Getting leads for your pressure washing, roof cleaning, gutter cleaning or any other exterior cleaning business is arguably THE biggest part of running your cleaning business.
If we’re being honest, cleaning stuff isn’t that hard to do. I cleaned my first roof just by watching a youtube video and with a bit of practice now have a skill that has made me hundreds of thousands of dollars.
So right up front realize that if you have a pressure washing or any other similar home service business you are NOT in the cleaning industry you are in the marketing industry.
After reading this article you will have the skill to beat the pants off of pretty much any other business in your area regardless if you have a ton of experience online or have never done any sort of digital marketing yet. Let’s get into it.
To start off let’s be clear about what exactly “getting more leads” is.
Getting more leads is simply code for getting more new customers in the door.
Making more money. Growing the business.
Almost all of the problems you as a business owner has, can be solved by getting more people to give you money.
Getting. More. Leads. Cool?
What exactly is a lead?
Before we get too complicated let’s first clarify what a lead is. There have been entire books written about this subject so I won’t go too in depth but basically a lead is someone you can contact that has shown interest in your business.
The main issue most pressure washing companies have is even getting anyone interested in their business.
Your biggest problem is people don’t know about you!
They do not know you exist and how is anyone supposed to hand you money if they don’t even know you exist?
Right now if this is you there is really only one place you should be focusing your efforts to get more qualified leads.
The internet.
Look around. Almost every person you see is glued to their phone. This is where you need to be.
And let me tell you right now 90% of those people are either on social media or they are on Google.
In the marketing world we usually refer to this as “search marketing” or “interruption marketing”.
You can probably think of a few examples right now and there is a time and a place for each.
Facebook ads are an example of interruption. Someone is scrolling around looking at cat memes and then boom an ad pops up with something like “pressure washing services for homeowners in xyz city”.
The person wasn’t inherently looking for this it just popped into their world and interrupted them as you could say.
What other examples of interruption advertising can you think of?
Next up is search marketing.
This is vastly different because it often has a much higher intent behind the person looking for you. Instead of dicking around on Instagram they went over to google and typed in “pressure washing contractors near me”.
They understand they have a problem and are actively looking for a solution.
From here either your business website pops up or if you’re running google ads they might see your business.
That is a simple overview of what some people spend thousands of dollars on expensive marketing campaigns which you’re about to learn for free.
How to have the best pressure washing website in your service area (search marketing 101)
If you’ve been in business longer than five minutes you know that the “best” business is not always the same as the business that makes the most money.
You could have been in business for 30 years, have amazing equipment, tons of trucks but if you don’t have a website you are missing out on a massive amount of potential customers.
In this day and age every single business needs to have a proper website that is optimized for the search engines. There is no if ands or buts about this.
Maybe in the 90s it was fine to just be on the yellow pages or put out yard signs but now days if someone has a problem they immediately search for a solution using Google.
You’ve probably done this today. In fact that was probably how you found this article.
Your customers are the same way. As such you need to spend some time thinking about how to position your website to solve their problem which as a business owner is technically all you do.
This is called search engine optimization or SEO.
Seo basically just means that when someone types in a certain keyword, the website that has this keyword explained the best is who shows up first on google.
For example let’s say someone lives in Austin Texas and they want their driveway pressure washed. What are they going to type into google?
Probably something like “driveway pressure washing company near me” or even “best pressure washing company austin”.
Google knows based on your website if this is you or not. If your website says Tallahassee or Portland Oregon its not going to show up. Duh right? This may seem obvious but when I work with guys in my Inner Circle on their websites they will have their website just say “Steve’s Power Washing company”. No mention of city or anything which is a huge mistake.
The thing with Google is you need to get very clear what services you offer and where. This is because competition is usually super high the broader you are.
If you try and rank for “Pressure washing Austin” good luck. That’s going to be super competitive. Everyone and their mother is trying to rank for this keyword which might take years for you to try and hit. A quick workaround is to do some basic keyword research and become much more focused with the cities you work with.
Instead of trying to rank just for Austin like everyone else what if you have a dozen pages on your website for the smaller cities nearby? Think “pressure washing services shady hollow” “gutter cleaning service west lake hills” “solar panel cleaning pflugerville”. Imagine if you had a page for every single small city AND every service you do.
This might end up being hundreds of pages for your website but if you really want to dominate your city you need to master this sort of content marketing.
These are just examples but this is how you need to start thinking.
What is the best way to get super specific and in front of my ideal customer? How can I position myself better than everyone else?
