Ep 36: Client Spotlight: How Danielle got ads working like a machine after failed agencies and courses

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Danielle owns a premium residential cleaning company in Arizona, and before she found Hometown ADvantage, she had burned through Google Ads, multiple agencies, and even another course — with almost nothing to show for it. You'll hear exactly what was going wrong behind the scenes and how she turned it around completely. Since starting ads in September 2025, her business has grown 56%, she's doubled her cleaning technician staff, hired her first assistant, and is now opening a second location — all on a starting ad budget of about $30/day. This one is worth a listen if you've ever felt like ads just don't work for your business.

Transcript

0:00

All right, we are back with our third and final episode of this three part series where I got to sit down with some of my clients who have gone through Hometown Advantage and talk about their journeys. So in this episode, I'm talking to my client, Danielle. She owns a premium cleaning company in Arizona, and her story is so relatable to so many people. She never planned on being the owner of a cleaning business, but it's something that happened and she went the route of hiring several different agencies to help her with advertising and she couldn't figure out why. None of them could figure out how to help her. She even bought a different course before she bought mine. And she was still left feeling like she was missing something. So when she finally took the jump, came into Hometown Advantage, went through the course material, got my hands on support, we were able to diagnose what the problems were and completely turned things around for her. Her business is crushing it with ads right now, and I'm not gonna give you much more detail than that because she is going to share herself. And before we dive in, don't forget my Free Beyond Boosting, my Free Beyond Boosting Masterclass is coming up on April 30th. It's a Thursday. It's gonna be at 1:00 PM Eastern. I am gonna be laying out the three campaign strategy that Danielle uses, Anna Liv, all the people on these client spotlights have used to help generate leads every single day and convert a portion of those leads into new clients. I'm gonna talk about the do's and don'ts of ads, things to stay away from common mistakes that you or your agency might be making, and I'm gonna share more about my program, hometown Advantage, which all of these clients. Went through to get their ads really on point. Right after the workshop ends, I will be offering$500 off the program, and everyone who joins within that next week is going to get two done for you reels created by my team that you can plug and play right into your ad, create right into your ad campaign. They're gonna be specific to you. We're gonna work with you one-on-one to get the reals done. And it's going to save you so much time when it comes to getting ads up, so I'm really excited for everyone who jumps in on that. Without further ado, here's Danielle's episode.

Track 2 2:30

Okay. Hi Danielle. I'm so excited that you came on and I'm so happy you're doing this for me. How are you today?

Track 1 2:38

I am so good and so excited to be here. Thank you so much for inviting me to Goal.

Track 2 2:42

for inviting me. Yes, absolutely. So start us off. Can you just share a little bit about yourself, your business, your role there? Give us like an intro for everyone who hasn't met you. Yeah,

Track 1 2:54

So my name is Danielle and I am the owner of a cleaning company, primarily residential. We do a little bit of commercial, but really truly our focus is residential cleaning. And we consider ourselves to be a little bit more of like a. Luxury cleaning brand not more, not like your budget, kind of commodity size. And the reason behind that is we want to give that kind of a five star service where people, our customers truly feel cared about. The communication is there. We obviously we're a company that wants to keep growing, but we always want to give our customers that like. Small town feel like they're talking to know their own family, their best friend is their cleaning company, and they don't just feel like another number. But this was honestly not my goal from the beginning. I did not, wake up one day and say, I, I want to start a cleaning business. I actually came from corporate world for 16 years and life happens and here we are.

Track 2 3:54

here we are. Yeah.

Track 1 3:55

Yeah, talk to me about that. What was the decision like to start the business then? Like where did it come from? Oh gosh. Probably what so many people say what changed everyone's world like, everyone's life. What changed it? The big C word COVID and then being a mom. So I happened to have. A very young child. Not quite newborn, but almost newborn, right? When COVID hit the world shut down, I was working, corporate life. My husband was working corporate life, but we had jobs that we didn't get to work from home. We had to go into the office and we had the small child. We had no family, no friends. There was no daycares open, there was nothing. And I had to take a step back. And I took a leave of absence for a year. Didn't leave that corporate job, but took a leave of absence. And a year later I went back and I was like, this is not for me. Like I can't do this anymore. This worked for me before I was a mom and it's not working for me anymore. And I pivoted and I was like, I have to start a business. And here we are.

