Cheapest Ways To Get MORE Leads In Pressure Washing

Transcript

[00:00:00] What's up guys? Welcome back to the Lean and Mean Academy for another video. Today we're gonna be talking about the cheapest ways to market your pressure washing business. I know a lot of you guys are on a budget when you first get started. Back in 2017, when I got started in pressure washing. I had nearly no money to even market.

It was all, uh, Aaron's shoe leather, walking down the sidewalk, knocking on this businesses, trying to get them to gimme some money to clean their windows. And then I branched into, uh, pressure washing and I started getting a little money under my belt to where I could devote to marketing. And, uh, when you do start spending money on marketing, it does matter how you, uh, allot that money, right?

Because we definitely want. An ROI today. That's what we're talking about. I got my boy Chris Lonergan from Footbridge Media here on the line. What's up Chris? How we doing Aaron? Good man. So I know a lot of these dudes are on a budget. That's why I wanted to do a good title for him today. The, the cheapest Ways to [00:01:00] Get Started Marketing Their pressure washing business.

Something to where they don't have to come off a lot of money. But they can get a really solid ROI and start building that, that foundation, you know, to where they can eventually start spending even more money and get more leads and more money, and get more leads. And now they have a big growing business.

Yep, that's right. I mean, it takes, it takes some money to make some money at that point, but you don't have to jump in right away with the most expensive lead generation tactics. There are a lot of easy ways we can ease into marketing. So it's comfortable. Your wallet's not really gonna feel it as bad as dropping thousands of dollars in Google ads.

It doesn't take that to get started. Uh, if anything, it's easier to get started because of that. You don't have to worry about draining your bank account. You can just do a little bit of extra legwork, maybe a little bit of more, uh, burning your time instead of your cash so that you can get those first customers.

Sure, sure. So today we got three, uh, cheap ways to market your business that are really effective if you do these and. These are [00:02:00] gonna be some of those things that you probably keep doing throughout your business, but they are cheap, they are effective in the beginning. And, uh, Chris, what's our first one?

Number one, it's the one that most people are already probably thinking about. It's SEO is having a good solid website presence and being present on organic optimization, having good efforts there so you can try to get on Google on search engines. Uh, and that is ultimately a really low cost thing.

You're gonna have to invest your time early on to build that website out. To make sure that you are constantly updating that site with your projects, but the end result there is over time, you could build a strong presence on Google for the very common searches that someone who's looking for your pressure washing service or your home service.

If you can rank well in Google, that means you're gonna get leads ultimately for one of the lower possible costs. So your ROI there at, uh, in the long run is really gonna be, uh, a really solid number. 'cause you're gonna spend a low amount of money to get someone to come to your website and they're gonna convert because they found you just through Google, [00:03:00] just from your online pre your pure online presence.

Yeah, that's, that's huge. Right? Everybody goes to Google. Everybody uses Google. Um. They're kind of run the world, if you will. They might be the Illuminati at this point, the Illuminati, you know, um, there's a building somewhere with these, these Google people, little, little Googles, little Google and, uh, and, and it's, but it's very important.

Uh, most of my marketing, Chris, has been, been done through Google. And, and you guys at Footbridge Media, you guys build, uh, contractor specific websites. That's all you guys do, correct. That's right. For the last 20 plus years, we've done nothing but specifically work with contractors. Home service pros, so not just pressure washers.

It includes lawn, lawn and landscaping folks, roofers, electricians, basically anybody who does work at a house instead of someone coming to their property to do work. I love it. I love it. So. You guys build sites. I've had [00:04:00] y'all's websites, uh, for my business since 20 17, 20 18. Uh, if you want a pro website built for your business, go and dial the number on the screen.

It's scrolling across the bottom. Give 'em a call, talk to 'em about a website for your business. These things perform super well. These guys are the Jedi at building contractor sites, and if you mention Lean and Mean, mention my channel, uh, you'll save about $600 a year. On your website, very cost effective.

But with that being said, let's see. Let me just, what should I search here, Chris? So I think we were talking about some, uh, we've got a, a guy outta Spokane, some pressure washing in Spokane. Pressure washing Spokane right there. All right, let's take it out. So this is the top level search, right? This is what a customer could be searching for if they need your services right out.

And they [00:05:00] live in Spokane. So this is what they would search for. So Grace, pressure washing, we can tell here he's running some, uh, local service ads. So he is number one. He's at the top here. This is the cool part. This is organic. So for the whole area of, of Spokane, Washington, uh, Marco, uh, is number one at Grace pressure washing, and he's also number one in organic.

