Carpet Cleaning Business can be a very lucrative business for owners if followed through with both passion and profesionalism. Yes, it does require some specific knowledge to start, thrive and grow successfully, just like most businesses. There is always a need for cleaning both for homes and coperate places and this makes the target market readily available at any place humans inhabit, particularly in the cities.
Someone will always be too busy to take out that rug, or scrub it, or generally have no idea how to manage the stain on their expensive and very fragile carpet. Carpet cleaning business, is also almost unaffected by recession, and does not require so much capital for a start-up, and a successful carpet cleaning business can make about $30 to $80 dollar a day per room cleaning.
We believe, if you are reading this article you have already set-up your carpet cleaning business but seeks to be more successful but for those who haven’t yet, because they are unsure of how successful it’d go.
Worthy of note is – every business idea that coincides with your passion is worth giving a shot at. Discard every doubt in your mind and go for it with a plan. Below are a few tips to guide you in setting up your potentially successful carpet business.
- Write a good business plan – This acts as a compass for your business and how you aim, necessary resources, it can be a formal or informal plan but must tackle expressly – your target customers, whatt equipments and tools you need, do you need extra hand/s for a start and how many, how to market your business effectively and gain new customers.
- Get trained and obtain a certification – For trust from potential customers get well trained and licensed
- Register your business – Register with the state your business is situated as an LLC incase of legal-related problems
- Have a business bank account – preferably open a business checking account, do not use your personal bank accounts, so you can track your business transactions properly.
- Obtain the right insurance – Another necessary paperwork, protect your carpet cleaning business from unnecessary claims or mishaps.
- Fund your business – Get the necessary equipment and tools needed, (cleansers, stain removers, spotters, carpet brushes etc). All of which require sufficient funding to cover the start-up cost or get a small business loan.
- Market your business – Tell your family, leverage friends to help you market, social circles as a whole, gather feedbacks, build online audience platforms – such as Facebook, Instagram etc.
Ways To Have A Successful Carpet Cleaning Business
A carpet cleaning business for those who want to run it succesfully know it takes more than owning a powerful vacuum cleaner and a good number of chemicals for stain removals or sprays to qualify as a professional carpet cleaner, you also understand that carpet cleaning actually involves a lot of work and dedication to kep your business growing.
So if you are looking to expand your carpet cleaning business, the best first step is to actually:
1. Look back on your original business plan:
Are your market and service description built based on the types of customers you like, and the types of services you provide them (deep cleaning, stain removal, annual refresher, etc.). You want to look back at your profit so far in the last couple of months, do they add up to your plan.
Have you met your milestones – the number of jobs per week or per year? How many new customers have you gained, how many keeps coming back, how is the feedback you get? Reached your revenue goal, checking all these if you get you are already definitely in growth mode. Now you will have to re-evaluate where you stand, where you’d like to go, and address a few matters.
2. Expand Your Workforce
In order to grow your carpet cleaning business, you may want to consider your personnel. If you want to be able to take on more jobs, your current employees will either need to take on more hours, or you will need to hire more hands. The later, is most preferable because it allows you and your employees to deliver their best at each contracted job. If you don’t yet have employees, now may be a time to consider hiring.
Keep in mind that by expanding your business, you’ll also need to add equipment, as well as cover additional costs like business insurance for a larger workforce.
3. Reach More Customers
To expand your business, and keep those additional workers busy, you’ll need to reach more customers. In order to reach more carpet cleaning customers, you will likely require more marketing. You will need to add to your existing marketing efforts with a larger budget, more types of media/social media, and more pinpointed messages. If you’re not already doing so, to better reach your target market you should be considering all avenues including:
- Facebook ads
- An active Twitter, Instagram and possibly YouTube account
- An SEO enhanced website so you’re easily found on Google
- Printed flyers
- Magnets
- Partnerships with real estate agents, property managers, general house cleaning services and the likes
- Word-of-mouth (so try to keep every client satisfied!)
4. Reach More Customers
Also, in order to reach even more carpet cleaning customers and clients you will likely require more than just social media marketing strategies. You may need creative graphic designs that advertises your business and these graphics will have to be updated when you introduce new things into the market such as promos, free deliveries, flash sales etc. All these are strategies you adopt to keep your business in the heart of your customers as their first choice.
Tips to Design A Carpet Cleaning Website:
- Develop a Responsive Website Design.
- Easy Website Navigation.
- Consistent And Simple Carpet Cleaning Website Layout.
- Use Most Relevant And Quality Content On Your Website.
- Make It Easy For Customers To Contact You.
- Use Engaging Call-To-Action (CTA) Button.
5. Raise Your Prices
As you have likely realized, setting fees for your services is no easy business. And once you’ve set your fees, it’s not always comfortable to increase them. While you may worry that you’ll lose customers if you increase the rates for your services, this is not a reason to hold you back. Experience has proven that in all likelihood, most customers will stay with you if you increase rates by 5-10%. After all, the price of living itself goes up over time, and your business needs to keep up in order to survive.
Existing customers, additionally, are often more loyal than you’d think. If they’re happy with your service, they’re unlikely to go searching to replace you over a relatively small sum of money, especially considering most private individuals don’t clean their carpets more than once or twice a year. Larger organizations you work with on a more frequent basis will also most likely accept a small increase, though in this case you’ll need to give decent advance warning for it to go over well. Check out our full piece on this topic for more details and tips.
6. Offer Extra Services
Once you’ve got your foot in the door and booked a new customer for your carpet cleaning business, you’ve got yourself an opening. Use this to your advantage and offer each customer more than just a basic one-time cleaning.
Want customers to clean their carpets or furniture more often? Offer some sort of loyalty plan. You can give a bulk discount for committing to a certain number of cleanings in advance, or you can have some sort of pnch-card system along the lines of “Buy 5 cleanings, get 1 free”.
Want to add more revenue streams? Think up-sell and cross-sell.
Up-selling means that if you’ve been called to a home to clean the living room carpet, look around and offer your services for the rest of the space; is there a couch that needs a cleaning? Do you see another rug in a different room that needs some care which you could offer on the spot? This is even more effective when clients see how beautiful a clean carpet looks and feels, and since you’re already there, it works out well for both of you.
When it comes to cross-selling, you can start offering complementary products like air fresheners, handheld vacuum cleaners, or even furniture brushes. Or you can add services like window cleaning, sofa cleaning, or even lawn care. Just make sure you’re equipped for any extras you take on; and don’t let the add-ons to distract you from your main business offering. Because at the end of the day, customers called a carpet cleaner for a reason, and if you want to grow your carpet cleaning business, you’ll need to excel at that.