Track 2 5:02

Yeah, And we're gonna talk more about your marketing journey. and Your ads journey and all of this. But something I've noticed in you from working with you is like you have a, the really good business mind and you really think strategically and like data based and you're like, you have that CEO mindset, which I feel like is what has helped Make you so successful with the ads. Did that just develop when you started your business, did you have some of that in your corporate job, or where does that come from? Where

Track 1 5:34

I have truly no idea because I have no experience in business, no experience in marketing, like literally nothing. And I don't know, I honestly, I've said this to so many people, and it's probably lame to say, but I feel like truly like when you have your backup against the wall and you feel pinned in a corner. You can figure anything out and you will figure anything out. So true.

Track 2 5:57

So true. I love it. Okay, so let's go back, okay. Before you decided I'm gonna learn ads, I need to learn ads, what did the marketing aspect look like? As far as your strategy or the time you were spending on marketing, how did you market your business when you first started? Did you hire people? Let's talk about that.

Track 1 6:17

Yeah, no, from the beginning it was truly like shoestring budget. I had no idea what I was doing. And I, turned to all of those very simple, like third party, not that I'm bagging on it at all, but. That's all I knew. Like third party stuff, like Angie's List and Thumbtack and Bark and stuff like that. That's all I knew. And I was like, okay,

Track 2 6:37

like, okay,

Track 1 6:38

it'll make it quick. Like at least it'll get like some people coming to me. And so I started there and slow growth, but growth nonetheless. And then I. A little while in when, the business started making some money I did start putting it into marketing companies and I, was doing the Google local service ads. I was doing actual like Google ads and spending so much money, insane amount of money and literally getting almost nothing in return. I was getting people who wanted us to come clean their house in the next 90 minutes. And I'm like, okay, we don't have that availability. I'm so sorry. We're a real business. Yeah.

Track 2 7:21

here. Yeah.

Track 1 7:22

I can't drop what I'm doing and be to your house considering it's also a 45 minute drive to your house. But that was getting the leads I was getting. And it just, I just saw money pouring out and I was like, this isn't working. There has to be a better way. And I don't know what that way is, but there has to be a better way.

Track 2 7:42

to be a better way. No, totally. So then is that kind of around the time in your journey where you decided, I need to learn this? You found my ad Talk about, Deciding. to join the program. I love that.

Track 1 7:55

Honest to goodness. I think I had attended, oh gosh, like two or three of your webinars, like over a year time period. And I had actually signed up for, and worked, not really worked with, but signed up for another program that was supposed to, help local businesses with ads. And honestly, because it was cheaper and I had been pouring so, so much money into Google Ads, I was like, I don't have the money. So I tried that and unfortunately that particular program was great for brick and mortar, but not great for a business like mine. That's not brick and mortar. Like we don't have an actual location. Where people can walk in. We're not like a restaurant. So it didn't work and I was just beside myself and I did And did you Yeah. Implement the ads from the program? What was that? Did you tried'em? Yeah. You tried? Yeah. I tried everything. Like I followed, you see how I am like almost oc d style, like I follow things. Exactly. Exactly. Like I don't waver and I think Nicole can speak to that like truly And it just, yeah, don't waiver. And then you're still questioning. I know, I'm still Questioning what I'm doing. but yeah, it didn't work. And there was actually at that same time, so the Google local ads were not, or not local the Google ads, were not working. And the company that I was working with they actually felt so bad that the ads weren't working. They stopped charging me for the ads and they started running free Facebook ads for me. I was obviously paying ad spend, but they were running everything for me and still nothing. what were they doing? I don't know. So now like I've gone back now that I understand it a little bit more, like having learned things and I've gone back and looked and, I think it's a lot of between, like the creative. Was too generic and it wasn't like really kidding people. And I think the way they had things turned on behind the scenes was definitely different. So I have gone back and looked at things like, why wasn't that working? That's so weird. So I have literally tried so many things Where did you find the agency? Was that something, was that someone local to you or was it like a big agency that serves a ton of clients? Yeah, so it's actually an agency that works. It's not here local. It's an agency that does a lot of marketing with actual like cleaning companies. And I had, it was a referral from a cleaning company from another state. And I was like, okay, if they have experience in cleaning let's, give it a try and see what happened. And it just, It wasn't converting. It was so crazy. Like the phone wasn't ringing. It wasn't like I couldn't, convert, leads into to sales. It was like the phone wasn't ringing. Or if it was ringing. Yeah. It was, we need our house cleaned in the next two hours. Okay. I can't help you that, I'm so sorry. I think, I guess I like looking back, I think I was just so laser focused I just have to do this. There are no other options left that like emotion and everything, like just completely went to the wayside and I was so laser focused. Like I said, really looking back I, don't know, I, the only thing that I really can put my finger on is I think a few different things, especially for local services needed to be changed, behind the scenes, but also I think with agencies, things are so done. They're done in such a cookie cutter way, and they're not personalized. Like I, I wasn't really the face of the company, it was more, we're just a cleaning company. That's commodity. That's not luxury. So I question if that was probably a really big piece. It just didn't feel personal. It just to people when they saw the ads, it just felt like another cleaning company.