Chris tell, what does this mean when you search the, the broadest search for a certain area for the service plus city and you're ranking number one, what does that mean for this guy? That means that number one, Google has a solid understanding of of who this person is. It means Google thinks that that particular vendor is the best answer for that search.

If someone is looking for, for pressure washing services, they can likely get the answers they need from that specific person. And whether that's through local service ads, [00:06:00] whether it's the Google Map section or whether through. The organic links, it suggests that Hey, Google, Google thinks, hey people, this might be a good choice.

The cool thing about being in both the ads and the map and the organic is people click different places. So they're basically monopolizing that first page there. So whether you're an ad clicking person, whether you're a map, I look, I look at the reviews first person, or if you're, I want a deep dive look at the website person, you're gonna get the lion's share of.

All those leads, those clicks that come through for that super common, like that's a, a core search term there. If that, that covers literally everything that, that obviously that this industry that, that this person can do. So they're gonna get a ton of traffic, uh, because of that placement there. The site looks great.

I mean, I, I wouldn't expect anything less. Right? It looks, it looks phenomenal. Y'all got a lot of data on here. I think this is what really separates y'all from other people who would be building websites. It's just look at all of this [00:07:00] data. These are all pages, um, that you guys have built. Right. Did, did Mark write any of these pages?

Did he have to write this content and send it to you guys or do you guys do that? Nope. We do. We do the lion share lift and we always say if people want to contribute. You know, premises or they've got an idea of what they want a page to be about, but they don't have to, at the end of the day, we try to do as much of the heavy lifting as possible when it comes to the content creation that counts, uh, the, the, both the service pages and the city pages here, and you can see there's a, a ton of them for this site.

So a service that we don't have in, in Daphne, Alabama, where I'm from is homeless encampment cleanup. But out and smoking. See out and out and out west. See, they got these home. This is incredible. This is like a, a crazy niche that he's had a page built for and he's cleaned a few of them. He is got some project pages here.

Um, but you know, a business owner doesn't want to come clean this up. Who knows what's going [00:08:00] on. Uh, who knows what's lingering, you know, what kind of hazardous needles or anything, or it's just funny. There's so many niches that you can, um, target and you guys write all of this content. Now, caveat here, do not get the website with footbridge and send them, you know, 50 pages that you want built by tomorrow.

That's not how that's gonna work. Um, Chris, what do y'all do? Like five or 10 in the beginning and then they can send in more as time goes on. But just don't, don't overwork 'em. What's the number? Usually, generally speaking, like when we first launch a site, it's anywhere between, I say, 25 to 35, 40 pages, including the homepage, the about page, the city pages, all that stuff.

So we try to prioritize, because we also wanna launch your site quickly, so we don't want to spend, you know, two or three months writing all that content. We're gonna prioritize the things that make the most sense, the top 10 cities, the top 10 services, [00:09:00] and then from there we can niche down, we can do more specializations, talk about targeting specific neighborhoods.

You know, as, as we go on, so you launch and then adding content on like that is actually a solid way to show Google that you are continually updating, you're continually growing, and you get a situation like this where this particular pressure washer is now very well known as the answer to Google for a lot of this content.

Yeah. He is crushing, like, he, he messages me on Facebook all the time. I'm so proud of him. I remember when he started, he was in the inner circle. He still is. And uh, he's a lifetime member. A lifetime member down here. And, uh, he just hit me up and, and wanting to know all the info. And I told you earlier that Mark did, if I said it, if I uttered it, like, and I said it once on a live, you know, in our con in our coaching group, mark did it.

Like he's done everything to a t and, uh, you can see it by his rankings, like [00:10:00] it's just performing. So $199 a month. There's no contracts with footbridge, so give them a call. I think that's the first way, the first cheap way to really establish yourself and get, frankly, super cheap leads. I mean, guys, a gutter cleaning doesn't even cost 109.

It costs more than $199 to do a gutter cleaning. So for one gutter cleaning a month, you can have a website that's ranking like this. And as we showing here, we're showing here in a major like metropolitan area. Like Spokane's not small. It's not like a rural town. Like there's a lot of people here as well, and he's crushing it and he's, he's ranking even outside of here in some of these small Silver Lake and some of these other places.

He even works in Idaho. He had some pages on there, um, for Idaho as well. So that's the first one. Chris, what's our second one? Our second cheap way to market your pressure washing business. The second cheap way is one that I'm a really [00:11:00] big fan of actually. On our fun Footbridge Media's YouTube channel, we posted some content recently about it.

It's a actic called Clover Leafing. The idea is you can try to get four more leads from every active job that you have. So if you show up at somebody's house, uh, before you leave, before you finish work, before you actually leave for the day, talk to the houses on the left and the right. Talk to the house across the street.

