Social Media Strategies Deep Dive - Facebook

This post is the first of several in a new series that takes a deep dive into Social Media Marketing. Be sure to check the introductory post too. And here's a link for the Winning Through Marketing series. 

This post is for residential and commercial cleaners alike. Facebook is the king of social media, or at least for now (hey, didn't we feel that way with MySpace once?). They're on the rise with a steady pace of users since its inception. By the end of Q4 of 2023, they had over 3,000,000,000 active monthly users according to Statistica. That's staggering. According to Backlinko, the average American Facebook user spends 30 minutes on site each day. And Khoros reports that 59% of users will reach out to a brand on FB. The engagement is there. This is an important platform for your business, even if you're not actively engaged.

9 (+1) Ways You can Use Facebook to Grow Your Cleaning Business:

• Post on Your Personal FB Page
  
  If you're on Facebook, you have a personal page. Why not tell the world you're a cleaning business owner? Hey, I get it. Maybe you're not ready to come out of the janitorial closet. Confession time: from my start in 1997 to 2020, I didn't tell anyone outside our industry that I was involved within the cleaning industry. Why...because of shame? Stigma? Maybe. That's part of it. Lack of pride might be another. But when COVID hit, and I learned that I can add value to the world with my disinfecting knowledge, then I changed that. 
  
  Post on your page. Share that. It's ok. People would rather buy from people, especially buy from people they like, know, or trust. You can be that perfect fit for them. You can solve their pain points and challenges. People are looking for people like you every single day. If anything, be a thought leader within your space and promote content that informs and educates, as this is the biggest converting form of content. 
  
  Also be sure to add your business name and website to your personal profile. Profile clicks are real and your next client might just find you.
  
  
• Post on Your Business Page
  
  If you don't have a FB business page, go create one now. It's free. It's easy. It only takes 5 minutes. At a minimum, it could help with your SEO. It could also bring in new business. If anything, it'll improve that like, know, and trust factor your potential clients are looking for. 
  
  What should you post? I like the 5:3:2 Rule on posting. Of 10 posts, 5 should be curated from other sources. Ideas:
  
  - Updates, facts, or info from cleaning products or equipment you use within your cleaning business. This could come from product advisories, online posts from companies or suppliers you do business with.
  - Posts from those within the cleaning industry that have relevant info that your audience might be looking for.
  - Include posts from other sites relevant to your business like from news sources, or Medium or Quora or from similar sites.
  - Be sure to include posts within your community, like special events, happenings, or something of interest from your reader. 
  
  Do not include content about yourself, though you can tie it back in. The spotlight should be on this other info, not on you.
  
  Of 10 posts, 3 should be from content creation. This is information you created and highlights you and your business. Examples:
  
  - Repurposed blog posts, or if you have a podcast or YouTube channel, share those. 
  - Write articles, guides, or ebooks. We'll often publish these as lead magnets and share them within Facebook to get more people to consume our content.
  - Include sections of your newsletter.
  - Share before/after photos of jobs you did.
  - Share a flyer or a graphic about your cleaning business.
  - Post info specific to your cleaning business, like processes or recent wins around the service.
  
  Finally, 2 of every 10 posts should humanize your brand. Examples:
  
  - Post about your team or a specific employee.
  - Post about your clients' pets and feature them, or if you have a pet, talk about that.
  - Do a behind-the-scenes tour of your office or create a walk-along video or post about a day in cleaning.
  - Share personal wins of your employees
  - Challenge your community to create the scariest decorations for Halloween, for example, or most festive for the holidays.
  
  How often should you post? You should post about 3 times per week. However, there's a statistic out there that I struggled to find as of writing this that posting frequency does not improve your odds of being seen. If you posted 100 times a week, your statistical odds of being seen are no different than 3 times per week due to limiting organic reach.
  
  
• Share Your Facebook Business Page
  
  Share it. Encourage people to follow and like it. But here's the key: Only encourage people within your potential audience to Follow and Like it. I'm on different Facebook groups for cleaning and there's one in particular that encourages a Like for Like or a Follow for Follow scheme where you can post your business page so that fellow cleaning companies can like it with hopes of reciprocity. This is a terrible idea.
  
  History lesson first. Facebook released pages and you can "Fan" the page. 100% of fanned (now liked) pages got seen by those who Fanned/Liked it. Fast forward, FB changes it to Facebook Pages and Likes. Those that liked your page were a lot less. By 2018, that number dropped to about 14% according to Facebook. And by 2024, that number averages around 2.2% with some brands being around 1%. What does that mean? For every 100 people that liked your page, only 2 or 3, at best, would actually see your organic post. 
  
  Here's the trouble: If you're promoting your page to people who will NEVER buy from you, like a fellow cleaning business owner, your organic reach will go down. So let's say you had 100 potential customers like your page and 2-3 of those saw your posts. If you have 100 cleaning business owners like your page, then your potential audience who can view it drops from 2-3 to 1-2 at best. If you add 100 more in these Like for Like schemes, then you'll be lucky to have 1 single potential customer see your page. 
  