Track 2 11:46

Oh my gosh. Okay. That's huge. And that's something that has, I think has helped make your ad so successful too. Which we're gonna talk about your actual ad results and things like that. of course. But that's something that attracts a lot of people is that they don't have to be the face of the brand and things like that. Like they don't wanna show up on camera, they don't wanna take photos and videos. But then a lot of times what I've experienced and noticed is they still want that luxury Client. Like, they still want the high-end clients, but they don't wanna do what you're saying, you knew you needed to do To attract those people. So I think that's been something that's been so helpful for your ads. Danielle's ads are a lot of reels. and it's, B roll of her cleaning and different things like that. And then with some like really good texts on top, which is like my go-to type of ad that I teach because it works so well for me. It works so well for my clients and we just rinse and repeat and make that happen. Can you talk a little bit about the time commitment, and I'm really curious just from my own. End too, talk to me about how much time you spend on advertising and creating content and I want people to have a realistic Expectation of how much time they should be spending on content and ads to have predictable good results. Can you talk to me about how much time you spend on it?

Track 1 13:05

Yeah. I think it's definitely broken up in chunks. There's, when you're first beginning to try to put all like the ads together, there's definitely gonna be a little bit more of a time commitment. Just like with anything, when you're starting anything up I had already had a few, clips of me doing some cleaning. And so I just pulled that stuff out. There was a few things, I literally grabbed my phone and set it up on like a TV stand and started doing some things and recorded it and was like, okay, good enough. Like I wasn't hiring, I'm not hiring professional, videographers or photographers I'm literally taking my iPhone and setting it up on books or shelf or something. Yeah. And going and doing something. Recording it. Yeah. So super simple. And then just, again, putting the ads to like actually putting them, together was potentially like the most time consuming piece of it. Just'cause you want the variety and all that. But, oh gosh. I don't know. I would say I probably had it broken up. I had it done in less than a week. That's it's not eight hours a day, that's broken up in chunks of time. I'm still a business owner. I'm a mom, I'm a wife. So I was just making it fit and I had it literally all the videos done. All the different types of ads done, the creative done the copy written literally in under a week. Yeah. And then putting, getting like the ads up in Facebook seriously at the most two hours. And that's probably like even exaggerating, how long it took, I'd say. Yeah, like at the most two hours. And now it's, and then it's nothing. I go in and I check the performance I'll, turn off or turn on certain ads here or there, depending on how it's going. So in a day now, it's. Maybe five minutes.

Track 2 14:55

And then of course there's gonna be times when you're like maybe trying to get a new batch of ads going and things like that. But what you're saying is getting started, It takes time. Once you've got the base, it takes a lot less time.

