One-off domestic, this week
End of tenancy cleaning, deep clean, carpet cleaning near me. Bought on price and availability, worth one visit, and the search most cleaning sites rank for.
Trades
Cleaning company marketing built for contracts, not one-off jobs
A one-off end-of-tenancy clean and a five-year office cleaning contract share a search results page and almost nothing else. Most cleaning companies rank and advertise for the first while their growth depends on the second, and the monthly report cannot tell the two apart.
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Marketing does not behave the same way here.
Cleaning is bought in two completely different ways. Domestic and one-off work is bought on price and availability by somebody who wants it done this week, and it is worth one visit.
Commercial cleaning is bought by an office manager, a school, a clinic or a property manager on reliability, insurance, staff vetting and references, and it is worth a contract that renews for years.
A site that treats them as one service ranks for the cheap one, and an ad account that bids on the word cleaning pays for both at the price of the expensive one.
The firms that scale are the ones that decide which contracts they want, build pages for those sectors, and measure the business by contracts won and their annual value.
How your customers actually search.
Regular domestic, by trust
Weekly cleaner, house cleaning service. A recurring relationship bought on vetting, insurance and reviews more than on price.
Commercial contracts, by sector
Office cleaning company, school cleaning, medical cleaning, commercial cleaning contract. Bought by a manager on references and compliance, decided over weeks, worth a contract.
How an enquiry becomes a customer.
Different intents take different routes. Serving all of them with one page is the most common structural mistake in this industry.
- One-off: a call or a quote form, a price, a visit. Decided in hours.
- Regular domestic: an enquiry, a home visit or a call, a trial clean, a standing booking.
- Commercial: a quote request, a site walk-round, a proposal, references checked, a contract that renews.
- One cleaning page for every kind of work, which ranks for the one-off jobs and not the contracts.
- No page per commercial sector, when an office manager searches for office cleaning and a practice manager for medical cleaning.
- Vetting, insurance and accreditations mentioned nowhere, which is what every commercial buyer checks first.
- Service area not defined, so the site ranks in the wrong towns and quotes travel it cannot afford.
- Commercial campaigns by sector, landing on a page that shows the compliance a buyer is looking for.
- Negatives against jobs, vacancies, products, machines and DIY, which drain cleaning budgets every month.
- Domestic campaigns priced against the value of a recurring customer, not a one-off visit.
- Geographic targeting tightened to the area the firm can staff, rather than the whole city.
- Proposal follow-up on commercial quotes across the weeks a decision takes.
- Contract renewal and review reminders to commercial customers, which is the cheapest revenue the business has.
What the report should lead with.
- Contracts won and their annual value, by sector
- Cost per contract, not cost per lead
- Regular domestic customers gained and retained
- Quote-to-contract conversion rate
- Enquiries for work the firm does not want, tracked so they can be removed
Proof
The closest accounts we have published.
Not accounts in this trade. Two service businesses that sell through enquiries and calls, which is the same way this trade sells.
Google Ads, lead generationMedia buying
2.41Kconversions
- £19.21cost per conversion
- £0.57average cost per click
- £46.3Kspend managed
Meta, lead generationMedia buying
£2.68cost per lead
- 2,631leads delivered
- £0.77best ad set cost per lead
- 205Kpeople reached
On camera
Four clients on camera, in their own words.
Four clients, four industries, one thing in common: the number moved and they said so on camera.
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It is the best long-term investment we have made in the company, full stop.
Ahmed · Business owner · SEO
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The cost per lead from organic is a fraction of what we pay on ads, and that math gets better every month.
Sandra · Founder · SEO
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People can book a table without calling during the dinner rush. My host actually thanked me.
Aaliyah · Restaurant owner · Website
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These tech geeks know the Facebook analytics and the data and the pixels and all that stuff that makes a musician’s head explode.
David · The Wankers · Social ads
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Read the postQuestions
Questions from this industry.
01 Why do we get so many one-off cleaning enquiries when we want contracts?
Because the site and the ads say cleaning, and the most common cleaning search is a one-off job. Contracts come from pages and campaigns built for the sector that signs them: offices, schools, clinics, property managers. Build those and the mix changes.
02 What does a commercial cleaning buyer check before calling?
Insurance, staff vetting, accreditations, references and whether the firm can cover the hours. Put all of it on the page built for that sector. A buyer who cannot find it moves to the next result.
03 Should a cleaning company pay for leads or for clicks?
Neither, ideally. Pay for qualified enquiries that meet criteria you set in writing, such as a commercial contract in your area. A domestic one-off that arrives through a commercial campaign should not cost you anything.