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After seeing several years of heightened demand for their services following the onset of the pandemic, many midsize and large home services businesses — including those in the cleaning sector — have seen a slowdown in new business growth. Historically high inflation and a weaker housing market are two likely factors for this decline.
Owners of cleaning businesses who are trying to determine how to get more cleaning clients in the year ahead must also consider that the people they aim to serve can, ironically, be a source of competition. A recent survey from the American Cleaning Institute found that 70% of Americans feel a sense of accomplishment from cleaning, and nearly nine in 10 connect cleaning to a sense of well-being.
If you are constantly wondering, “How can I get clients for my cleaning business?” this post is for you. We’ve put together a handy 14-step guide to help you focus your marketing efforts and grow your cleaning business in 2025. We cover everything from how to define your target cleaning clients to how to invest in paid Google Ads. We’ll also explain how using AI-driven technology like Invoca can help your midsize or large cleaning business create compelling customer experiences and generate more revenue.
We are confident this list of 14 steps can go a long way toward helping you address the issue of how to get customers for your cleaning business in 2025. Of course, you can complement this list with your own ideas. Whatever strategies you choose to implement, your main goals should be expanding your client base through improved visibility and awareness and building lasting and rewarding customer relationships.
Who should your cleaning business target, and who needs your services most? Your capabilities, staffing, and resources can help you answer those questions. For example, if you have a midsize cleaning business, you shouldn’t target large-scale users of cleaning services like the landlords of large office buildings because you won’t be able to service them effectively. A better approach is to focus on smaller commercial properties like medical offices or retail stores. Or, you may want to focus solely on house cleaning with an emphasis on larger homes.
You can also define your target audience based on your niche specialties. If you use eco-friendly cleaning products, you might target environmentally conscious businesses or individuals as customers. Deep-cleaning services might be aimed at customers with industrial facilities or professional organisers and junk removal firms working with homeowners.
You can’t define your target audience unless you understand what makes them tick. We’ll examine this subject in more detail later. But for now, know that you need to gather as much data as you can on your target audience so you can tailor your services and marketing approach accordingly. (Keep in mind that customer data can come in many forms and from many sources, such as online activity and one-on-one interactions like phone conversations.)
To stand out in a sea of cleaning industry competition, you need a unique selling proposition or USP. Sometimes also called a unique selling point, a USP essentially explains why your target audience should buy from you. It tells them what makes your services different — and better. A USP can also help you charge more for your cleaning services and retain clients.
If your audience is environmentally conscious, your USP could be that you use highly effective eco-friendly products. If you are aiming for a target clientele with pets, your USP might be that you are the pet odor removal experts.
Your USP can be unique, or it can be something your competition is already doing. If it’s the latter, you must be better known for the USP. One way to accomplish this is to make sure your USP is incorporated into all your marketing materials and campaigns and comes through as a message to customers in every interaction.
One place where your USP should always be is online. That’s where most of your audience is likely to conduct their initial research about cleaning services businesses.
Your website should be well-designed so customers can easily find contact information for your cleaning business, such as phone numbers, email addresses, and a physical address if you have one. (Details like these will optimise your website for local search engine optimisation, or SEO.) Referrals are also a simple but powerful strategy to earn new business, so help yourself in this area by including reviews and customer testimonials on your website.
Another tip: Optimise your website for mobile viewing. According to the Pew Research Centre, 91% of Americans own a smartphone, and 15% are “smartphone-only” internet users, meaning they don’t have a broadband connection at home. Smartphone screens vary in size. Take a responsive design approach to all online assets. Consumers want your website to look the same whether they are on a 27” desktop or a 4.7-inch iPhone SE display.
Your online presence includes any social media profiles that promote your midsize or large cleaning business. So, make sure to maintain and regularly update your profiles on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and other platforms. These tips from Hootsuite can be a useful starting point for learning how to optimise your social media profiles effectively.
Your USP and information about your cleaning services, such as rates, contact information, and testimonials, must be consistent across all the web and social assets you use to promote your business and engage with customers.