Track 1 15:10

absolutely. There's like nothing, and every month I'm creating, a little bit of, just organic content. So usually what I'll do during that time, then I'm putting some organic content together. I'll pull some stuff and I'm like, oh, this would be really good for an ad. And I set, I'll still use it for organic, but then I'll pull it and put it in a different folder and then turn it into a video and I'm like, okay. Then I'm slowly starting to build like my library of videos for the next run of ads, so I don't have to sit down and put all that time in again to redo all the ads. I already have stuff going, or I'm already putting stuff together in advance, I think. Something that has been really helpful for you too, that could really benefit other people is your, you just seem like you have the systems mindset, right? Like you're gonna systematize everything and you're, it comes from being a mom and like you said, having your back up against the wall and different things like that. Like you're not physically going to get every single thing done that you wanna get done if you don't have some sort of system to get it done with. So that sounds like what you've developed, like I'm gonna create more organic content. I'm gonna make sure that it, I can, two birds, one stone. Run some of these as ads, all of that. Yep. That's exactly what I do. Yeah. And then one thing for transparency for some of the listeners too, is you're not taking cleaning clients, right? What do you mean? Like you don't go and clean. No. Do you go and clean people's houses? No. Nope. Not at all. I am a hundred percent. You're able to really focus. Yeah. No, I have my entire team of technicians and leads and quality check people who go out and they take care of all of that. I do not go out and clean. I am the behind the scenes. Up to this point, I've been literally, other than cleaning, I have been doing a hundred percent of everything. And just three weeks ago I brought on my first assistant, so as of now, I am officially not even doing, I'm not doing sales calls anymore. But that's actually brand new, like within the last few weeks. So exciting. And that's, how's that deal? Seriously? Because of my ads is why I'm here.

Track 2 17:20

Oh,

Track 1 17:21

That's so exciting.

Track 2 17:22

Seriously. Okay, so let's talk about your results. What if you were talking to somebody who was thinking about joining the program or thinking about trying ads and they're like, do ads even work? Did your ads work? How would you describe your results? Kind of explain,

Track 1 17:41

First off, one word, mind blowing, and I am not kidding, and I have pulled. I think now three or four people specifically in this, in the cleaning business throughout the country that are in other like business groups with me. You have to do this. I'm not kidding. So in, I started doing this in September of 2025. And for reference, it's now February 10th, 2026. And. My business has grown 56% since September of 20 25, 50 6%. The only thing that has changed in my business is running Facebook and Instagram ads. That is literally the only thing that has changed and I've had to double my cleaning technician staff. Like I said before, I brought on my first assistant because I couldn't handle the, sales calls and the scheduling, and I couldn't do it on my own anymore. Even with having the systems in place, it was just, I couldn't do it all anymore. No, I don't do it all. Yeah. Trust me. I know. And yeah, so the business since September has grown itself 56%. When it comes to the actual, like ads and stuff to get an idea of how many people are you actually talking to? So I, I, have people with my particular ads, I have people who will give me their contact information, name, phone number, email, stuff like that. So then we're able to call them. And talk to'em on the phone. What are your wants, your needs when it comes to cleaning and we help them identify, what's the best fit for them and their family. And so out of all the leads that are giving us our contact information, we've been able to get in contact with right around 50% of the people who are giving me their contact information. We're actually able to talk to on the phone and provide quotes to 50% of the leads That are coming through From those 50% that we talk to we are closing and putting on the books and making money any, depending on the month, but anywhere from 55 to 60% of the people we talk to are scheduling and we are going into their home and cleaning their homes with an average ticket for the initial clean. So you have to figure, our goal isn't just to go into someone's house one time and clean their house. Our goal is to go into their house initially, do a, a really good job, either a real true, like top to bottom, deep clean to just a really thorough, clean. And, obviously people's wants and needs and budgets are all different, but our average ticket rate for the first clean is$570. And so again, out of those people we're closing 60%. The people that we actually talk to on the phone with the going rate, about 560,$570 per clean. And then for the initial clean. And then from there when people become recurring, which I have the numbers for, who are turning, going from initial cleans to our repeat customers. So initial cleans to our repeat customers, we are at 80% Wow. Are turning into recurring customers. And our average ticket per month per recurring customer. Is right around$430 a month. That's amazing.

