Using marketing strategies to promote your DryMaster affiliate business is a great way to increase your customer base and take your carpet cleaning company to a higher level of success. Effective marketing can help you increase sales, create brand loyalty, and interact with potential customers while getting a sense of what they want.
Most DryMaster new affiliates are aware of how important marketing can be, but not necessarily sure how best to go about marketing their services. Adopting a marketing plan can be slightly intimidating at first, with the concept often viewed as foreign to outsiders.
Marketing strategies are ever-evolving, and determining which methods will be most effective is not the type of information that’s typically found on page one of a carpet cleaning business plan. With that in mind, what’s the best way to go about both online and off line marketing and promoting a carpet cleaning business?
Here are a few ideas to get you started:
1) Distribute email marketing to your existing customer base:
Email marketing is a great way to reach your current customer base with personalized and customizable messages that can resonate on a deeper level. And it’s economic and cost-effective.
Research by the Data & Marketing Association indicates that email generates $38 for every $1 spent, which is an astounding 3,800% return on investment (ROI), making it one of the most effective marketing options available. Additionally, email marketing allows you to measure and monitor your success rate for reaching customers and converting clicks into revenue.
For your email marketing needs, we recommend MailChimp or Klaviyo, both of which provide excellent email automation tools.
2) Utilize a full service customer relationship management (CRM) system:
CRM is a method for managing a company’s interactions and relationships with current and potential customers. A CRM can improve customer retention by as much as 27%, and the benefits don’t stop there.
CRM technology helps you better understand your customers through complete data that indicates their wants, needs, and even expectations. By better understanding your customers, you dramatically increase the likelihood that they will perceive interactions with you or your company as positive experiences. And 3 out of 4 customers say they spent more money because of a positive customer experience.
Finding the best full service CRM for carpet cleaning businesses can involve a great deal of time and research, so we did the legwork for you. We recommend using Service Titan for all your CRM system needs — from setup to the point where you begin utilizing the data to improve your customer relationship experiences.
3) Start an online search campaign (SEO and Paid Search):
Your customers are online, and in order for them to find your DryMaster affiliate business, you need to ensure you have a far-reaching web presence. One highly-effective method for doing just that is online search campaigns.
The two most popular types of online search campaigns are organic SEO (search engine optimization) and paid search. Understanding the benefits of both will help you better structure your campaigns to be successful.
A paid search campaign provides businesses with an opportunity to advertise within the sponsored listings of a search engine like Google or Bing, and reach a targeted audience. With paid search campaigns, the typical structure involves you paying each time your advertisement is clicked (pay per click). Less common payment structures can include paying each time your advertisement is displayed (known as CPM or cost per thousand), or when a phone contact is generated through a unique number provided on your advertisement (known as pay per call).
A SEO campaign involves optimizing the content on your website so that when potential customers search for carpet cleaning services (in any number of ways), your site is more likely to appear in the search results.
The automated search programs or “spiders” of Google, Bing, Yahoo!, and other search engines constantly crawl the web and index sites. Where your site is indexed depends largely on the search engine “friendliness” of your website’s content. Organic SEO means optimizing your site’s content to make it easy for these “spiders” to read your site, understand its content, and be more likely to display your site in search engine results.
For paid search campaigns, you can easily setup and purchase a targeted advertisement through Google or any of the other search engines.
For SEO optimization, it’s probably best to hire a seasoned digital marketing company to guide you through the process (at least initially), depending on how much day-to-day influence you have over your company website. If you edit and update your website yourself, you may simply need a consultation with a digital marketing company to determine best practices for ranking your site.
If you let someone else handle your website’s updates and content, it’s possible they already have the wherewithal to assist in a SEO campaign. If they don’t have that type of experience, connecting them with the digital marketing company you choose is a pretty seamless process.
Both of these campaigns require a bit of money up front, but it’s well worth the investment. The paid campaigns offer you an opportunity to generate virtually immediate results for your company, while the SEO campaign provides a long term solution for establishing a far-reaching web presence that puts you ahead of the competition when customers search for your services.
Additionally, DryMaster systems will also teach you many other effective ways to reach out online customers through online lead generating companies.
4) Include promotional items:
We’ve all heard of company “swag,” which is essentially a promotional product featuring the company’s name or logo.
Types of swag span the gamut — from pens to water bottles — and can be customized to your exact specifications. Although promotional swag that is customized for your company can be expensive, the effectiveness of general promotional items can be very beneficial and shouldn’t be overlooked.
With that in mind, regardless of the size of your budget (or if you even have a budget) you might consider simply offering a free promotional item whenever signing a new customer or providing your services.
As you are in the cleaning services business, we recommend that you offer items that are aligned with your brand and fall under the category of carpet cleaning marketing materials.
Such examples might include a travel bottle of hand sanitizer, a lint roller, or a pack or wet wipes. Essentially, any item that is related to cleaning would be worth considering.
Although it may seem trivial, by providing customers with a sort of free gift every now-and-then, you’re actually increasing the potential for repeat business. Promotional items increase company loyalty, and you don’t have to spend a lot of money on customized swag to reap such benefits.
All of the above marketing ideas represent solid and proven effective business strategies for carpet cleaning businesses like yours. If you’re serious about taking your affiliate business to a new level of success, adopting a savvy marketing plan is one of the most effective and timely ways of achieving your goals.
