The economy and cold winter combined have hurt many carpet cleaners. Jump-start your spring season with smart marketing and bring the jobs to you.

Check out the cover story in Cleanfax Magazine‘s March Issue I wrote.

CLICK HERE to download the full article.

“We seem to forget that when there are recessions, and people stay home more, in-home service demand actually grows.”

This has been a very interesting past 12 months, from a marketing perspective. Gas prices have gone from sky high to rock bottom. The economy has flourished for some and tanked for most. The weather has gone from global warming to global freezing.

With distractions like these, what is a small business owner to do?

Get back to work. There is a saying that where there is anxiety, there is always opportunity. And there is absolutely opportunity in this industry. We seem to forget that when there are recessions, and people stay home more often, in-home service demand actually grows.

You simply need to remind them that they need you. You need to market to get their attention. I am watching some cleaners struggle right now, while I’m seeing others having their best year ever, despite the economy and despite the crazy weather.

What’s the difference?

It’s their response to it. It’s being proactive instead of simply expecting and accepting bad times and doing nothing about it. It’s being creative instead of just complaining.

How do you create your own busy season? You see what’s working for others and do the same things.

Do more of what’s working.

When we consult business owners, the first question we ask is “What is working for you right now?”

Every business has something that is working for them. An ad, a newsletter, a referral program, a business joint venture, a website, a business network, a sales letter sequence, a free recorded message system, a client appreciation system, etc.

Something is working right now.

The quickest path to creating more business is to identify where your jobs are coming from right now, and doing more of it. If you send out 500 flyers to a neighborhood to generate new business successfully, then send out 1,000.

If your five-around door hangers bring you a few jobs a week, then start doing 25-around.

If a carpet retailer sends you jobs, find another location to create another joint venture endorsement.

If a sales letter/offer brought you new jobs, then sequence that same letter/offer into a second or third notice to maximize your sales response. Keep doing it until it’s not profitable any longer.

If your off-line direct mail campaigns are bringing you new business, add on-line campaigns to expand your reach.

If new customers are finding you through Google, then work on improving your search engine optimization so more cleaning service seekers will find you.

Business owners think they need something entirely new to get more business when the simplest step is to just roll-out more of what’s already working for them.

Then move to see what works for others and model them. This doesn’t mean only modeling cleaning companies, because there are great marketing ideas out there in every business sector.

That is why having a “marketing mindset” is so valuable. You can find marketing gold everywhere you look; you can apply those ideas to your own business.

Go deep with referrals.

With referrals, a simple two-part rule applies — be referable, and reward the behavior you want more of.

Being referable, of course, means delivering great work and service. You need to be a company worth talking about to others. Most good companies are getting referrals right now, but many in a very haphazard way.

If you were to increase that number of referrals to three, five or 10 times your current number, you would have your “busy” season.

So how do you do this?

By building a strategy for collecting and maximizing referrals.

Read the full article and get 4 ways I recommend to go deep with referrals.

I also cover how to create “Reason Why” offers and I explain 4 ideas to help boost readership and response to your marketing campaigns:

1. Grab their attention with grabbers
2. Targeted gift rather than a blanket discount
3. Give clients an opportunity to help you help others
4. Reward clients for buying additional services

Get all the details, download the the article and you’ll also learn how to “maximize” every single marketing campaign.

Post a comment with your feedback on the article and I’ll have my team send you a 1 hour and 45 minute recording of me and some of my most successful Piranha Members discussing how they’ve created their own busy seasons!