Advertising for commercial cleaning firms

Commercial cleaning contracts are awarded by facilities managers, office managers and property managers who are risk-averse and have been let down before. That defines the entire approach.

The advertising job is the first meeting

Nobody signs a cleaning contract from an advertisement. The purpose of all marketing here is to earn a conversation.

What produces those conversations, in order of effectiveness: direct approach to a named person, referral from an existing client, presence when the incumbent fails, and visibility in search when someone actively looks.

The third is worth planning for. Contracts turn over most often after a service failure, and the replacement search happens quickly.

What the buyer is actually worried about

Row one is the decisive one. Cleaning contracts are lost because the cleaner the client trusted left and was replaced by three different people in a month.

If your staff retention is genuinely good, publish the number. It is the strongest claim available in the category and almost nobody makes it.

The direct approach that works

1. Build a list of every commercial building in the district above a threshold size.
2. Identify the person responsible, by name, not the general address.
3. Send one page: what you do, who you already clean for locally, your staff retention, and one specific observation about their premises.
4. Follow up by telephone within a week.
5. Repeat every six months regardless of the answer, because the answer changes when the incumbent fails.

Point five is where firms give up too early. The contract becomes available on a timetable you do not control.

Specialisation pays

General cleaning competes on price. Specialisms do not: medical practices, food production, laboratories, listed buildings, solar panels, post-construction cleaning.

Each has requirements a generalist cannot meet and buyers who will pay for competence.

Recruitment is marketing

This industry's product is people, and it competes for them with retail and logistics. Advertising for staff, with actual pay, actual hours and a named contact, is as important as advertising for clients, and the two reinforce each other.