I wish I could find the advert now.
But they were offering quite a good comm rate if you were to close a commercial contract.
Im assuming, no expert, that within this industry its price wars.
Depends what your target market is? Domestic or commercial? Which will all depend on the equipment capacity that you have.
Commercial I suppose less buildings, domestic - high volume?
I suppose you must get to a turning point within the business where you want to progress. You maybe doing a mixture of both, but then is the decision where either you want to do both domestic and commercial or one or the other?
Domestic marketing
I would assume that leaflet and door to door knocking, plus word of mouth (word of mouth can also be bad if you do a bad job) so it works both ways.
So yes domestic would be regular advertising in local mags, One off ads do not work, you have to be continuous, so people get used to seeing your name. Leaflet dropping, but you COULD if you wanted follow this up with a call. Everybody prioritises services and bills, which is more important, paying the gas? or paying the window cleaner?
If any of you advertise, I would have thought that the advertising bill is last on the list to pay - its a necessity, but not as important as buying supplies to run your business.
Commercial marketing
I would definately go down the route of calling from a TPS list (telephone preference service). You either can buy data, and hopefully rely on that the amount of employees reflects the building size? Or you drive round your local area and look at the buildings you would like to clean. Try and find a number on the net, TPS
check it and call.
Really its very diverse the ideas, you could offer 1 month windows, gutter cleaning free - or something like that - mix and match?
Refer a friend, an honoury clean?
Sometimes you have to add a little "extra" that sets you apart from the competition, a bit gimicky it maybe - but it may sway people to go with you.
Even a voucher scheme, so many cleans and you get a clean free?
You could even run a competition between all the people on you round, make it fun, this month A N Other are giving away X, it makes you different
you could do a trival pursuit type of thing when you put the bill through the door, whoever wins gets their clean free.
Your a community industry
You will soon be known for being a bit different
Hope that helps
