How to Make Ads Work Angela Brown Ask a House Cleaner

How to Make Ads That Work

Here’s how to make ads that work for your cleaning business. Do your ads suck? Nobody responding? Does nobody seem to want what you have? Don’t write another ad or spend another penny on marketing until you master this one technique.

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Hey there, I’m Angela Brown, and this is Ask a House Cleaner. This is a show where you get to ask a house cleaning question, and I get to help you find an answer. You can find this and 400 other answered questions in this series on our YouTube channel.

How Do You Write Ads That Work

How to Make Ads That Work, Man Talks on PhoneIf you run a house cleaning business, you’re probably wondering how to write ads that work. The answer is, simple and sweet. You’ve got to play to the platform. What does that mean?

So play to the platform is that every different Avenue where you have an ad is going to have a different set of rules. So you have to know who you’re talking to, and then you have to talk to them in a way that is meaningful to them.

Writing Ads is Like Putting Your Toddler to Bed

How to Make Ads That Work, Woman Reading Child a BookThat sounds confusing, right? Let’s back up for just a second. Let’s say that it’s bedtime at your house and you want to let your toddler know that it’s bedtime and you’re going to turn out the lights and it’s time to go to bed. So you might say something like, “Okay, one more story, and then lights out.” So that is how you tell them it’s time to go to bed. So now you’re prepping them.

Now for a teenager, you might say something totally different. You might say something like, “Don’t forget to set your alarm.” And then “No more electronics for the rest of the night.” And that’s your way of saying good night. Now to your spouse, you wouldn’t say turn out the lights or one more story, or any of those things.

You change the message just a little bit, and you might say, “Hey, that’s it for me for tonight. I’m checking out.” You’re not giving them directives. You’re giving your own directives, but you’re letting them know what’s happening and you’re keeping them in the loop.

You Have to Play to the Platform

How to Make Ads That Work, Group of People, Play to the PlatformSo you’re playing to the platform. That means every different scenario offers a different approach. Does that make sense? For example, let’s change the story one more time. Let’s say that I’m speaking to an audience of 2000 people.

So instead of me standing here having little hand gestures that are in front of my body, I’m going to have these ginormous hand gestures and I’m going to move around the stage because I want the people way at the back of the room to be able to see me. Also, I want it to pick up on the IMAX screens behind me.

I’m also going to use a microphone, where if I was talking one-on-one, let’s say to the next-door neighbor, we would have a small conversation and there would be no wild flailing of the arms. So you have to play to the platform to get your message across.

How to Write Good Ads

How to Make Ads That Work, Woman Thinking, Ads Should Be Simple and SweetHow do you write good ads? Well, you have to play on the platform. So for example, there are lots of people that used to run ads on Craigslist and Craigslist has a certain type of clientele that you tend to attract. Somebody asked me the other day, does it work to run ads for your cleaning business on Craigslist?

Well, it’s always worked for us, but, but here’s the caveat, we have to understand who is the typical person that’s going to respond to that. And if there are other people there, how do we weed through those people and get to the actual people we want to speak to.

We Always Add Disclaimers to Our Ads

How to Make Ads That Work, DisclaimerIn our ads for cleaning, we’ve always included disclaimers. Our disclaimers would say things like house cleaning, fully clothed, no sexual favors. So those are our disclaimers to that platform. And we’ve never had any problems, but if you were to post that on a Facebook ad, people would go, “Man, you’re out of your mind.”

On Facebook, what you might say is, “I’ve got a solution for really icky bathtubs. Anyone have an icky bathtub, I can show you how this works.” And then a whole bunch of people are going to go, “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Pick me.”

Whereas if you say, “Hey, we have cleaning services, we can make your house shine and we can give you back your free time on the weekend.” People are going to bounce right over that ad on Facebook.

What People Want to See on Facebook

How to Make Ads That Work, Women Looking at TabletSo you’ve got to play to the platform. On Facebook, they want to see the icky bathtubs. They want to see the before and after. If you have a solution, they want to know what did you use? How did you do it?

Hey, you got an icky bathroom. I’ll come over and show you. While I’m there, I have a house cleaning service, I can do a walkthrough of your house and I can show you or give you pricing on what it would cost.

And they might say, “Sure, come on over.” Okay, great. And then you can give them an estimate for the bathtub or whatever.

Every Platform is Different

How to Make Ads That Work, Speaker at ConferenceSo every platform is a little bit different. Now, if you’re talking about hiring people, the platforms are also different. So on indeed.com, you might say in search of XYZ candidates. We would not use the word candidate if you’re advertising on Facebook.

I’ve picked up a lot of people that work for Savvy cleaner on Nextdoor. I don’t say, “Hey, I’m in search of a candidate.” Or whatever because that sounds weird. I’m speaking to my neighbors. If you play to the platform, you’re going to say something like, “Hey, I’m growing a YouTube channel, do any of my neighbors want to help me?”

You make it more casual like, “Hey, we’re neighbors. We hang out.” And the people are like, “Hey yeah, pick me.” And so right now, 11 or 12, I forget, of our team members right now for Savvy cleaner are my neighbors. They live in a two or three-mile radius of my house. We found them on nextdoor.com.

There’s No One Size Fits All in Ads

How to Make Ads That Work, Woman on ComputerSo it’s not serious recruitment in running ads and searching for a particular candidate or whatever. It’s like, “Hey, you have skills and I need them. We have lots of needs and I need lots of skills. So what do you have? Come help me.

Playing to the platform is going to be your best approach when it comes to running ads, there’s no one size fits all because there’s no one size fits all cleaning company. There’s no one size fits all personality, but I will suggest this. You have to find something that speaks in your language and to the person you are speaking to.

When I got involved in sales and marketing, I learned all the word tracks, “Hey, Mr. Prospect, are you in a position today to make a decision?” People don’t talk like that. Those were the word tracks and if I use them, it sounds weird. I’m just like, “Hey, check this out.” And people were like, “Oh yeah, what am I checking out?” That’s my personality. So you have to have your personality infused into your ads.

And then you have to speak to the audience on that platform. It’s called play to the platform. And that is how you make ads that work.

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