  Why is Facebook doing this? They're limiting organic reach so you can buy ads. The less organic reach you have, the more likely you are to spend on ads to reach your potential audience. 
  
  
• Post in local Facebook groups
  
  This is a great way to share your cleaning business within local Facebook groups. Go to the search bar and search your local city our county. Join all those groups. But here's the key: don't SPAM! At a minimum your post could get deleted. At worst, you can get banned. People hate spam. It's self-serving. But maybe they have a Follow Friday or Share Saturday (or some other day, you have the idea) where you can share about your cleaning service. 
  
  If the site doesn't allow for self-promotion, maybe you can skirt rules a little. I'm in a sleepy town of Burke, VA, which is right outside Washington, DC. We have about 4 local FB groups where members can keep up with the local gossip. Every single day I see posts of locals asking about a cleaning service. Many of these posts go unanswered. It makes me want to start a residential cleaning biz. And as commercial-only, I've seen posts asking about office cleaning too. If the Admins/Mods don't allow self-promotion, then at least DM that person. Be a value add though. Don't shill. Offer to answer their questions on the perspective of a local cleaning business owner. They just might ask for your services.
  
  Another strategy is to give, give, give, give, and then ask. Give so much value that people want to learn more about you and then that ask becomes 10X easier. Give until it hurts and help others along the way. Through My Clean Pivot, I'm actively in these FB groups serving and helping others. If fact, I don't even ask. I give freely and if someone approaches me in reciprocity, then I'll freely accept them as a new client or customer.
  
  
• Offer Free Lead Magnets
  
  What's a lead magnet? It's something you offer for FREE in exchange for their name and contact info so that you can market to them later. I was originally going to put this under your Business Page, but this topic is very important and everyone should be doing it. 
  
  Facebook and other socials (maybe Pinterest and YouTube aside) want to keep you on their platform. So if you offer links that take people away from the platform, Facebook will limit your reach. But you can offer lead magnets through Facebook. Create a document, an ebook, a community guide, a cleaning guide, or something of value for your potential client and offer than on FB in exchange for their contact info. You can add a link to your site within the comments or you can DM a link where they can get that information.
  
  Examples we used: 1) COVID hits. Virginia created new laws around workplace and COVID. I created a guide helping local businesses navigate through that challenge. 2) We offered Definitive Checklist. What's a Definitive Checklist? It was simply our Scope of Work with fancy graphics behind it. Basically it was every task we did and their frequency and clients ate that up. We received a lot of leads that way. And 3) We had an ebook navigating prospective clients on how to select their next cleaning service.
  
  
• Start Your Own Facebook Group
  
  Hey, why risk getting banned? Create your own group. You can put your business name on it. You can ban other cleaning businesses from posting. And you can share the group on your personal and business page. Invite local businesses and homeowners to join. Locals search for these groups all the time. At the top of the group you can add that the group is sponsored by your cleaning business. Anytime they sign on to the group, they see your business name. Now, don't self-promote. People don't like that. But having your name always present will help your reach.
  
  
• Do Facebook Ads
  
  Create your own Facebook ads. FB's AI tool, Llama (3.2 as of this post) is an incredible and definitely un-utilized AI tool. It's free. It's easy. It'll help you create a converting ad. And you can ask it to improve itself to have the best ad out there. 
  
  You can also do retargeting ads. You can run your prospect's and client's email list through FB and create a look alike audience. What that will do is set you up for retargeting ads so that way every prospective client will see your business name within the sponsored ads. FB does have a requirement for 1000 emails to do this.
  
  
• Affiliate Referrals
  
  Here's a tip, create an affiliate program within FB. Go to Facebook group owners and offer a percentage of each clean if they allow you to post your cleaning services within that group. These could include local FB groups. Or you can create a strategic alliance with a different but parallel FB group that potentially has an audience that you can serve, like maybe a specific industry like landscaping, plumbing, or other contracting groups that are in your service area. 
  
  
• Use Facebook to Follow Thought Leaders and Client decision-makers
  
  Use Facebook to keep your audience close to you. You could follow pages, but with 1-2% odds you'd see their post, it's almost not worth it. However, you can follow people and pages and keep a running list to keep tabs on them. For example, if you see a prospect's president post about a position change or new job role, you can send a congratulatory email or even Message to them on that promotion. That helps keep you top of mind so when you do prospect them directly about cleaning, they'll be more apt to recall who you are.
  
  
• BONUS: Use Messenger to message your leads
  
  This is an add on, and it should be noted it's not my idea. I was reading in one of these cleaning FB groups and the poster said she won new clients by simply using Messenger to message her pitch. It worked. She said she won new clients doing it this way. I imagine they'd have to be local but this is genius. I never thought of that. Great find.

Well, I hope the above Facebook guide helps. I hope his guide helps you turn on or up your content marketing strategy that'll help you win more clients and win more revenue. Happy hunting!