pulled together and polished, right? Even if the work itself is fantastic, we can make this look prettier, right? So that’s kind of our job, right? To make things look pretty, literally. And so what I like to do is we get our before and after graphics or before and after raw photos from our cleaners or from you if you are cleaning. Take those. We direct our cleaners to make sure that they are taking it from the same angle with the same lighting as much as possible so that we can actually see their work and see the difference and that it’s consistent between the two pictures. And then we take that to Canva.

Now, we used to have a different before and after graphic template and I felt it was a bit old fashioned. I had made it years ago. And so I wanted to improve it since we are really trying to elevate the Serene Clean brand, look a little bit more luxurious. So what did I do? I took my old template, which was just a square with our logo and blue borders around the graphics. And I took that to ChatGPT. And I said, ChatGPT, this is the brand direction that we want to go with. You are a top level graphic designer. This is what I want. Help me come up with some templates for it. Or what would you suggest? And it gave me these beautiful suggestions. And I chose one of them. And that is now our before and after graphics. And actually, let’s edit in and you guys can see what this looks like. And you’ll see it looks very serene, calm, elevated.

And the most important thing that you guys will notice, it has the cleaning tech who performed the work on the graphics. So Serene Clean’s brand identity and entire personality as a brand is that our team is the strong horse and is on a pedestal. My team, my cleaners, those are the people that I am highlighting again and again and again throughout all everything that we do, right? That’s literally the brand. And I would highly recommend this be your brand too, because people like to see, especially in our industry, the people that work on your team. So for me, that’s literally what Serene Clean is all about is our team, right? We lean really heavily into that. And so in my mind, I was, how can I make something kind of boring, a before and after graphic and make it more exciting, right? We can tie the cleaner who perform that cleaning technician. That’s our role is what we call them. How can we tie the cleaning technician who performed that work into the work themselves? And then when the cleaning tech sees that, it gives them a lot more pride. It’s not just listing them in the actual text itself. It’s showing them on their work. So they’re shown right next to their work and they love it. They definitely engage a lot more now with the posts because they did that work.

And the customers and potential clients also engage with the posts more because they are seeing that. There’s just something very visceral. And they’ve done studies on this, that people are drawn to people’s faces. Anything with people, we’re gonna be more drawn to it, right? And so this is gonna be kind of a telltale little foreshadowing into this entire topic today is having people included in our social media as much as possible in our Google My Business. But we’ll get there when we get there. So we edit that onto there. And then of course the post is not just, you know, here’s a before and after. We are highlighting the cleaning technician by name. Again, use ChatGPT for your caption, guys. We do. That’s what I will. Veronica does my amazing executive assistant who does all of these things now. But before that, we would type out, great job, Ashley, you killed it at this. She always does such a great job with the details, right? And so highlighting and really showcasing our team again and again.

And I know you might be worried. You’re, oh, but what if they leave? That’s okay. It’s not like you’re highlighting somebody got fired or somebody quit on if you go on social media, our Serene Clean social media, really any of the platforms, you’re going to see photos of cleaning texts who aren’t there anymore. And I’m okay with that, right? Unless they say they got publicly found out for stealing, then I would go through and maybe delete those ones, right? But we can’t do this thing if we’re never if we’re not going to showcase our cleaning texts, because it’s such a strong horse of our kind of social media presence. So I just have come to the conclusion that the reward is worth that possible risk of eventually they’re going to leave. That doesn’t change that their work is there.

Now, I forgot to caveat this. Please make sure that you get a release waiver signed from your cleaners that we can use them in our marketing efforts. And they are able to absolutely opt out. Many, many cleaners when they come on with us want to opt out and not have their images used on any of our marketing or promotional material. Totally fine. But we do get explicit permission. That is something I would suggest to have in your new hire paperwork somewhere so that they have the option to opt out. You don’t get anyone coming back with a nasty surprise of, I don’t want to be on your Facebook. Why are you doing this? Blah, blah, blah. So just make sure you get explicit permission from your staff before you do this. But really all of them like it that do allow us to do that because then they’re getting publicly praised, which is a huge core tenant of our company culture is praising them both internally and then externally in the outside world. So I know I’m going on and on about this, but this kind of concept is what we’re going to be talking about in all of these areas.

