Ultimate Lead Guide - Finding Residential Communities

Residential Communities are next in our Ultimate Lead Guide series. Aside from our Winning With Marketing series, be sure to also check out:

The Introduction
Schools
Places of Worship
Medical Offices
Government
Office Buildings
Car Dealerships
Banks
Gyms
Residential Communities

Apartment and condo buildings are everywhere. This is a prime opportunity to clean. Yes, I know we're commercial. I'm not including the inside apartments in this analysis (though this niche is ripe for residential cleaners too), but these properties need the hallways, laundry areas, lobbies, offices, gyms, parking areas, outside areas, and more all cleaned. Someone has to do it. Why not you?

According to the website, Construction-Physics.com, there are 5.2 million multifamily residential buildings in the US that range anywhere from duplexes to large high rises containing 40,000,000 units. One-third of these properties have 20 or more units in them. That's a lot of cleaning someone has to do, and that could be you. 

One of our earliest clients in our first cleaning business was a condo building. It was located within Washington Circle in Washington, DC. It was approximately 10-floors. Our job duties were that of a day porter. Our employee would clean throughout the day, at 8 hours for 5 days, dusting, vacuuming, wiping, cleaning up the outside grounds, running the trash compactor, cleaning the parking garage, and more. We invoiced monthly for an equivalent of $5500/mo in today's dollars.

I don't know how we came across this client; it was before my time. But I didn't think about adding more of these until this property received a new property management company. That company took a chance on us and invited us to bid another 6 properties in the DC area, and we won half of those. In one property, we cleaned the outside only. In others, it was common areas within the respective buildings and that ranged from just stairways and landings, to entire floors with amenities. At the peak we were invoicing about $20K/mo for all of them adjusted. Not too shabby! It became a nice little niche and definitely helped propel us forward in business. 

As all things do, it came to an end when the owner of that property management company sold off and we lost all of those contracts within a few months of each other. We didn't rely on that niche and it certainly helped us and we were thankful for the opportunities. We cleaned others over the years from apartment complexes to large condo buildings. 

For purposes of this post, I'm defining residential communities as any residential property that has common areas that need to be cleaned, both inside and outside. I'm also including here HOA properties like pool areas or clubhouses, and I'm including corporate housing which is common here in the DC Region. 

Over time we did pursue more. Our top sources for new residential community leads included, 1) Networking, 2) Referrals, 3) SEO/website, 4) Driving around, and 5) Website Portfolios. This will be a shorter post since we really didn't go after this niche. Our marketing was primarily limited to cold calling or reaching out to warm/hot leads, in the cases of referrals, networking, and SEO. You could find leads through other sources like Google, state databases, aggregate lists, and 3rd party sites like CoStar or Rent.com, but I'm limiting the below list to tactics we used.

Networking:

This was probably our #2 source. It's not what you know, but it's who you know. We found some residential leads through the local Chamber of Commerce. Apartment and condo complexes (well, property management companies in general) were always active in our local Chamber. That led to meeting new friends, having those discussions, and led to opportunities. 

Referrals:

Referrals were the top source for sure. That led to that $20K/mo revenue referenced above. That take over led to more opportunities and when that initial buyout took place, we were first in line to schmooze with the new owners and it paid off bid. Conversely, when the new owners took over years later, we also worked to develop those relationships but it didn't pan out. Moreover, that company had an in-house staff who did much of the cleaning at their properties. 

SEO/Website:

Thanks to our SEO, we did have several leads find our website and that led to opportunities. I don't recall the keywords we used but keywords are location-dependent anyway. Certainly use tools like Semrush or Ahrefs for help with that. But from that, we pulled in apartment complexes, condo complexes, and even HOAs, and we never included HOAs in our sales copy, which I thought was interesting. We'll take any opportunity we can get.

Driving Around:

Like many of the other tactics in the Ultimate Lead Guide series, we drove around. A condo or apartment property takes up a lot of space. It's hard to miss. We'd drive around, assess their needs from a distance, get a rough idea of inside cleaning just by looking from the outside, and add them as a cold lead for future prospecting. 

Website Portfolios:

Property Management companies have their primary website, usually, and they'll also have a community website for that community. We will look online for both and add them to our leads list for future marketing. It's easy to find their contact info once you've found their site.

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Next On Deck: Asking for that Testimonial and 22 Questions You Can Use (10-9-2024)