The business that does this the best and appears first on google will essentially dominate because they will have so many free leads coming their way. Page 1 of Google is no joke. This goes beyond simply talking about what you and your business do. It’s getting into the mind of your customer.
Maybe you add a hundred blog posts on the best way to clean a driveway or how to clean gutters. I’ve gotten many clients this way. I have articles and videos explaining how to clean a roof and when someone tries to do it themselves, realizes its hard who do you think they’re gonna call??
Search is a massive topic and I go more in depth into this in my new book (coming soon) but for now click on over to google and start typing in common search terms for your business in your city. Make sure those keywords are on your website! Add more service pages or a seasonal landing page with different services and for the love of God make sure you have your phone number VERY clearly displayed.
Stuff like that may seem small but you would be surprised. Above all make it very easy for someone to find your website and buy from you. That is the bulk of it.
Next let’s move onto my personal favorite, social media marketing.
How to advertise better than anyone else on social media
My first book The Ultimate Pressure Washing Marketing Guide comes with real time examples and goes deep on this topic but the bulk of what you need to know is this.
Get your business in front of as many eyeballs as you can for as cheap as you can.
So many pressure washing businesses overthink this. They take 10 minutes and throw up a facebook ad and spend $30 bucks and complain that facebook ads don’t work.
To date I’ve personally spent and helped many others spend tens of thousands of dollars on facebook ads.
Those that win are the businesses with the best online profiles and that advertise with the best offer.
Running an ad without an offer is like fishing without bait. It doesn’t make sense.
People need to have a reason to click on your ad. Especially because they weren’t searching for you in the first place. We need to be a bit more enticing than we were with Google.
One of my favorites is a low ticket offer. This is a great way to get your foot in the door and get leads for very cheap. I’ll offer something like a $199 gutter clean or a $299 roof clean. Of course the classic is the “$99 dollar driveway clean” which gets a ton of hate but damnit if it doesnt work.
Even if you just have a low ticket client you can very easily upsell and cross sell. If you’re doing the roof make sure to offer window cleaning, if you’re doing the driveway offer a house soft wash. Get that ticket price up its as simple as that.
The reason most businesses fail at online ads is they think they will lose money. After all why aren’t you running ads right now? If you had 100% certainty and knew you would make $2 for every $1 you spend you would be spending as much as you could.
Running ads is as simple as having a great offer paired with a good photo or captivating video. Something that has worked very well for me is a 22 second timelapse of me cleaning a roof with some classical music. It doesn’t need to be more complicated than that and of course the good old before and after pic of your work is something that works very well for me and the other guys in my Inner Circle group.
Best ways to get pressure washing jobs but for free
One of the most overlooked ways I see of getting leads for literally no cost is with a Google business profile. Otherwise known as google my business account. As discussed earlier when someone types in a search on google there are the websites that pop up but before that is the local businesses that are closest to the person searching. This is called the google map pack and all you need to do is get your business verified by google and you will get a gmb listing.
This is much more location based as Google likes it when a business is able to serve its customers better than everyone else.
That is Google’s goal after all.
It wants the best business aka the one that has the most reviews, the most photos, and most keyword-rich content to be shown first.
Even better, I’ve seen people get verified on gmb and get listed very fast. Sometimes getting leads within a couple weeks. Not to mention it’s free to setup so get going on this asap.
Add your services. Add your hours and where you service. Sometimes google makes you submit a video or they will send you a postcard to get verified and while this can be a pain in the ass, a solid google my business listing can be well well worth it.
Really Leveraging Past clients
Another free method is just building a really good client base and continuing to serve them over the years.
Everyone knows this but even I get lazy on really making an effort to collect customer email addresses and be on top of serving them over time.
SO much of our work to this day is from word of mouth and past clients its not even funny. In the begginning you can do this by yourself but as soon as I got employees things got a bit more crazy so now I keep track of everything with a crm like QuoteIQ. Right now I believe it’s just $1 for your first month if you use that link but regardless you need to start keeping track of your customers hands down.
Conclusion
The business that gets good at marketing can pretty much fail at everything else but if you can get clients and money in the door you have one of the most valuable skills in the entire world.
Leads are the lifeblood of your business.
Learn to do this well. Either spend time and money to learn it yourself or you will have to hire a lead generation company to do this for you and they can be very expensive.
If done and executed correctly, following the steps in this article can easily add thousands of dollars of potential leads per month or even per week to your power washing business.
Let me know how it goes for you and I hope you crush it 💪
-Spencer Claeys