So that’s before and after graphics. So that’s one area that we’re going to do. And obviously before and after videos is great. And then I will take those again into Canva. It’s so easy. Canva is me and Canva going steady for a long time, years. Gosh, the whole time this business has been open, I have used Canva. So it’s pretty much, you know, a long-term relationship at this point. I love you, Canva. So me towards software. So that’s before and after graphics. That’s going to be number one pillar.

Showcasing Testimonials and Reviews

Number two pillar is going to be reviews and testimonial graphics and same concept, right? We don’t want to just be screenshotting a Google review or a Facebook review and plopping it up there as a post. Don’t do that. I see a lot of you guys doing that and it just looks kind of bad. So we want to take the words and put them into a nice graphic template from Canva. And again, so this one actually stayed the same the entirety of the business life. I just found a pretty picture of a kitchen, put an overlay for the text. We put the text in there and then we would call out the client as well as their area. If it’s an email or this was a text or they want to stay anonymous, because we’ll turn positive email feedback into these graphics as well, as you’ll see if you go through any of our stuff, that gives us more testimonials and more feedback. So that’s another thing that we do. And I know, yeah, this is work, right? This is more work because if you do have a marketing person, you have to flag these things and send it to them or they need to have access to these places that people could be leaving you positive feedback both privately and publicly. So there is some administrative labor that goes into that. So for sure, we need to figure that out. So again, my executive assistant is the one who is doing this and she is going to be gathering that throughout the week so she can make the graphics with it.

So the one change that we have made to this over the years is just like the before and after graphics, we are adding our cleaning technician’s face on the actual graphic for whoever the review is left for, right? And typically, we encourage our clients to call their cleaner out by name because they do get a bonus if they’re mentioned in a public review positively, they get a $5 bonus for every review, go ahead and do that, highly recommend that so that they are incentivized to get reviews for you guys. Otherwise, what’s the point for them? And then again, highlighting who that cleaner is, that gives them a lot of pride and it opens the door for public praise and affirmation. And that it’s a huge part of what we’re trying to do is make people proud of this work because it’s something that is so often seen as beneath us or that cleaning is not a career choice or it’s something to be ashamed of or something you do just to get by, right? So we’re really trying to highlight that we’re very proud of our entire team. And we’re proud of the work that we do. And so that is another aspect of the things that I’m discussing today, is that by all of our businesses, social medias, we can shift the cultural narrative about what this work is, and how people see cleaning potentially. So I do keep that in mind as well. And I know that that feels really, whoa, we’re just cleaning, Stephanie. But it is something to keep in mind because being disrespected in our work is something we have all gone through. And so anything that we can do that says, no, we’re actually proud of this work and we are damn good at it. And I’m so proud of my team. Anything that we can do to put that out publicly, I think is a positive for our entire industry. So side note on that, let me get off my soapbox and continue on.

So that’s going to be the testimonial graphics. And so typically we do the cadence that we’re going to do is before and after graphic testimonial, before and after graphic testimonial. And that’ll take us to four posts a week. And then the other posts in our kind of smattering are going to be employee anniversaries where we highlight the staff member on their work anniversary. You can also do birthdays, but that’s just a lot more. So we don’t do birthdays. We do like to tell the cleaning techs appointments that it’s their birthday, as well as internally, we’re saying happy birthday, right? But that would feel a bit chaotic. You know, I couldn’t do that. That’s something that we haven’t done is ever said it’s so and so’s birthday. But that would be a great one. If you guys don’t have a lot of testimonials, that would be a great one to do in the meantime. And just continue on honestly, is your cleaning text birthdays, and wishing them happy birthday publicly.

