10 Ways To Increase Your Maid Service Business Revenue

Learn how to grow your maid services business and increase your revenue with these clear and actionable tips, including marketing, value-added services, and more.

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Maid services are very much in demand, but it can be a difficult industry to get started in. If you run a home cleaning service and you're struggling to make it a sustainable business, you may need to start thinking outside of the box when it comes to lead generation and how you differentiate yourself from your competitors. If you're not a marketing professional, it's natural to struggle with the idea of value-added services and marketing. What is a job referral? Do you know what your unique selling point is? We're here to help you understand those topics and how to grow your business. You can start finding more home cleaning service leads in your area today. Sign up with CraftJack to get started.


10 Tips For Building Revenue

1. Evaluate Your Residential Target Market

Consider the area you operate in and whether targeting a different demographic might offer you the opportunity to increase your revenue. Home cleaning services are a broad market, and fees can vary significantly between zip codes. If you've secured any clients in more upmarket areas, look to those for word-of-mouth referrals to expand that section of your market. Advertise a premium service with pricing to match and look to fill your cleaning schedule with high-value clients. This could increase your revenue without you having to work longer hours.

As well as targeting high-income clients, consider other audiences. Some potentially underserved markets include:

  • End of tenancy cleaning
  • Student accommodation cleaning
  • Community groups 
  • Home help for senior-friendly accommodations

Some of the jobs listed above are one-off cleaning jobs. However, they're a chance for you to meet new clients and build a relationship with them. A family moving from a small house to a much larger one to accommodate their children may consider employing your services on an ongoing basis if you do a good job of sprucing up their home at the end of their tenancy, for example.

2. Add A Pet-Friendly Cleaning Service

If you're looking to differentiate yourself from the other cleaning services in your area, consider offering a pet-friendly cleaning service. Cleaning a home occupied by a pet with very long hair or that isn't well house-trained requires more care and attention than a standard cleaning visit to a pet-free home.

Pet owners often feel a sense of solidarity with other pet owners, so if you have pets yourself and therefore have lots of experience cleaning up pet hairs or getting rid of litter tray odors, use that as a marketing tool. 

3. Brand Yourself As Eco-Friendly

Homeowners are becoming increasingly aware of the impact their day-to-day actions have on the environment. According to Harvard Business Review, 65% of millennials claim they'd like to use more environmentally friendly products, but only 26% actually do. One reason for the lack of action is that changing your daily habits is hard. If consumers don't know which brands to buy or feel the green cleaning products they use don't work for them, they may turn back to what they already know.

Market your maid service as an effective, efficient, and environmentally friendly one and you'll have the chance to attract homeowners who want to do their bit for the environment but don't know where to start. Offer a reliable service and you may acquire free leads from vocal clients who are eager to show off their green credentials to their friends, family, and neighbors.

4. Offer Referral Bonuses

Traditional marketing such as flyers, and even modern marketing on social media, can be useful for growing your business. However, your existing clients are a useful source of highly qualified new clients. Trust is an important part of growing any home services business. Cleaners spend time in people's homes and have far more access to private areas than most tradespeople. While some people do hire cleaners based on advertisements and their public reputation, it's natural for people to place more weight on the opinions of those they know well.

According to one customer experience survey by Esteban Kolsky, 72% of happy customers will share their experience with 6 people, while 13% of unhappy customers will share their experience with 15 people. Encourage satisfied clients of your maid service to share their experiences and offer bonuses for doing so, such as 50% off the first cleaning visit for a referred customer and 50% off for the referring client if their friend or relative chooses to sign up for regular visits.

5. Consider Business Cleaning Services

If your neighborhood is already saturated with home cleaning services, consider looking to businesses for cleaning job leads. Many smaller businesses require cleaners to come a couple of times a week to take care of their shared areas. This could give you extra flexibility. For example, you could clean hospitality businesses outside of typical working hours, giving you the chance to schedule time off during the day if you want the option to pick up children after school or run errands.