Talk to the house behind that, that target place where your actual job site, where you're working. If you're gonna just knock on the door, you're gonna say hello. If you've got door hangers, you can leave a door hanger. You're basically gonna introduce yourself. You're gonna apologize for the noise if you, while you're working, but just to say, Hey, we're in the area.

You may have a pitch like, Hey, we're gonna, we're offering free estimates while we're here. Let me know if you have any questions. We'll be helping your neighbor bill out over here, uh, and you could talk to him afterwards. If you have any questions, leave your business card. Leave a a, a door hanger. The idea here is there are people who are gonna be seeing the results of your work.

They see your work vehicle. They see you in [00:12:00] action. They see that you're professional. If you can get more people in that neighborhood, you're gonna spend less time driving around. You're already, you already know that people in the neighborhood need your work. If you're a pressure washer, it's not like that house is uniquely environmentally affected.

That means other properties around there need, need house washing, need roof cleaning, need window washing so you can turn. That one job you're working on too, basically into a billboard for, for the neighborhood at that point. And it costs you literally nothing to go next door to knock and say hello and introduce yourself and just say, Hey, let me know if I need to move the, the van or if I need to, you know, move the truck or do anything to help you out while I'm here.

Just to go outta your way to introduce yourself and to demonstrate that you're a professional. Uh, and it's cheap. It costs you nothing. It costs for the, the cost of a door hanger. You can go shake someone's hand and say hello. I love it because it gives you four opportunities to actually meet people, talk to people, and get another job out of the one job you've already had.

Dude, I love the apology move. That's like a [00:13:00] great way to not feel like you're selling. Yeah. You know? Exactly. Yeah. It's like, especially for folks who are not comfortable with selling, you can come and say, Hey, we're, we're here. Partner dust, partner noise, our, we're pressure washing here. You know, it could be a little bit noisy, but that's why we're here at this time of day.

That's where we're here to talk to you now to make sure that you, you know, you're not caught off guard by this. Um, it, it's a great way to kind of slide ease into the idea of selling yourself without necessarily selling. I love that. That's, that's a good angle. 'cause people are like, oh no, it's fine. Yeah, everything's fine.

You're like. Yes. Now I need you to buy pressure washing. No, you, you also need your roof clean. You also need your roof cleaned. My somehow some reason we need our roof cleaned Jedi mind tricks, man. That's good. Um, Chris, what's number three? Number three is referral programs. And I think a lot of contractors are afraid of referral programs because they don't really understand.

The premise of how [00:14:00] it works properly. The idea is you tell your past customers that you've got a referral plan, that you will pay them or give them a gift card or give them some sort of free perk if they refer you to a friend or family member. A good rule of thumb is figure out, you know what? What's your cost to get a lead?

Does it cost you 20 bucks, 50 bucks, a hundred bucks to get a lead? Say it costs you $50 to get a lead. Then you tell your past customers, Hey, if you refer me to a friend or family member and they buy, I'll pay you 50 bucks. I'll give you the $50 instead of giving it to, to Google or whoever else. But you don't pay them unless you actually get a paying job out of it.

You're not getting, you're not giving them $50 for the lead. You're giving them $50 for a completed job. So, uh, if you know that you're gonna spend $50 on the lead when you go do the house washing job you referred to, or whatever it was. Just increase your rates to cover the cost of your lead. So person A refers you to person B.

Person B does the house washing job with you. They pay you, they're already [00:15:00] squared away. You've made money on that job. You then take part of the profits, part of the proceeds from person A, from person B, and give it to person A as a reward. The idea here is if you could do this, if you can really satisfy customers, you really wow them with the whole customer experience.

You're gonna turn all of those homeowners, all those happy customers, basically into a referral army for you. They're gonna be a sales force you don't have to pay for, and you get leads as quickly as they can refer friends out, and they get rewarded for it. So of course they're gonna continue to do it, you know, to say we love referrals.

You know, referrals are a great compliment. That's that's great. And some people will do it out of the kindness of their heart. But if you incentivize them, if you say, I'll give you 50 bucks to tell a friend. They're gonna tell more friends boy, them old ladies, they'll be cashing in on that. Mm-hmm. If anything, they're gonna go over, Hey, I noticed your windows need to be washed.

I've got a buddy do it. Yeah. They like to talk, you know, they walk their little dog and stuff. They like to talk to everybody, you know? Yep. Um, so absolutely [00:16:00] harnessing, uh, those customers that you've had and, and incentivizing them, Chris, how would they know? You know how much they're paying for a lead as far as how much to give a customer, because obviously the more you give a, you're willing to give someone for a referral, the more incentivized they're probably gonna be.

