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Also don’t forget that if you need a quality software program to help manage and grow your business, you may want to take a look at The Customer Factor. There’s lots of software out there, but none quite like this. I think you’ll agree!
I wrote a post recently where I included a couple of new service announcement letters that you can send to your customers when you announce any new service. If you missed that particular post, feel free to check it out.
But this blog post today talks about a letter or email you can send to your customers announcing a specific new service…and that service is Christmas Light installation.
Christmas is right around the corner, so this is the perfect time to let your customers know about it. You already have the ladders, so why not offer this service? It takes no money to get started (either in equipment or in finding customers since you’re working with your existing customer base), and it’s all profit. It’s truly one of those no brainer decisions.
I personally charged hourly for this service and just estimated how long I thought a job might take. I liked to try and get $50 an hour since that was my average hourly cleaning windows. So you could easily make $200 to $300 or more for each installation. It just depends on how big the house is, how many lights/decorations they want to put up, etc. etc.
Anyway…here is a letter that you can send to your customers to announce this service:
Today I’d like to add to the previous post by recommending that IF you do decide to check your own website rankings by typing in keywords you think searchers might be searching for in your area, then you must browse privately.
I’ll explain how to do this in a second, but to provide a little background, google knows what results are valuable to you. It’s very easy really. I mean if you do the same searches and visit the same websites, google considers these websites valuable to you.
So let’s say you search for your website using a keyword (ie: “boca raton window cleaning” assuming you live in boca raton). Your website is on the front page in the #5 spot. You then click through and visit your own site.
Today’s blog post is all about why it’s very, very important that you don’t check your rankings in google for your website. If you do, then it could actually hurt your rankings.
To explain, there have been some changes to the search engines over the last few months and a couple of those changes involve the bounce rate (how fast a visitor leaves your site) and user feedback.
Ranking highly in google is not only about how many keywords you have on the page anymore or how strong your meta tags are. It’s becoming more and more about how visitors interact with your website.
Let’s look at an example.
Let’s say you’re ranked in the 5th position on page one in google for your keyword of “window cleaning boca raton”. Let’s say that you’re excited about this (certainly understandable), so you check the rankings every day hoping you’ll go up the rankings even more.
So you type “window cleaning boca raton” (w/o the quotes) in the google search box and click search. You see where your site is and you then close the window. You do this a half a dozen times per week.
What you’re actually doing is sending the message to Google that a half dozen times per week NO sites ranking on page 1 for that keyword were enticing enough for you. You didn’t click any of them, did you? Right, so that’s exactly what you told Google. You’re basically telling Google that none of the sites – yours included – should be ranked there because the results didn’t match what you needed.
This will harm your rankings. If you check your rankings just to see what position you’re in and then click away, you could realistically cause your search engine ranking to be lowered. Not good.
Another gauge that google is using to determine rankings is the bounce rate. To put it simply how long does someone stay on your site? At what rate do they click the “back” button? How do they leave your website? Via a link you shared with them, or another way?
Generally, the longer they stay the better… the deeper into your site they get (the number of pages) the better, and if they leave (via a link) following something you’ve recommended, that’s even better.
So let’s say you’re searching for your keyword to check out your ranking as mentioned earlier, but instead of clicking away as talked about above, you do click through into your site. Maybe you want to see if it loads good, whether it’s still there, or maybe you’re just proud of it and want to look at it real quick so you can pat yourself on the back.
So you enter your site, check it out for a couple of seconds and then click the back button. That simple act has told google that the site you just visited didn’t have the information you needed. So that’s why you clicked away so fast. So the bounce rate has been adjusted downward which once again can affect your rankings in a negative way.
Let’s look at one more possible scenario where you need to be careful. Read more…
A window cleaner recently asked if I could come up with a couple of letters for him that he can send to his current customers announcing a new service. Below I’ve listed two that you can use.
Hi ,
I hope this letter finds you well. As a valued customer of ours, we felt it was important to send you a notice that Clearly Services now offers an additional service. And that service is dryer vent cleaning.
Getting your dryer vents cleaned regularly is extremely important. More than 15,000 house fires per year are attributed to clogged dryer vents. You can view this short 4 minute video to see the importance of maintaining clean dryer vents:
**video link here**
As our way of introducing this new service to our customers, we are offering a limited time discount special of $25 off until September 30th. Normally we charge $99 for a thorough dryer vent cleaning service, but until September 30 we’re offering this valuable service for just $74!
Please call us at
and book your dryer vent cleaning today. Thank you for your business and have a great day.
Best Regards,
Steve
Clearly Services
P.S. I encourage you to view the video above to understand the importance of having clean and unclogged dryer vents. This is definitely not something you want to put off until “later”.
The above letter is assuming dryer vent cleaning is your new service (recommended as it is profitable), but you might be getting requests from your customers to offer any service. If you get enough requests and you decide to offer whatever service they’re requesting, here’s a different letter you can send:
Generating online customers reviews is one of the most important things you can do for your window cleaning business. Major companies have a huge amount of exposure online and offline, but smaller companies don’t have the same resources, so leveraging customer reviews can really make your business stand out and it’s very cost effective too (as in free).
With people being so busy these days, it can be a challenge sometimes getting them to take the time to leave a review, so below I’ve listed 5 tips on how you can encourage your customers to leave you a review:
1) If you invoice your customers, make sure you use the invoice space wisely. Don’t just list the job and price info. on the invoice and that’s it. In The Customer Factor, members have a personalization area on their invoices where they can insert whatever text they want to. So again, take advantage of some of the empty spacing on your invoices to include a request for the customer to leave a review.
Actually any business can get a free website if you’re doing business in Texas. Google has partnered with a few other companies to provide business owners in Texas with a free website. So if dollars are tight and you don’t have a web presence currently, there is now no reason why you can’t get online and enjoy some search engine traffic.
I do want to add some thoughts to this freebie. First of all, is it really free? Um…not quite. For the first year it is. But after one year, they will charge you 4.99 per month for hosting and 2.99 per month for the domain name, so make sure you fully understand this prior to signing up.
And here’s another thing to keep in mind before signing on the dotted line. I’m not sure if they register your domain name in their name or register it in your name. If it’s in their name, then I wouldn’t do it. Because what happens if you want to have your website hosted somewhere else after a year? If the domain name was purchased in their name, them more than likely they won’t allow you to take the domain name with you. So there is the possibility that your domain name is tied to your website and if you want to take your website elsewhere, you’re plumb out of luck.
Times are tough financially for many people. For many having their windows cleaned is a luxury and not looked as a necessity. The average house here in California could receive an estimate of at least $130.00 for window cleaning. “The Average Family” may not want to spend that much money for a luxury!
Would it be smart of a business to do a lower base rate? We have seen a local window washing company here in Sacramento that advertises a special “always” for $99.00 single story up to 30 windows.
What are your thoughts? Our main goal is building a “monthly base” income with small businesses. This is slowly building. We have to go out there and get every job. Unfortunately at this time we can’t invest in much advertising other than passing out fliers and approaching people on our own.
Thanks!
Cari
My Response:
Hi Cari,
Good morning. The first thing I’d like to ask is where are you spending your time marketing? Because $130 is super cheap for a home. The typical home on average (if you’re in the right markets) should be between $200 and $250 on average. There are always exceptions of course, but this is usually the size window cleaning job you’ll do as far as residential goes.