When you clean offices, you may be able to use that as a networking opportunity to acquire residential clients, too. The office workers will have a chance to get to know you, building trust so they're more comfortable with the idea of you visiting their home.

One thing to be aware of if you're considering offering a business cleaning service is the payment cycle. In the long term, having business clients gives you stability and can be a reliable source of income. However, it's common for businesses to pay invoices on a fixed schedule, so you may find yourself waiting 30 or more days for payment. Take care to ensure your cash flow can cover this as you take on those clients.

6. Offer Prepayment Options Or Loyalty Bonuses

The idea of offering discounts for prepayment may seem a counterintuitive way of raising revenue, but in the long term, it can be effective. Consider running a promotion such as "book nine visits, get the tenth free" or a discount for clients who prepay for the month ahead. This can net you a steady revenue stream, making it easier to budget your own expenditures. In addition, clients who use a service regularly are more likely to view that service as an ongoing part of their lives and are therefore more likely to renew once the term expires. Gift vouchers and discounts for new customers can be an effective way of adding value to your brand and can augment any other lead generation efforts you have underway.

Broaden your appeal by investing in a mobile app to manage your bookings and serve as a loyalty app too. It's estimated that 97% of Americans own a smartphone, so using an app is a good way of reaching the majority of your customer base. There are still many older adults who don't use smartphones, however, so it's worth having a paper booking system as a backup so you don't exclude anyone who might want to use your services.

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7. Sell Cleaning Products As A Sideline

As a home cleaning professional, you'll most likely deal with trade accounts and suppliers homeowners don't have access to. You'll also have a wealth of expertise about which cleaning products are the most effective for banishing odors or removing stubborn stains. Use that expertise to your advantage and share tips and advice with your clients. 

If your clients ask for advice on how to look after their homes during the gap between your visits, recommend products to them. Consider offering a subscription service where they can purchase consumables and you'll drop them off each time you visit. The profit margins on this may be slim, but it's a service that won't take up much of your time and it adds even more value to your regular visits. By offering high-quality, specialist cleaning products to your customers, you'll give them something they can't get elsewhere and increase the likelihood of them sharing your details with their friends and family, who may wonder what the secret to their spotless bathroom fixtures is.

8. Hire Staff And Take On More Clients

As an individual, your earning capacity is limited because there's a limit to the number of clients you can serve per day. One way to grow your revenue is to hire other maids who'll work for you and do work under your brand. If you choose to take this route, you'll benefit from the economies of scale.

The maids who work for you benefit from the strength of your brand name and don't have to invest in doing their own marketing or ongoing customer service. They'll take a regular income with fewer of the worries that a self-employed person deals with. You'll earn a percentage of each visit those cleaners do. 

The risk of hiring cleaning professionals to work on your behalf is that those cleaners represent your brand, and if they don't do a good job or behave in a negative way, they could damage your brand. It's essential to carefully vet every person who'll be representing you.

9. Invest In Lead Generation

Once you're an established maid with a large customer base, you may do well from free leads and word of mouth alone. It takes many years to reach that level, however, and in the early days, marketing is an essential investment. If you have faith in the quality of service you provide and you're selective about the demographics you target, you can feel confident the clients you reach will have a high lifetime value. Consider the lifetime value of each new client, and the cost of acquiring that client, to work out how much you think it would be worthwhile to spend on customer acquisition.

10. Offer Add-Ons Such As Car Valets

Just as pet-friendly cleaning may allow you to generate more revenue, offering a car valet service could help you increase your earnings. As a home cleaning service provider, you make your money from each visit you do. The time spent traveling between homes is dead time where you aren't earning money. Therefore, increasing the amount you can charge per visit makes a lot of sense. You may be able to offer a car valet service as a value-add to existing maid service clients while charging a lower fee than a dedicated valet.  

Think Outside The Box And Grow Your Audience

Every region is different, and the marketing techniques that work in one area may not be so effective in other areas. Use your local knowledge and connections to work out what people in your area are looking for and market to that demographic. It may take some trial and error to find the formula that works for your business, but with patience and persistence, you can grow your home cleaning service.