One of the biggest visibility boosts you can give your cleaning business is to set up your free Google Business Profile (GBP). This doesn’t take long to do, but it can pay huge dividends in reaching cleaning clients in your local market.
If your business wants to pay $600 per year, you can amp up your free profile with a Google Guarantee badge. Google Guarantee is a verification program that Google backs with a reimbursement guarantee for dissatisfied customers of your business. According to Google, verified businesses with profiles are twice as likely to be considered reputable by customers.
Your GBP should include up-to-date details on your cleaning business’s location, hours of operation, phone number, and other contact information. The profile, which appears in Google Maps and as a sidebar in relevant searches, can also include photos, customer reviews and testimonials, and details of your main services.
Be sure to regularly update the profile for your cleaning business with relevant posts, promotions, or FAQs so it stays fresh and meaningful for local searches. (To underscore why this is important, simply consider that nearly two-thirds (65%) of customers for carpet cleaning services run local searches before converting.)
Delivering a superior customer experience is a critical differentiator for any business. Today, customers also want a seamless omnichannel experience, so your cleaning business needs to be prepared to provide one.
You can create that experience by aligning all channels your customers use to interact with you, including in-store, online, email, social platforms, and phone calls. A customer’s online journey can be relatively seamless if your website, social, and mobile assets are up to date and fully optimised. Phone calls are trickier, though, unless you have the right technology.
Invoca’s intelligent call routing and advanced features like PreSense can improve customer experiences and make it easier to personalise them. PreSense is a conversational AI tool that analyses customers’ online journeys and automatically delivers key details, such as names and likely intent, to customer service agents before they take calls from those customers.
See how PreSense works in this short video:
Positive customer reviews and testimonials can help your midsize or large cleaning business enhance its credibility and attract more cleaning customers. According to research from BrightLocal, 41% of consumers use three or more review sites to research companies they want to do business with. So, be sure to encourage your customers to post reviews on Google, Yelp, Angi, and similar sites.
When you earn a review from a customer, make sure to respond to it, whether that review is flattering to your cleaning business or not. BrightLocal’s research also shows that 88% of consumers are likely to use a business that responds to every review. Prominently display the best reviews on your website, in marketing materials, and across social platforms.
With the rise of social media and digital marketing as tools for engaging customers, the power of traditional email marketing campaigns is often overlooked. Cleaning businesses that don’t consider email as a way to get cleaning clients and retain existing ones are missing out on an important channel for interaction.
You can use email to share newsletters containing cleaning tips, special offers, and service reminders for customers. If you have both residential and commercial customers, you’ll want to create separate content relevant to each audience. Then, segment your email lists so that you can direct relevant content to each audience.
Another traditional approach that can help you get clients for your cleaning business is direct mail. Sending postcards or flyers to homes and businesses can supplement digital and email campaigns. Make sure to highlight immediate opportunities with a strong call to action (CTA), such as “Call now for special savings!”
You can also gather insightful data from your direct mail campaigns and, in turn, use it to inform other marketing efforts for your cleaning business. When customers call the number you’ve provided in a direct mail piece, you can use a call tracking and monitoring platform like Invoca to digitise call data. You can then add that information to your database of customer insights from online activity and email responses.
By analysing all of this valuable data, you can understand which direct mailers are delivering the most leads and conversions for your cleaning business. This will allow you to fine-tune your messaging and increase your marketing return on investment (ROI).
Meeting your customers where they are also means promoting your midsize or large cleaning business on social media platforms. Use insights from surveys, reviews, calls, and online to identify the best platforms to reach your audience and develop engaging content to post on your social pages. You might also run targeted ads on platforms like Facebook or Instagram to reach younger homeowners in your service area.
If you use a platform like Invoca, which easily integrates with social media platforms to track and attribute phone conversions, you can monitor the performance of your social media marketing through clicks and calls.