Celebrating Employee Milestones

So we do it on the work anniversaries, I write a very heartfelt message for the actual caption coming from me. That is something I manually write. Obviously I have ChatGPT help me refine it, but I’m writing that. That’s still something that I keep on myself where I am acknowledging their hard work and what a great person they are, their loyalty, just all of the positive things about the staff member. And then internally I do stuff too, of course, for appreciation on their anniversary. But again, that public admiration and pride and respect that you’re showing your team, this is all great for social media, but this is your workplace culture too we’re talking about. That this is going to enhance your workplace culture. So that’s why this is so important for so many reasons, really from multiple angles of the business.

So we’re going to highlight them on their anniversaries. We are also going to highlight our monthly nonprofit that we donate to and the staff member that chose them. So for six years now, we have been choosing a local nonprofit for the business to donate to on a monthly basis. So every single first of the month, you are going to see a post highlighting the nonprofit that we’re donating to, as well as a picture of the staff member who chose that nonprofit. And so, again, I’m talking about putting things in place you may not have. But then if we’re going to do good things, let’s talk about the good things. I get donating in silence and all of those things. But I want to highlight that when people choose our services, their money is going to bettering their local community. And that’s why we do that. Right. It also highlights for our staff member and gives them a chance to stand out of I care about animals. So I chose our local animal shelter or this month. It’s October. We donated to Project Christmas of Jackson County and Jessica chose that. And you can see that on Serene Clean’s Facebook. We’ll put the little graphic here so you guys can see. So we highlight Project Christmas, highlight Jessica. It’s such a feel good opportunity. And you are also doing good as well. So there’s just no downside to this.

So when we’re doing good things like that, if we do our highway pickup, we are going to put just raw photos, photo dump of that, right? We don’t need to make that into snazzy things. So if there’s ever an event, if we have our Christmas party, we’re going to highlight that. If we take our employees out to lunch, we’re going to highlight that. So when it comes to the other category of things that you’ll see on more of a sporadic basis, it’s those types of just team type of stuff. If you have a team breakfast, if you have a team event, if you guys do CPR training, if you do just anything at all, we’re going to want to take pictures of that and highlight that to showcase one, our team in kind of more of a natural setting, right? It’s not a post photo or anything. It’s just us hanging out. If we have a cookout, we’re going to highlight that, right? So do not drop the opportunities that you already have in place. Or say you do, you know, you are still cleaning with your team. You should be taking photos all the time of you guys smiling in between jobs or cleaning or anything like that. If you are still on the job site, there should be plentiful photos of you slash your team members cleaning, right? Because that’s what you have to work with right now. You might not have a bunch of testimonials, right? You should be getting before and afters. That’s an easy one if you are cleaning and should be what you focus on heavily. But if you can’t get testimonials, we need to get other things. Well, in the meantime. Right.

So that’s going to be showcasing you happy at work, you and your one cleaner happy at work. That’s what we want to do, because that’s the only way we can really stand out right now. Because if you just go the generic post route of, you know, we have quality cleaning services, call this number, boring, super boring. You don’t stand out. But if I see you and your cleaner in your branded shirt having a good time cleaning, then that’s fantastic. And you’re going to stand out.

The Power of Video Content

And then the final category is going to be video content, right? Not just before and afters, but actual video content. And I know that this is the one that is going to be my hardest sell to you guys, but let me tell you, it is the one with the most bang for your buck. It is the one with the most reward. And that’s why I will never stop talking about how valuable this is. And I know it takes more effort, but it really is so valuable. So testimonials. If you guys can get five video reviews, those things are going to work for you for years, literally for years. And you’re going to put them on your Facebook page. You’re going to put them on your Google My Business. You’re going to put them on your website. You’re going to link to them when you send an estimate email, right? They will work for years. I have video reviews from years ago that are still selling for me today because they compound, right? They don’t go away.

