Are You a Local Cleaning Company with Online Clients?

The Ask a House Cleaner Show and Podcast with Angela Brown

Are you a local cleaning company with online clients - you know, clients who found you online? Are your cleaning customers spying on you?

Are you a local cleaning company with online clients – you know, clients who found you online? Are your cleaning customers spying on you? The search results are getting better, and the algorithms will expose or promote your cleaning business. Market your cleaning business by cleaning up your online profile.

Local Cleaning Company With Online Clients?

You may be a local cleaning company, but your clients are online. And if you think that you’re smart enough to sidestep the algorithms, you are sadly mistaken as far as the success of your business goes. Now there are two major events that happened in my lifetime that I will never be able to unravel, unpack, or even understand.

One of them is the advent of the internet. Kind of just smacked me upside the head like I was standing still while I was running a local cleaning business. I thought it was going to go away, and it didn’t. The second thing that just blew me off my rocker was the algorithm that drives the search engines.

Your Local Cleaning Company Needs the Algorithm Rules

Okay, super weird that it would happen in my lifetime, but here’s one thing that I discovered. I have discovered that if you are going to run a business, you’ve got to play to the algorithm rules. All right. And the algorithm keeps changing, they keep tweaking things to make a better user experience. But here’s what I discovered.

In the summer of 2015, my business pivoted. We had a troubled teenager come to live with us who was suicidal and destructive and she was violent and a whole bunch of things.

In order for me to continue my business, I was going to have to make some severe changes. Because I couldn’t take her to work with me. And I was going to be unable to leave her alone while I went to work by myself. And so, during that weird window of time, I was able to sell my local cleaning business and start over again, online in an industry I knew nothing about.

When I Started My Facebook Page

There was one moment where I realized, oh, I should probably be on Facebook. So, I built a Facebook page for my business. Now I had a roaming Facebook page that was for Angela Oberer which is my married name. And I was like a ghost in a graveyard. I had to pop by every eight months or so and go like, boo!

Then I would pop out again. But for Angela Brown, that’s how all my customers knew me. I decided that I would create an Angela Brown Facebook page. So, I did. And within about 15 minutes, my brother called me from Milwaukee and he said, oh my goodness, are you okay? And I said, I’m okay. What happened?

What Happened When I Started My Local Cleaning Company Page

He said, I see that you’re Angela Brown now on Facebook. And I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. In fact, what happens is I’m selling my business and I’m just going to be using the Angela Brown name. I’m going to be working online. Now. He goes, oh, I’m so relieved. I thought you were getting a divorce.

But a few minutes later, my sister called me from Texas. She was like, oh my goodness, do you need a place to stay? I’ve got a couch. You can come stay with me. I was like, I love you. And I would love to come visit, but why would I stay with you on your couch? She’s like, because you’re getting divorced. I saw your Facebook page and I’m like, I’m not getting divorced. Pat is still here.

Facebook Linked My Family and I Together

I asked her, how did you know about the Facebook thing? She said, because Facebook linked us together. I said, no, it didn’t, I didn’t tell Facebook anything. I didn’t give them any of my friends. And I made no connections whatsoever. I simply made a page.

Well, here’s what happened. Facebook started patching things together based on my previous profile that I had set up. They started piecing together that I knew these other people. Do you know this person? Do you know this person?

And they’re like, yeah, that’s my sister. What is she doing under this name? So quickly? I went online and I made a note. I said, I’m not getting divorced. I wanted to give you a heads up. I’m selling my business.

You Have Control When Your Local Cleaning Company is Online

I’m going to be going online. And about an hour later, one of my clients called, what do you mean? You’re quitting our service. Whoa, what just happened? All of a sudden Facebook was telling secrets that I wasn’t prepared to tell. I had zero control. And then I realized, wait a second, I do have control.

This is a train that has already left the station and it just stopped at my town. And if I jump on, I can go for the ride. I’m not the one that has to pay for the billion-dollar algorithm. They’ve already paid for it.

They’ve already figured out who my customers and clients are. And they’ve already figured out who I know and without typing any information it has started patching together, all of these dots.

Facebook Brought Clients and Companies to Me

When I said how’s cleaning inside Facebook, it started creating a whole bunch of friends and other local cleaning businesses that it started bringing to me.

Then what was interesting is I created a Facebook group and in a couple of years, Facebook has found me 15,000 business owners that have come to me and said, “Hey, we want to be part of what you’re doing.” I’m like, whoa, this is an amazing algorithm.

Everyone is Online These Days

The reason I bring this up is this. If you’re online and all of us are, if we have smartphones, we think that we’re smart enough. We can have this profile over here and a different profile over here. And our customers will never find it. I’m here to say, don’t be such a fool.