Your cleaning business will be more successful — and your CAC lower — if you can boost customer retention. In addition to delivering a superior customer experience, you can drive repeat business by offering rewards for regular clients, such as discounts after a certain number of cleanings. Promote your brand loyalty program across all channels and in direct communication, too.
Satisfied, repeat customers are valuable advocates for your business. You can continue to nurture them by offering exclusive discounts or special rewards like free services if they refer new clients to you. As you should do with a loyalty program, promote your referral program to customers on your website, social media, and through email campaigns.
Whether residential or commercial, cleaning companies can partner with plenty of other service businesses. Real estate agents, home staging specialists, property managers, home repair businesses, and moving companies are all potential partners for cross-selling.
You can use these partners to attract a wider audience to your cleaning business by offering joint promotions, special partner discounts, or bundling services. For example, property managers can offer landlord clients optional cleaning services for move-ins and move-outs.
If you deeply understand your target audience’s needs, preferences, and motivations, your marketing and communication strategies will be far stronger and attract more leads. And if you are using a conversation analytics platform like Invoca, you already have tremendous insight into your customers.
Understanding customer sentiment can boost that knowledge and improve engagement. The best way to get that insight is from hearing the voice of the customer.
Invoca uses AI to reveal that true voice, determining customer emotions and opinions expressed in one-on-one communications. This insight can help your midsize or large cleaning business identify and address concerns both during and after phone calls to enhance customer satisfaction and drive conversion rates higher.
Google Ads can be a cost-effective way to help you reach potential customers actively searching for cleaning services. By targeting specific keywords and locations, you can drive more relevant traffic to your website, increase brand visibility, and boost leads.
Your paid Google Ads should target keywords that signal high intent in consumers. Keywords like “cleaning services near me” or “office cleaning in [town/city]” can help deliver strong leads. Your ads will have a greater impact if you also feature clear CTA statements that direct consumers to your booking page.
You can further optimise your Google Ads campaigns with Invoca, which provides data on phone call conversions. That data will help you understand the true ROI of your marketing efforts online and over the phone. It will also help you make smarter optimisations. For example, if data from phone and online surveys indicate potential customers for your cleaning business think environmentally sensitive products are important, your CTA could be: “Contact us today to schedule a free in-home demonstration of our eco-friendly cleaning services.”
Additionally, Invoca helps you make the most of Smart Bidding, which is Google Ads’ AI-powered bidding tool. Smart Bidding can place and adjust bids in milliseconds, spotting patterns that would take humans much longer to identify. Invoca’s conversation intelligence can help you improve Smart Bidding performance by using AI not only to track calls (which Google Ads can do, to a certain extent) but also determine if those calls were leads, which callers converted, and how much revenue was generated (which Google Ads can’t do).
With this added insight from Invoca, you can allocate your marketing budget more efficiently and double down on the campaigns driving the most revenue growth for your cleaning business.
Learn more about how Invoca’s integration with Google Ads helps you measure the complete customer journey.
There are plenty of online resources to help you raise the visibility of your midsize or large cleaning business and attract cleaning clients. Start by defining your image and USP for your target audience through content on your website, Google, and social media channels. Use a combination of paid ads, direct mail, and email campaigns to reach consumers and generate leads. And turn your existing customers into brand advocates by asking them to provide reviews and testimonials and incentivising them to deliver more business through loyalty and referrals.
Offline resources like phone calls can also provide valuable information on how you can get more cleaning clients. Invoca’s USP for home services businesses like your cleaning business is that we help you track and analyse the phone calls your marketing drives so you can make smarter optimisations. We also help you create seamless digital-to-call experiences, which allow you to convert more leads to customers.
By integrating Invoca’s phone call data with your marketing insights, you can create exceptional customer experiences that drive more revenue for your cleaning business. Watch this short video to see how Invoca works:
Here are some additional resources from Invoca to check out if you’d like to learn more about how to get cleaning clients for your midsize or large cleaning business:
And, if you’d like to see firsthand how Invoca’s technology can help you find clients for cleaning services, call us today to set up a personalised demo of our platform.
