How to use Facebook to Market Your Cleaning Businesses

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It’s easy to think that Facebook is no longer a useful tool for lead generation. At almost 20 years old, the platform is geriatric by social media standards, but that’s no reason to underestimate its potential reach.

We’ve talked to thousands of cleaning business owners about how they continue to use Facebook as a top lead generation source.

In this article, we share our key learnings to help you get the most out of Facebook and generate those all-important leads for your cleaning business. Best of all, you’ll learn how to do it without being spammy. Let’s dive in.

In this article, we touch on:

• Why Facebook is still one of the best lead generation platforms
• How to use Facebook groups to build a custom audience
• What to post in Airbnb and property management Facebook groups
• How to use non-spammy posts to build your pool of relevant leads

Why Facebook Is Still One of the Best Lead Generation Platforms

There are so many ways that you can market your home cleaning business, but one of the easiest ways is by building a consistent, personable presence on Facebook. 

While Facebook ads have a good reputation for conversion, they represent a much bigger financial investment than simply creating a Facebook Page for your cleaning business and posting regularly. 

Everyone we know is on Facebook. Most people who still use the platform are in Groups, which offer users the ability to discuss special or local interests. For a small business, reaching people in your community should be your first priority, which makes Facebook an ideal place to reach people.

A good first step to starting a Facebook page is to target your niche. Whether it’s stay-at-home dads, young professionals, or people who simply don’t have the time to do a proper cleaning of their homes, defining your ideal customer profile will help you figure out which groups to join and how to post within them to reach new clients.

Pro tip:If you’re not already familiar with Facebook Groups, a great place to jump in is the ZenMaid Mastermind, where you can talk with owners and leaders in the cleaning service business and see what other cleaning companies are up to.

Join the Right Facebook Groups to Find Your Ideal Clients

Once you’ve figured out who your ideal customers are on the platform, you’ll need to find out where they are. This is the time to join relevant Facebook Groups. 

Join groups that are for specific areas of the field you want to target for your home cleaning services, such as groups for Airbnb owners, project management, or young professionals. When searching for groups to join, use specific city names and keywords like “Airbnb” or “Airbnb community.” Focusing your search will help you to find groups that are relevant to your niche.

Most Facebook Groups and Pages have community guidelines or moderators who maintain rules for posting to the group. Some others are stricter and have approval waiting periods, where Group creators restrict members to a specific location or block businesses from posting.  

It’s important to read and respect these rules before you post to ensure you’re being respectful. If you don’t, you risk either getting ejected from the group or wasting a lot of time trying to join groups that are only for individuals.

Once you join a Facebook Group, you gain access to user demographics data that you can later apply to a Facebook ad strategy. 

Pro tip: Some of the Facebook groups you have joined will have a review process. Make sure that whatever you are posting in the group follows the guidelines and rules so you don’t get kicked out.

Create a Posting Strategy for Your Target Facebook Group

Once you’ve joined a group, you can’t simply start posting ads for your cleaning services from the get-go — you’ll be kicked out. No one likes a spammy group member, and you’ll likely be in violation of the group’s usage guidelines.

However, there are ways of gently advertising your business while also adding value or building name recognition for your brand without annoying people.

Your first move should be to observe how the group has posted or received similar posts before you joined. Take notes about things like creative ideas, timing strategies, and interaction styles if you’re new to Facebook — other businesses may have figured out a golden cadence that allows them to post regularly without browbeating group participants.

Once you have some ideas, determine how often you want to post. Stephanie Pipkin, Owner of her $1.5+ million a year business, Serene Clean, recommends thinking about what will be possible for you to accomplish during the busiest season you experience. 

Inconsistency in posting can often be a red flag, mostly when it’s clear you make a flurry of posts in one time period and then go dark for months at a time. What would you think if you encountered a Facebook Page whose last post was months ago? Either they went out of business, or they’re not very organized, and neither impression is a good first impression. 

Instead, choose an easy cadence that you feel comfortable with, such as posting twice a week. Share the posts you’ve created with the groups you’ve joined. Think of it as top-of-funnel content marketing — sharing funny, insightful, or valuable content with others — as a means of having people interact with your post, and gathering user data that can then be applied to custom audiences.