So how can we show when we are still starting out new, how can we show that we stand out other customers, right? Other customers talking and there’s something so impactful about a real customer saying how great you are. And I know that it is really nerve wracking to ask for these, but they are so worth it. And you’d be surprised by how many clients say yes. You just simply have to ask. I know you guys are, how do I get video reviews, Stephanie? You send an email, you send a text, or when you’re on the job site, say, hey would you be willing to do a quick one minute or less video review of our work? We’re trying to get our name out there more and these are the things I’m going to ask you. I’m going to ask what your name is, how long have you used my business, where did you hear about my business, and then three, why would you recommend my business to other blanks, other homeowners, other business owners, whatever they are, their vacation rentals and just let them talk, right? And so it’s very simple and once you spell out what you’re going to be asking, a lot of people will be very happy to do so, especially when you say I will be happy to come to your workplace or your home, whatever is most convenient to you. And again, it just takes a minute, right? So we can spell it out that way.

And just keep asking, don’t be afraid that they’re going to say no. If they say no, but I will do a written one. Well, win there. That’s a win as well. Right, guys. So these are so, so, so valuable. We put them on our website. Google My Business is going to be a huge one for it. And actually, you can put them on YouTube and have them show up in the search results. Because if you search cleaning services in Black River Falls, Wisconsin, we are showing up in the Google Map results, we’re showing up in the web links, we’re also showing up in the actual search results as videos too, which is the video review. So it’s really important to get these. And I think that if you can’t do any of these other things consistently, getting a few of these will make you stand out even if your website isn’t the best, or even if you don’t have a ton of regular reviews yet. These are the things that will actually move the needle for you because they 10x things. They’re so, a video review versus a written review. I can’t even, I would give away free cleaning for that. I’m not even kidding. It’s so, so valuable. So highly, highly, highly recommend. And if you guys have any more questions, leave them in the comments below about video reviews. Also hit that thumbs up. If you haven’t hit that thumbs up, what the hell? Hit it right now. Hit that subscribe if you’re not subscribed as well.

So we’re going to get video reviews. We also want to talk about our business on video. Okay. And again, I know you guys are cringing, but please, please, please know that this is what’s going to make you stand out. This is what’s going to make people say, I can’t tell the difference between this cleaning business and this cleaning business because they both don’t have very many reviews and they both seem to be newer. But this one has a video of the owner talking about why they opened up and why they care so much about this and their community and what they’re going to do for me and all of these things. Or they have several videos from the owner talking about this or talking about why outsourcing the cleaning is such a great idea and valuable use of their money so that they can have their time back or how we handle quality control or what we think about this or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, all of the things. Again, ChatGPT can give you about a thousand video ideas like that of what you can talk about as the owner of a small business that is going to be really impactful to a potential client. So clients say, I’m going to choose them because if I’ve got, okay, go back a couple episodes to the juicy apples, right? And we’re looking at the apple bins. That’s going to make you guys the juicy apple when everything else seems the same, right? Because nobody wants to do it. It’s painful. I understand. And if you’re shy or if you feel like you’re not very good on camera, I understand that.

Okay, scroll back. Go scroll on Serene Clean stuff. I wasn’t always this well-spoken goddess that you guys see right in front of you. Ha ha, well spoken. You guys should watch the last couple episodes, okay? I haven’t always been like this. I haven’t always been so confident on video. It’s a skill. It’s a skill where you get over yourself and you become less self-conscious over time. I promise it’ll get better. And just remember, nobody’s gonna watch it anyway. That’s what I tell myself whenever I’m recording a video and I get hung up and just don’t think so hard about it, all right? Show your personality, be relaxed and be, hey, this is Stephanie from Serene Clean. I just wanted to hop on here, guys, and talk to you about why we care so much about what you do. And actually, let me tell you a story that just really impressed me today about my cleaner, Jamie. And she did this, blah, blah, blah, where we were at this cleaning today and the client actually burst into tears when she got home because she was so relieved by what we did. And she’s going through a really hard time because some family health issues are happening and we were able to take the weight off her shoulders. And that is why we do what we do. And I’m so proud of our work. And I just would love to be able to help you as well. So thank you so much for watching. You can click that link in the comments to get to our ZenMaid booking form. And we will get right back to you. Blah, blah, blah. It can just be that, guys. And not that obviously. Don’t repeat what I just said. But you know, that’s the concept, right? It doesn’t have to be the super polished thing.