Track 2 21:06

Let's talk about what you spend. Budget. I know a lot'cause that's always a Question. People ask me how much should I spend? And so when you were first starting With the ads from the program. what was your ad spend budget?

Track 1 21:20

Initially we were, I was right around eight to$900 a month. Yeah, for ad spend it's like around$30 a day kind of thing. Oh yeah. And now, and as of right now, this is gonna this is so crazy. No, I'm only at$1,300 a month. Yeah, that's it. And have doubled my business Since September. Amazing. And I am now about to, I'm actually going to be like doubling that 1300. We're gonna bring it up to about 20, 2500 to 3000 a month. But again, I didn't start there. It's five months ago it would've been like, you're crazy. I'm not spending that much money. But it's working. It's amazing. And yeah, here we are. Yeah. That's so exciting. And I always say people too. My goal is that you actually want to spend more. A lot of people when they get first get started with ads. The mentality is how can I spend as little as possible? Yeah. Which I totally understand. Yeah, absolutely. You don't have guaranteed results. You don't know what's gonna happen. But hopefully the ads get you in this mindset of, oh my gosh, I wanna spend more. Because the more I spend the. The more that this happens, the more growth that I have. Yeah. Absolutely. That's so exciting. And you told me right before we were getting on that you have other news for your business too. Yes. What's that? I live in a very large, spread out metro area, large city. And. driving distance between different areas of the city is huge and so I've primarily been servicing. Primarily like west and north part of the metro area with a few other people. Few customers dabbled everywhere. But we have officially grown so much and just things are working. We are now expanding and opening a branch in the east Valley Of the city. which is just huge. So we're opening up our second branch for the company. And again, this wouldn't have happened. I would've never, I wasn't planning on this six months ago brand new plan. And, Doing something new and opening a new location can always feel nerve wracking. But I can imagine that knowing that you know how to generate consistent leads in sales for this business and, you can just rinse and repeat Yep. For another location, plus you'll get so good. Yeah. And that's literally all it is. It's rinse and repeat. Exactly. So do you have any advice, or what would your thoughts be for local business owners who might have been where you were a few months ago? So maybe they've tried ads, they've tried paying agencies, and they're just like feeling that same feeling of this needs to work, but I don't know where to go next. Yeah. Yeah. I honestly I don't have some eloquent thing to say other than, I I have tried so many different things and so many things that haven't worked, and this was literally the first thing that has truly worked. And just get, just, you have to try it. Give the program, give yourself a shot. You can do this. And Facebook ads, I know seem, they seem so scary and overly complicated. But they're not, and I still question myself like all the time, but it's really so easy and there isn't, it doesn't take a whole ton of time, which is also amazing, and the results are just literally mind blowing. Cool. I think it's a good reminder Something I always wanna put out there too is it doesn't take a whole lot of time. But it does take some time. It does. And you've been a really good example of, Signing up for a program and making sure that you have the time to commit to it. Because I, that's the problem I see behind the scenes is people's calendars are so booked solid with no wiggle room. That. Then they sign up for a program where it's gonna take some time to consume the material and get things set up like we talked about, and they don't ever quite get there. To add on to Danielle's advice, it would be like, give yourself a chance, do this, but then also make sure that you can figure out the calendar part. And give yourself time, because Danielle has done that and it has paid off immensely. I literally went into my calendar and car, like in that week, I knew I couldn't do it all in a day or two, but. I scheduled out within that week. This isn't an option like this is, unless something horrible happens or my daughter or husband gets sick or something nothing is gonna stop me from this. This is the only option for this week. Like this has to happen and I made it happen. Everything else was just put to the wayside for that week. Okay. That's all I have for you. Thank you so much for coming on chatting about your journey. I loved learning more. And that's it. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, let's see if I can stop the recording.