Here’s a basic rundown:

• Step 1: Find a video on YouTube that you think would get people talking or spark emotion, like one where an Airbnb home gets trashed, or there is a big stain left behind by renters.
• Step 2: Create a post with a comment saying something simple like: “OMG, what would you do if this happened to you?”
• Step 3: Add the video link to the post and publish it, making sure that it doesn’t post to your personal Facebook page.
• Step 4: Head over to the ads manager on your business page and create a custom audience using Facebook sources of video.
• Step 5: Share the same video post you created for your business page to the various Facebook groups you have joined.

Whoever clicks, watches, or comments on your post will be added to your custom audience group, which you can target later with ads. (If you don’t have a marketing budget to spend on ads right now, don’t worry. We’ve written a post that explains how to get leads from Facebook without buying ads.)

Now that you have an idea of the process, check out this step-by-step video and follow along as Ryan talks in more detail about each step in posting to Facebook.

Compelling Facebook Posts Will Result in More Leads

Constructing the perfect message to market your cleaning service doesn’t have to be hard. Have fun with it! 

You can use emojis to catch attention, but be sure not to overdo it so that your potential cleaning clients don’t have to work hard to decipher your message. 

You can use a form to capture your leads’ contact details through Facebook. Facebook makes it easy because they already store the users’ email and name, so a lead form will auto-populate, and in two quick clicks, the user can submit the form. Take a look at this video to see a step-by-step form setup process. 

Pro tip: Remember, you are required to include your privacy policy, so add a link back to your website as guided by Facebook’s set-up process.

Facebook posts are also a good stepping stone if you’re just getting started with social media because they are mostly text- and image-based. If you’re already creating videos, it may be easier for you to join a platform like TikTok and post before-and-after videos. But there’s no need to jump straight to video on Facebook. 

Make Lead-Generating Facebook Content for Your Cleaning Business

When marketing your cleaning service, use videos, pictures, and easy-to-read information to entice potential cleaning clients.

Some great examples of video content that you can use are:

• Scans of rooms before and after a cleaning
• Clips of cleaning techniques that your cleaning business uses
• Quick videos of you talking straight into the camera about what you offer

Some examples of user-generated content you can use are:

• Client testimonials: Share quotes from your current clients about their satisfaction with your cleaning business. Make sure you get their permission first!
• Airbnb reviews: Cross-posting reviews left on the Airbnbs you’ve cleaned that include a mention of your work can help build your reputation for good service
• Ask a question: Engage your audience by asking them how they’d clean something tough — a dirty oven or tile grout — and then share your approach in the comments

How Much Effort Should You Put Into Facebook Ads?

While you definitely want more than one ad running at a time, you don’t have to spend a lot of time crafting unique written ad copy. You can keep the text the same and change the videos to create multiple variations of the same ad. 

Create at least 6 duplicate ads per ad set by clicking on “duplicate” when setting them up in Business Manager.

Monitor your Facebook ads and, if you find that they are costing you more than about $8 per lead, switch them out for something else. 

Remember, the more ads you have running, the more ground your budget can cover. The more leads you get per ad, the better your chances of having a positive return on investment (ROI).

Even the Best Cleaning Business Lead Generation Strategies Require Follow-Up

We’ve discussed Facebook as a lead generation platform and talked you through both content for ads and the process of joining groups and sharing posts to gather leads. When you apply this process and continue to post into groups, you’ll add to your target audience and build up an extensive list of leads over time.

Don’t get impatient! This will take some time, and you must be consistent.

Along with patience, it’s critical to remember that with any leads you do gather, you need to have a separate system in place for following up with them. 

When people are on Facebook, even if they click on an ad, they often aren’t looking to buy right away. However, they might be ready to buy in 3 or 6 months’ time. You’ll want to stay top of mind while they consider their options.

So, as useful as Facebook can be for getting leads for your cleaning business, the platform is only as effective as your follow-up. Having a follow-up process in place, where you follow up with leads on the first day, the second, fourth, seventh, and so on, allows you to build a relationship with the leads you’ve gathered. After the 30-day mark, following up every 30 days by Messenger or email acts as a friendly reminder that you’re ready and waiting to help as soon as your leads need you.

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