So you know when I was talking about being polished with your graphics. With the videos, it can literally just be like that. It can be prop up your phone and talk at it for two minutes and post the damn thing, right? Just make sure that, you know, you’re not swearing or anything like that. You need to come off as professional, wear your work shirt, but good Lord, do not be sitting around in a dirty tank top and doing this, right? Look professional because that could be, it’s hopefully going to be potential clients that are watching this, right? Or we may want to spend money and boost this because videos that are boosted are going to get a lot more traction than posts that are boosted because people like video content as you, I know you probably watch a lot of reels, don’t you? You probably like TikToks and YouTube stuff. That’s why you’re here, right? So what makes you think anybody else is different, right? Why would they stop and read your boring generic posts when they could watch a video instead?

Okay, so put yourself in your customer’s shoes. I know I keep saying that, but that is a huge, huge caveat point that I’m trying to make is that you are your potential customer. So why are you treating your business as if it’s a totally different ballgame? You know what you are attracted to, right? You know what home services are going to attract you when you need a plumber or an electrician or whatever. And it might be, you know, they picked up the phone, right? But you know what I’m saying? When we have multiple options, I’m looking at these types of things. And a lot of this stuff is subconscious. People aren’t thinking, oh, I trust this company more because the owner had a video on the website and on their Facebook and they were posting consistently. That’s not what they’re thinking, but it is how their brain is processing the information at hand, right? And so that’s why they’re going to reach out to you instead.

So video content, guys, even just a couple, and then just pin those. You can actually pin posts on the top of your Facebook page and for your business page. So choose the ones that are impactful. If you go to ours again, you’ll see that what’s pinned at the top is all going to be videos. So that’s going to be the cleaning giveaways. That’s going to be me talking about us not having any complaints. If we’re hiring, I’m going to post videos about that. So, you know, I’ve done a lot of different types of video content over the years and go ahead and scroll through if you guys are interested on the Serene Clean and shamelessly take any ideas, you know, you’re not my competition. And if you are, stop listening because I don’t want to give you all these good ideas. You’re a competition. You want your competition not to be listening to filthy rich cleaners, guys. You want to be the only one in your area listening to this because it works. Okay. It’s worked very well for us. For us, we’ve consistently got great Facebook leads and just showcasing the business, right? We want when people stumble on Serene Clean’s Facebook, it’s, whoa, I know exactly this. This business is active. They love their community. They love their staff. They’re a little silly. Sometimes they’ve got pets in the office, all of these little things that you can highlight. It’s okay. Don’t be so serious, guys. People enjoy working with people who enjoy their work, right? So how can we showcase that we enjoy our work and that we are going to be pleasant to work with, right?

Optimizing Your Google My Business Profile

So that’s pretty much everything when it comes to Facebook. Again, I’m sure there’s lots of other things that we’ve posted and you guys can take some time and scroll through. And pretty much everything that I talked about with Facebook, I want to apply to Google My Business. That is where every time I hop onto a consult call with you guys, almost always the Google My Businesses are just not up to snuff because there is almost no photos. And if there are any photos, they’re very generic, they might even be stock images that you downloaded and put on there. No, no. Or the before and afters are just before and afters uploaded and they’re uploaded separately. So they’re not even lined up. So do the graphics and upload those to Google My Business. Any videos that you make or any video testimonials, you can use a video compressor and shrink the file and upload to those. Those are very impactful to have on your Google My Business.

And first and foremost, most important thing, photos of people. Okay. And what an experiment I like to do with my consulting clients actually is we pull up and we Google cleaning services in Dallas, Texas or wherever they’re from. Right. And we pull up the map and see what pops up. And we start clicking through Google My Business Profiles. And I’m, which ones are catching your eye? Which ones, which photos are making you pause? The ones with cleaners in them, the ones with people in them. All right. So get photos of people, your people, not generic stock images of cleaners that are not your cleaners. Get your cleaners on there. Get you on there if you don’t have any cleaners. Showcase that you are doing the work and you enjoy it. Okay, that’s what’s going to stand out when you don’t have a lot of reviews yet.