Right? So what do you, how, how do, how would they figure that out? Where they know what number to say. The real rough cost there is what's the cost of your marketing, uh, per month, and then how many clients did you get in that, in that one month from that particular marketing? So something like Google Ads, you can tie a little more directly.

If you know you spent, you know, a thousand dollars in Google ads for, for a month and you got 10 clients out of it, then you know, it's a hundred dollars is basically your cost per lead there. Cost per acquisition is probably the better term there. You can still rough that out with, you know, your website costs, but at the end of the day, also has to balance with, you know, what's something that's gonna make them jump.

If it's $10, it's [00:17:00] not really gonna make a, a prospective referer jump, but if it's 20, 25, 50 bucks, the higher that number goes, the more likely that they're gonna give that referral. And also, again, at the end of the day, since you're only paying for the referral, when you get a, a job that closes out of it.

If you want to make your referral target a hundred dollars. Just adjust your pricing so that you're getting a hundred dollars more for that job. Uh, and you're basically just taking money from person B and giving it right back to person A as the reward, so you're not losing out on any money necessarily off the top.

Sure. That's brilliant. That's brilliant. I think there's a lot of people would be incentivized. The higher you go, the more incentivized they're gonna be. You'll, you know, there'll be a lot of customers who, who may not lock into it, you know, because they just have life. But there will be some customers who really gravitate towards that and they'll see five, 10 people.

Um, I think that's gonna be like your 80 20 there. I think 20% of of the people who are actively referring you are gonna give you 80% of your referrals. You'll have some really active folks. [00:18:00] Some folks that might give one or two. You know, if someone brings it up at a party or someone mentions on social media, Hey, I'm looking for an HVAC guy or whatever.

Um, you know, there, there are ways that, that, uh, that maybe one off, you might get one here or there, but yeah, you might find you've got a couple really good, you know, people who are champions of your brand. Uh, and those are the folks that you really wanna reward. Well, I love it. I love it. Well, those are three guys.

Take these three and implement them. Into your business. I mean, these are not hard when you're first getting started. If, if you're some people, you have more time than money, and if you have more time than money, these are the ways that you can really, uh, snowball, affect your marketing into year two, where things start getting a lot more smooth and leads start coming in a lot easier.

We always say year two. This business hits different, it does hit different than year one. You know, uh, lead acquisition starts to get a lot easier in year two because you've had your website, it's been aging for this [00:19:00] period of time. Google really knows who you are. You're starting to stack reviews. You're doing some of these techniques that Chris is telling you today, and you're having those people from the year before call you back and say, Hey, you know, I want to get it done again.

So these are people. Who you don't have to reach out and you've only spent one time to acquire that lead, and now they're coming back as repeat business. Um, so Chris, anything else? I think that at, at the end of the day, like you said, if you've got more time than money, if, if, if you're concerned, is you don't have money to run marketing for your business that good.

You don't need, you don't need the money all the time. So money's good, but time is really important. Knocking on doors for clover, leafing costs you no money. It costs you just a little bit of, of chutzpah, costs you a little bit of, of effort. Uh, but at the end of the day, that's the currency that you've got.

So if that's the currency you've got, spend that particular currency. And then, like you said, as things get better as you grow, then yeah, then that marketing budget can grow and you can look at other ways to diversify your streams. But to start things off, really it, [00:20:00] it's about putting in the blood, sweat, and tears, uh, and clover leafing and putting in your dues when it comes to online marketing.

Put in your dues when it comes to forming a base of good customers so you can have referrals. At the end of the day, it's that time spent investing in yourself, in your own skill development, and in your customers that are gonna get you that next customer. I love it. I love it. Chris, thanks for coming on today, man.

Thanks, Aaron. Thank you guys. If you're wanting to get your website done and um, you know, you need a website, every business needs a website. Uh, why not get it done by the pros at Footbridge Media. They've been doing it since 2004. Only contractors like us, um, give them a call. The number's scrolling at the bottom of the screen.

Talk to Aaron O'Hanlon. Talk to one of the guys there. They're not gonna pressure you. They're, that's not how they operate. Like I said, there's no contracts with their service. Uh, they really want to make this a partnership. In business with you and your business to where it's a long-term deal and uh, they want to crush it and [00:21:00] hit it out the park for you.

Mention lean and mean to get the $199 a month deal. If you don't, you'll be paying $250 a month, so you'll save like 600 bucks a year by just mentioning me at Lean and Mean Academy. And, uh, hope you guys enjoy it. Thanks for coming on. I'll see you guys in the next video.