Your clients are online. If you are a local cleaning company and you are in a city and you work around a few houses, I promise you this, all of your customers and clients are also online. There are savvy ways that they can do like a reverse white pages and just type in your phone number.

Your Online Clients Don't Have to Be Your Friends

It pulls up your business and it pulls up your Google listing and it pulls up your Facebook. And maybe you’re like, well, I don’t want to be friends with my clients. That’s fine. The internet can still find you. It can still patch the dots together. Here’s why it’s so important. I run seven Facebook groups that are for the different areas of my cleaning business.

Everyday people come to the group because Facebook thought that they should come to my group. Hey, go join this group. They come into my group, wait a second. We have some rules in place.

There are things like being nice to other people, no racism, no bullying, no cussing. You know what I mean? That’s it. We will let you in and we will show you nothing but respect, but we expect the same in return.

Online Clients Will Find Your Local Cleaning Company

And so, there are people that come to us thinking that, oh, they’re never going to find out who I am. But we have ways. Why do we have ways? We have ways because we are savvy online internet users, right?

So, I can tell within three or four clicks, if you’re a good fit for my business and the way that you set up your profile, oftentimes I don’t even need to click. I can go. Sure. Come on in. But if you have something in your profile, that’s sending up red flags.

I got to do two or three other clicks and in the two or three other clicks, I can pretty much go, no, we’re not a good fit, but thanks so much for thinking of us and I can quietly send you on your way and you never got to join our Facebook group.

We Turn Down a Lot of People in Our Groups

About two thirds of the people that come to our group. We’re like, yeah, we’re not a good fit. So, thanks very much, but no thanks. And we have to send them on their way. There was a woman this morning that tried to come into one of our Facebook groups and she violated pretty much all of the policies that we had suggested. On her public Facebook page, calling her customers all kinds of flippity flip, flip names on her public Facebook page.

And my first thought was, wait a second. I am a homeowner. I hire people like her to come to my house to do services for me, whether it’s landscaping or house cleaning or whatever.

I’m the homeowner that hires people like this. And what am I going to say as the homeowner? Forget the fact for a second, that I’m a Facebook business owner and I’m not going to let her into my group.

You Need to Use the Algorithms for Your Local Cleaning Company

But as a homeowner who sees this and she had her profile blocked and whatever, but Facebook has this thing that says for transparency’s sake, would you like to see who this is? And you go, “yeah oh, no. ugh uh, no way. No way on earth is she a good fit for me, my family, my home, or any of my friends. I can’t recommend her to anyone. I know, just based on what was on her public Facebook page.”

And she’s like, well, I don’t, I don’t need this, that and the other, whatever. Like she can do it all by herself. That’s great.

My challenge to you is why would you spin your wheels and try to do it on your own and try to be belligerent and try to be a bully and try to be all these other things when the algorithm is going to work against you?

The Two Most Powerful Algorithms

I say work against you because Facebook and Google have the world’s two most powerful algorithms. They have figured out a way that they can spend billions of dollars and keep everyone else engaged on their platforms. And I, myself am guilty of being on both of those platforms as a significant amount of my day.

And so, if I’m like the average user and I do not know social media okay. I’m like way back here when it comes to tactics and techniques and stuff. Right. So, there are people way more savvy on the internet than I am. But my point is this, if you are not the same person online that you are, when you show up to clean a customer’s house, you are going to lose big time in this game.

Be Careful What You Do Online

And you’re going to spin your wheels for years, trying to make up the difference, getting new customers and going through the churn of why did I get fired?

I have no idea why I got fired. You got fired for probably something that you set on your Facebook group, that defamed other people that made your customer embarrassed, that they know you, and they can’t recommend you to their friends. And they’re ashamed that they had you in their house. Okay. It’s probably something like that.

House Cleaning is a People Business

Now you might say, well, I’m the best house cleaner in the world. They’re hiring me for my cleaning. No, they’re not. No, they’re not. We are in the people business. We also happen to clean, right? Cleaning is the sidebar. We are in the people business. We serve people, we work with people.

If people hate you already and you come to their house and you may do an amazing cleaning job, but they hate who you are out in public. I promise you; they’re not going to recommend you to their friends.

I Won't Give Some People Recommendations

There are people that I’ve done business with in my life. And they’re like, “Hey, will you give me a recommendation?” I’m like, “Nope.” I took a chance on them. I’m glad that I did. They worked out for me, but I would not recommend them to anyone, anyone, sorry, I wouldn’t do that to you.

So, I want you to think that even if you are a local cleaning company, your clients are online.

I hope that motivates you to clean up your personal profiles and to make sure that the image that you’re creating online matches the hard work and the effort that you’re putting into when you serve your customers with the level of satisfaction that they deserve.