I know, obviously, I’m not talking about getting reviews in this at all, other than video testimonials. It should be a foregone conclusion that you know I’m gonna tell you to get more reviews. And on Facebook, that was something else we didn’t talk about. Get Facebook reviews and link to the ZenMaid booking form in your actual info so that they have an easy call to action, right? They know where to go or, you know, to your website or whatever. But make sure your email’s linked there, your phone’s linked there, all of that good stuff. Contact information, basic shit, right?

I will say that about Facebook and obviously have your Google My Business completely filled out. So make sure all the contact information is there. You have everything linked so that they can easily book. If you don’t have a website and you only have a phone number and your competitors all have a website, guess who they’re gonna click to? Your competitor, they’re not gonna call you, okay? They’re not gonna call, so get a damn website. Just, you know, being brutally honest here, you need to have a website, guys. And we can talk about websites. I think I have done an episode on mistakes that I see on websites, the eight most common mistakes I see on the websites, right? So you can go listen to that episode. I can’t remember which one it is. Maybe we can link it in the comments for everybody’s ease of clicking.

So we want to have that all filled out. Have the informational section filled out completely to include your service ranges. You get 500 characters, I believe, in the Google My Business description. Use it. Again, ChatGPT, guys. We all got it. We all got it. Go use it to write a full description about your business and how fantastic you are and what you’re going to do for people and what makes you special, right? Put that there. And then most importantly, I keep saying that. This is all important. The most important stuff is going to be the photos, getting Google reviews, having video testimonials on there. But it is a very important thing to also be updating your Google My Business with basically posts, right? And so we’re not posting as frequently as we do on Facebook. But what I do do is I take the same graphics for employee anniversaries, new employees. That’s another thing. Every time we bring a new person on or somebody is leaving and it’s a good leaving, meaning everybody is in a happy place when they leave. We’re also going to highlight, we’re going to do a welcome post and we’re going to do a farewell post as well. So another thing you’ll see on our social media.

So those are the types of things, the welcomes, the anniversaries, and our monthly donation. We’re gonna post that in the update section on Google My Business, just to keep that up to date. Because Google, from an SEO perspective, likes to highlight business profiles that are being active in utilizing the Google My Business platform, right? This is completely free. And I know a lot of you guys have had frustrations with Google. Google can be really frustrating. Sometimes they lock your account for no damn reason. And I know that this is frustrating and you want to give up on it, just keep working, keep contacting them. You will get it unlocked eventually. I promise. I know it can be fickle or it’ll take your reviews away and it gets frustrating. That doesn’t change the fact that this is where everybody is going to do their research on cleaning companies, right?

So outside of, you know, word of mouth, which is totally volatile, outside of Facebook, which can be hit or miss because sometimes people are just window shopping. If they are Googling, they are ready to buy. They are searching for a reason, right? So we want to really stand out as much as possible on our Google My Business profile. And when we can’t do that, because we don’t have as many reviews, we can do it in the content itself there, because this is most likely their first impression if they’re searching, and then they’re gonna, you know, get a little taste, a little hors d’oeuvre, and then they’re gonna hop onto your website, which should be the whole meal, right? So how can we stand out in that first little delicious morsel that they’re tasting? And that is going to be the update section, that is going to be the photos and videos, right? That’s literally how we can do it outside of the review. So keep working on your reviews, guys. I know that that takes more time and effort though. So these other areas we can work on in the meantime and get those up to snuff and help you start to stand out, okay?

Learning from Your Competitors

And I would recommend to you, go search in the biggest city near you, right? Go Google it and start clicking through the profiles and notice where you pause. Notice the ones that are catching your eye and why is it? Ask yourself, why did I stop here? Why did this one catch my eye? Oh, those cleaners are all smiling and they’re happy and they’re having a good time or they’re out to lunch or whatever. It’s not because they had a before and after photo that’s just raw, right? That’s not why. It’s not because they had generic cleaner photos. You didn’t stop because of that. So I would highly recommend you do that in your area. And it’s not to get upset. It’s not to feel down on yourself. It’s to learn, right? That’s what we’re all doing here is the nice thing is you can change this. This is something that you can improve upon. And once you get it down, it really, it’s just rinse and repeat. We’re just doing the same shit over and over and over again, but we’ve done it for years at this point. So now we have thousands of images on our Google My Business profiles and our Facebook has consistent posts for years and years and years.

