Tips for Effectively Advertising Your Cleaning Business

As the owner of a fledgling online directory, I am astounded at how many businesses don’t provide adequate information on their websites and business listings. A large number of cleaning businesses state their business name and their city location -leaving a great deal of uncertainty as to whether this business is positioned to handle a customer’s cleaning needs. This article will present the proper way for a cleaning business to list their information online, as well as, provide tips for protecting the private information of the business owners.

When starting a cleaning business, or any business for that matter, it’s important to consider the arena in which you are setting up shop. As a service provider, who travels into the homes and businesses of your customers, you have to be able to demonstrate two important things: 1) that you service the area where the job is needing to be done, and 2) that you are trustworthy, honest, and capable to do the job. Your business marketing materials (business cards, fliers, cleaning checklists, and website material) must observe both of these.

To demonstrate that you service the area where the job is, you must state where you are located. The address of your business may not seem that important if you have a service radius of 50 miles. However, a prospective customer may not be able to determine your radius if they don’t know where the center of that radius is. Saying, for instance, that your business is in New York City does not indicate which part of New York City you service -nor does it indicate to the customer that you service their home in Flushing, Manhattan, Queens, or anywhere else in the city and suburbs. It’s too vague.

How do you go about stating your address without compromising the safety of your home or family? The honest answer to this is hard to state for a number of reasons. No matter if you have a home office or a standard business front, safety is always a concern. That’s true for small business and large corporations. If you can’t get over this fact -and list your home office address- then your next best bet is to get a post office box smack dab in the center of where you plan to conduct your business: your service area. This will at least give you the benefit of utilizing the zip code itself -as a zip code is an ideal means to delineate service areas. P.O. Boxes aren’t that expensive and also serve as a way to separate your business mail from your private mail. It’s an investment that will reap bigger rewards.

Finally, listing your address also promotes a sense of trust and honesty to prospective customers. All to often, people are duped by businesses that purport to offer x service. Today’s consumers are smarter and now look for basic identifiers to vet prospective providers (look at the rise in importance of reviews, for instance). Listing your information separates you from scammers. It opens you up to your customers.

So when you go to create a listing on a directory or adding your contact information to your website, take a big step and add your address, email, and other identifiers. It builds trust with your customers, provides a focal point for your service radius, and aides in separating you from bogus companies out to dupe consumers. It’s what establishes you as a business.