I need to get as many customers this upcoming President’s Day weekend as I can. have been cleaning windows for over 2 years, I am currently 18 years old and live in north county San Diego. I have had a few random “bursts” of customers, my best 2 weeks making $975 and $675. I know that I can get more customers than I did for those 2 separate weeks, but I cannot market myself to the local area.
I just opened my GBP but I need to get verified and I live in an apartment complex so I am not 100% sure if I will be verified in the next week. My only success for getting clients has been from NextDoor, but I have not had responses from the previous 3 posts so I need to branch out to different ways. I have already knocked on almost all the houses in my neighborhood but it has been a year or so, so as of now that is my most likely plan of action.
If anyone has any ideas on how to get more clients, or where to advertise I would be very thankful. ANY advice is helpful, thank you and have a great day!
Send out reminder postcards to whatever customers you have cleaned in the last 2 years, reminding them that their windows are probably dirty again. You could also call them or text or email. I like postcards.
Knock doors in other neighborhoods than your own. My neighborhood is not the customers I want. Facebook and NextDoor ads. Ask your customers for reviews on Nextdoor. I get a lot of referrals from NextDoor. If you have the money do EDDM. It’s what got my business going 14 years ago.
If you need customers now, call up all your previous customers / leads. Knock on doors. Run Facebook or google ads.
Thank you for the quick reply, I have been wanting to get into EDDM for quite some time now. What are the necessary steps to get that fully completed and is it possible to have that ready to be sent out in the post office tomorrow or Wednesday? Would you also mind sharing what a flyer should look like? Would it only be 1 sided?
I am willing to invest the time and money immediately and get these sent out ASAP
I have reached out to all my old customers that I haven’t cleaned in the last 2 months but had no luck. I plan to knock on door Friday-Monday since I have school work to do until thursday. Any advice pertaining Facebook or Google Ads?
I did a mailing recently to customers that had been cleaned in 2019 and not since then and got several.
EDDM takes me time because I like to design my own cards.
If you want pre-designed cards check here Printing Services - Postcards, Fliers, Yard Signs, Brochures, and more – WindowCleaner.com
They can also do the sorting and mailing for you.
I do my own sorting and mailing.
It also takes time to figure out the carrier routes you want to send to.
The most recent mailing of 3000 took a little over a week to get back from the printer and then mailed.
It cost me about $1100 for printing and mailing.
Nice. Did you use a software for that?
For designing?
For distributing. Was that eddm?
Yes. EDDM. It’s very easy to do through the USPS eddm site. I just go there to their map, find the carrier routes I want and the program spits out a price. They have all the forms needed that I then print and fill out. I had 5 carrier routes this time. Then when the cards come back from the printer they have to be bundled in 50’s or 100’s with paperwork attached to each bundle. For this one I had to drive to 3 different PO’s which is not a big deal because we are slow right now, which is why I’m doing the mailing.
Yea, I just thought you might’ve used a crm like sendjim or something lol
Out of those 3k mailers, how many booked?
@mleahy14 Not sure. I haven’t done them yet.
What are you doing right now for getting business? Anything other than Nextdoor? When you knocked on doors, did you leave door hangers or anything?
What’s your budget for paid advertising?
Sometimes if it’s rainy season , no matter what you do you still won’t get any jobs . I would wait till early spring for windows
Maybe try and offer gutter clean outs in the mean time
Get door hangers and distribute to neighborhoods that have the type of homes that are likely to spend money. The yard not taken care, bland curb appeal? Pass on it and go to the next. You can make it go pretty quick because you are just placing it on the door knob and on to the next. If you don’t have any jobs scheduled then use the time to actually look and pre-select the homes that seem like good prospects. Have business cards made up with lines on the back for an in/out clean and an out only clean; you can use those for quick quotes or small businesses, clinics, and shops. Often times people will hold on to the flyer and call you 3-6 months later, so it is a numbers game - get your presence known. If you are really in need fr right now then have a separate flyer with a “damn good deal” on X amount of windows for $$$.¢¢.
I like the idea of a doorhanger and/or flyer with a deal. Would I be able to design flyers that have a president’s day deal, and have them printed at a local print shop somewhere to start distributing in the neighborhoods? I have looked at the neighborhoods in my local area of a radius around 5-7 miles and I know which neighborhood I would go to. There around 800 homes in that neighborhood, should I try to design my own flyer and print 1000? Or are there good templates or examples somewhere so that I don’t risk a bad flyer and getting a low response rate?
I have only been using Nextdoor, I have not left doorhangers anywhere but I am thinking of doing that or flyers with a President’s day weekend deal. Any advice for making a successful and effective flyer/doorhanger?
Garry’s suggestions above are gold.
Door hangers and business cards when just starting out, plan the homes you want, leave them something at the door (if allowed in that neighborhood), wear nicer clothing even if you are not actually talking to them, since many have Ring doorbell cameras.
Don’t expect every door hanger to result in a callback… I distributed 1,500 hangers when I first started, the result was only 3 customers, but they ended up being really good repeat clients that referred their friends later on.
Also, ask the people that book through Nextdoor to go on there and make a simple post about your ”amazing work” - word of mouth from happy customers is powerful.
P.S. since you are 18, I want to just say that I am very opposed to the particular door-knocking style that a couple guys on TikTok do. That’s all I’ll say about that…
Yes design your own…Use your imagination…have fun with it…Make a good offer…humor works…keep it simple in design and verbiage… flyers are quick and cheap…any print shop can do it…
here’s some ideas… window cleaning flyers at DuckDuckGo