Taking Action and Getting Started

So it’s that consistency. So when anybody comes to our stuff, they know, oh, this is a legit business. They care about it. They’re putting effort into it. So if you are not doing any of these things, don’t feel overwhelmed, just start small, introduce one of these concepts that I’ve talked about today, go make a template for the before and afters, right? That’s all you got right now. Great. Go to Canva, make a cool template that you like, it matches your brand identity that you’re going for, slap your logo on it, make it pretty. And again, utilizing AI as much as possible to help you because maybe you’re, I’m terrible at graphic design. I don’t know what looks good. Well, go to ChatGPT and say, hey, Chatty. That’s what mine’s named. What, this is the goal I’m going for. What suggestions would you have that I could to make this look more professional or elevated and also to help me stand out compared to the competition and see what it says, right? Use the tools we have at hand, guys. We are in an unprecedented time that can turn any of us into anything. And it’s an amazing tool, right?

So the excuse of, I’m not good at this anymore, because now you have the tool that you don’t have to be good at it, it can literally walk you through step by step how to do this. And once you have those templates, we’re cooking with gas. Now, I think that’s the same cooking with oil. I don’t know. But it goes a lot faster once you have that template. And now it just goes over and over again. And that’s where you could if you want to delegate or outsource that to a VA or some marketing person, you can do that. But we need to not be just delegating it from the get go. And all they can do is the generic shit, right? So you’re kind of forcing them into the corner. So they need to have the raw material at hand, meaning your cleaner’s photos. They need to have the before and after graphics. They need to have the testimonials to actually turn into stuff. That’s why they have to do generic stuff because then you don’t have anything for them, right?

And some of you will do cleaning tips and all of that. And that’s great. That’s fine. I find that I tried that in the beginning. They didn’t really hit off that well because I don’t know. People just didn’t really seem interested. And I wasn’t willing to go all in on that of educating our clients about how to clean their house. I don’t know, because that’s my job is to clean their house. So I don’t really want that. I want them to be terrible at it. Right. So they have to hire us because they’re terrible at it. I’m just kidding. But I don’t find that those posts were quite, they didn’t really hit the mark for us. It’s more how can we stand out from other companies? And this is how we’ve done so.

Closing Thoughts

So hopefully this was helpful to you guys. Let me know in the comments what you are doing right now for your social media and where you plan to work on things based on what I just discussed. Would love to hear your thoughts, guys. And again, shamelessly go look at Serene Cleans. I’m not saying we have the best social media in any way, shape or form, but this is just what’s worked for us. And it’s been something we’ve been able to be consistent with for years. And that’s why I’ve really stuck to it is because we have this pattern that’s very repeatable now and everything’s a process, right? There is some work that goes into this. It’s not like you can do this same day sometimes. We have to ask the cleaner. We have to keep track of whose turn it is to choose a local nonprofit, explain it to them. They have to get back to us. We need to make the donation. We need to get information about them, turn that into a graphic with the cleaner’s photo. It’s a process, right? But we have systematized all of these things. So that may feel overwhelming to you right now. Just let’s start with one, right? Let’s start with before and afters. Maybe let’s start turning our great reviews and feedback into some nice testimonial graphics.

All of that being said, guys, I hope you have a beautiful, wonderful week. Hit that like, hit that subscribe, and we’ll see you on the next episode of Filthy Rich Cleaners. Bye, guys.

If you enjoyed this episode of the Filthy Rich Cleaners podcast, please be sure to leave us a five-star review so we can reach more cleaners like you. Until next time, keep your work clean and your business filthy rich.

Note: This transcript has been edited for clarity and readability.

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

• Serene Clean Facebook
• Canva
• ChatGPT
• ZenMaid
• The Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes

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