This one is tricky. Unlike Twitter, anyone with a Facebook account typically has personal information on it and even though they can make their accounts private, it's just weird to ask people to "Like" your page. I did get some initial work through friends and a couple of clients that had big followings (one a musician that I had known of, actually!) but ever since I just haven't had much luck with it. I see other big cleaning companies with pages, but I question if they know something I don't or if they just have it to have it.
Anyone reading who could chime in will be added to my monthly free cleaning lottery, to which you'll be the first and only with a ticket!
This is probably my favorite. I didn't actually think of email originally, for some reason, but through reading different blogs I caught on quick. Much like Twitter, it's very easy to get clients to allow me their email so I can update them with when I'm available or if I'm running any deals. What's extra great about is that you can be sure they at least saw the email from you-- you can't ever be too sure with Twitter as things happen fast or people just don't check it very often. If I have a cancellation or a deal running or whatever, I can shoot a quick email out and I always get good results from it (and a couple complaints in the beginning for over-doing it, I'll admit).
Additionally, at the bottom of the email I always link to my tweet that's made right before I send out the emails so those who'd like to re-tweet and help me out can. And they do! A lot actually. So in addition to getting my clientele to see it, at least a few of them always re-tweet and all their friends see too.
Final thoughts
There are many ways to advertise your cleaning services and these are really only a few of many. Philadelphia itself is a GIGANTIC city and has thousands of ways to advertise outside of the internet. I've had a lot of small business owners with shops call and ask if I'd like to put up fliers (some for free just to get a nice promotion in their store). I imagine if I put a significant amount of time into this type of non-internet advertising, it would also overwhelm me with work.
Facebook must have a lot of potential, but I'm still unable to take advantage of it. My offer of a clean house stands true to anyone who can offer a few words of advice, but if not hopefully I can figure it out and shed some light on the topic.
Angie's List and AdWords are the two other big ones that I'm not yet familiar with. Angie's List is like Yelp in that it's about people reviewing businesses. The difference is I don't really understand how to get reviews there. I've never once had a client ask about it while many have asked about Yelp. I do have a page, but it sits at 0 reviews. It's a little bit frustrating because I do see huge companies using it and they can't be doing that for no reason... maybe it just takes a lot of money to get into. Another thing I wish I could find advice for, and that hopefully I can figure out.
AdWords is just damn complex! It's Google's advertising service (the yellow ads you see when you search for things, that's AdWords ads). I don't actually have time to learn this on my own, and I can't deal with the current work coming in, but if I ever need to use it in the future this may be the one thing I hire someone to take care of. I'd need a website to go along with it so I'd definitely have to pay someone to set all that up.
OK that's all for now!
-C
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