Running a pressure washing machine business in the digital age can be accomplished with a small investment. These days, there are several online tools that can effectively take your business where it matters most: in front of your customers.
Having an online presence is no longer enough. It’s important to be proactive and use these tools to get ahead of your competition:
You Need a Website That Breathes
It doesn’t need to be fancy with complex design elements. A simple website [blog post coming soon on this] can be highly effective it just needs to breathe. Be sure to have the phone number highly visible, usually near the top of the page and a contact form where customers can contact you.
Project pictures on each page of the website will be helpful in engaging and attracting visitors, while images and videos of employees working are also beneficial in building trust. Rather than just being a business with a website online, you’ll become an organization of people prospects can connect with.
Get Reviews and Make Them Visible
In the past, small businesses depended on word-of-mouth referrals to succeed. Today, thanks to technology, consumers can now find the services they need with much more ease but that doesn’t mean that the concept of word-of-mouth is dead – in fact it is more powerful than ever. It has merely evolved into the form of reviews.
As part of the buying process customers will often pop your company name into Google. If they find loads of great reviews indicating a reputation for quality, they’re more likely to go with your service.
On top of that, with maps making their way to the top of searches, reviews also impact your visibility in the searches. The more reviews, the more visibility.
Don’t rely on that visibility alone. Many prospects could arrive at your website by other means. Establish your reputation, and social proof early on by making your reviews prominently displayed on your website.
Getting reviews from customers isn’t easy. As we all know, many customers are quick to leave a negative review, but few take action to leave a positive review. Fortunately, there are several programs out there that are highly effective at capturing reviews and valuable feedback by email and text message. I didn’t use one for the first few years of my business, but if I had a ‘do over’ I would start using one on day one!
Excellent Visual Content
One of the smartest ways to maximize content for your pressure washing business is to use in-progress videos combined with before and after photos. Besides showing how well you do your job, here’s something satisfying about comparing a clean area to a dirty section weathers it is paver walk ways or tile roofs.
These forms of content will attract attention, as well as leads and inquiries to your site. They provide the customer with information on how your service works, the machines you use, and the quality of service that you offer.
Check out this framework training video for awesome ideas of marketing images.
https://youtu.be/IubttK0r_44Go To The Market Domination Method.
Track. Track. Track.
All of your marketing sources, need to be tracked. You need to know where every single call and web lead came from. I talk about it on length on this blog.
Was it pay-per-click? What keyword? What campaign. Without proper tracking metrics, your marketing campaigns cannot, and will not, be effective and cost efficient. There are several programs on the market which set it up and track every call right down to the keyword for less than $100 per month (great time to be a marketer huh?).
Systematic Coupons and Promotions
I generally don’t advocate using coupons, giving discounts, or running a promotion, but power washing is, by nature, a high repeat business, relative to most home services. Power wash the roof? Guess what, the driveway 8’ below is suddenly going to look dingy in comparison. In a couple months, it will all need cleaning again.
If customers are satisfied with your service, they’ll come back time and time again so offering some incentive is effective. With that in mind, you need to have a system in place for converting the one time purchases in to repeat customers – you can’t just wait for them to call back. It could be as simple as asking them if they’d like to have the driver pressure cleaned (after you just did the roof) or you could go a step further and call them back a week after service. Even better, re-market to them on Facebook.
Bottom line, coupons and promotions do work, but only if you have a system for capturing their repeat business.
Try out Facebook Ads
Many power washing businesses already have a website in place, business cards printed, company names painted on a vehicle, flyers sent out, and several ads placed around town yet they still don’t get the attention that they’re seeking. This is because they’re missing one very important element: Facebook advertising.
As I mentioned re-marketing with Facebook ads; facebook ads give power washing businesses the opportunity to market to thousands of people from your target audience within your location in a matter of seconds to generate new leads. Facebook’s ad funnel is known to be one of the most effective and affordable in terms of social media marketing. You can even reuse before and after images to attract customers to your Facebook page, where all the important information about your business can be found.
Use PPC (Pay-per-click) Ads
Strategically using PPC ads can help get your pressure washing business in front of your target audience. However, PPC ads have the notorious reputation of being an expensive way to market any business online, but there are ways around it. Using non-saturated keywords is one. There are many tools available online to help you determine relevant non-saturated keywords that customers are already using to locate your services.
Keep in mind that you should avoid keywords such as since these may be much too broad for most services. People who search for this term could be looking for supplies or advice, so it isn’t going to get you the results that you need. Long tail keywords will help attract people who are truly looking for the specific services that you offer while helping your ad rank better since it will be more relevant to the customer’s search queries.
It’s also necessary to keep on testing when using PPC ads. Not only will continuous testing help save you money, it will also ensure that each dollar you spend is actually working for you. You can do this by implementing different kinds of advertising copy and seeing which one of them performs the best within your desired audience. When you have determined which copy works best, run it again against other copy to continuously improve your PPC strategy.
Appeal to Pain/Pleasure Points
Pain and pleasure points are key marketing elements for every kind of business, and these apply to pressure washing services too. A good advertisement, in any industry, should drive prospects, toward pleasure or away from pain.
Pain points are a way of getting people to pay attention to your marketing efforts by empathizing with your customer’s needs. A way of empathizing with them is by focusing on the frustration they experience when they try to do the job themselves with little success, or the time and energy spent in doing so.
Pain Points
- Frustration of doing the job themselves. Although not rocket science, without proper training or equipment getting a professional clean isn’t easy. Its kind of like going to the dentist for a teeth cleaning. Yes, you can do it yourself, but it usually won’t come with quite the level of detail.
- Time spent doing the job themselves. Cleaning is time consuming. Most people don’t want to spend their time messing around with equipment, ladders, doing work.
- Being the ‘negligent’ owner. Homeowners feel a connection to the neighborhood, and likewise generally don’t want to be ‘that house’ that is an eyesore. Consistently dingy looking. Appeal to the ‘keeping up with the Jones’ mentality’.
Pleasure Points
- Looks like new. Everyone likes things that look like the day they got it, and for exterior surfaces power washing usually gets them as close to new as possible for the most economical price.
- Inner ‘peace’ associated with cleanliness. Everyone likes things clean. Appeal to the satisfaction of pulling up to a shiney clean home.
Take a look at this pay-per-click ad. Compare the copy to the other ads. Notice anything?
While the other ads are just standard run of the mill, ‘we do pressure washing’, style ads, the top one is appealing to a pain point and offering a solution. That ad probably gets a significantly higher click through rate, resulting in a higher quality score and ultimately a lower cost than the competitors.
Conclusion
Hopefully that gets you on the path to thriving pressure washing business. The important piece of the puzzle is having an effective website, and then tracking metrics. With that in place, you’re free to test marketing campaigns with the ability to ‘cut the fat’ of what isn’t working and then scale up what is. And always, always consider pain / pleasure points in your ad creative!
Let me know what you think or what works for you in the comments below!
https://youtu.be/IubttK0r_44