When people find your business online, it’s incredibly important that it makes a great first impression.
Your house cleaning company relies on a solid online reputation.
No matter what city or town your house cleaning company operates out of, chances are, you have a little competition. It’s estimated that, in 2015, there were about 875,000 businesses in the cleaning industry, and that number has certainly grown since then. And because the barrier to entry in the industry is so low due to the fact that very little equipment is required to get started, more and more small businesses are being started in the house cleaning industry every day.
While word of mouth is still essential in the cleaning industry, nowadays, most people do a Google search when they’re looking for a house cleaning business to work with rather than asking their friends or family for a referral. With a good online reputation, not only is your business a lot more likely to actually be found online when people in your area search for relevant keywords, but you’ll have a higher chance of turning prospects into customers when your online reputation is bright.
With so much on the line, your business’s online reputation is something that you shouldn’t leave up to chance, and that’s why your friends at Top Rated Local® have set out to help you get it right.
5 key online reputation management tips for house cleaning companies
#1. Focus on providing great service
The first — and arguably the most important — aspect of building and maintaining a strong online reputation in the house cleaning industry is providing great service. On average, it’s estimated that a typical house cleaning company will lose up to 55% of its customers every year because of poor service.
The kind of service you provide directly translates into the kind of reviews you’d get. When you make providing next-level service one of your top priorities, you’ll save yourself the headache of dealing with negative reviews, which can be tricky to handle and easy to get wrong.
Asking for reviews — or at least letting your clients know that your business is listed on review sites — is one of the most effective ways to actually generate reviews. Many people won’t write reviews on their own; most don’t even think about it. But if you let them know that a review can help your business, most people are happy to write one. If you can truly wow your customers with the kind of service you provide, you can be confident that you’ll get positive reviews when you ask.
#2. Claim your listings
The more websites your business is listed on, the easier it will be for people to find you when they’re in need of cleaning services in your area. Whether people are looking for house cleaning services on Yelp, Google, Facebook or Top Rated Local®, you want your business to be found, and for the information about your business to be accurate and up to date. That’s why getting your business listed or your business listing claimed on review sites is such a critical step.
A lot of times, review sites aggregate listings from other places on the internet, so there’s a good chance that, even if you’ve never signed your business up for a review site, you may already have a listing. However, algorithms only work so well, and if they pulled your business’s information from an outdated source, it may not be up to date or accurate. Imagine how frustrating it would be for a customer to try to call you, only to get an old number! When you take the time to claim your business, you’ll be able to update and correct all of the information about your business.
Another huge benefit of claiming your business listings is that it gives you more control over managing them. On most review sites, when you claim your listing, you’ll be able to respond to your reviews, which will help you better manage them.
#3. Respond to your reviews!
It may not seem like it’s a big deal, but a lot of people lead incredibly busy lives and don’t have many spare moments in the day, and that they took a few minutes out of their life to sit down and write a review for your business, the least you can do is respond to it. Responding to reviews demonstrates to your clients how thankful you are that they took the time to write a review for you.
If you get any negative reviews, responding can help to turn a bad situation around, and it may even help you earn more clients and win over the reviewer who had the negative experience with your business. It also gives you a chance to explain your side of the story a little. We’re not saying that you should make excuses, but if there’s a reason that the experience was so negative, it’s OK to let the client know. But even if that’s the case, your number one goal in responding to negative reviews is to own up, apologize and make it right.
Responding to positive reviews is also a good idea. Like we said, people are busy and don’t have a lot of free time in their lives. If they could spare a few minutes to write a review for your business, show them how thankful you are by making it a point to respond.
It’s super important to respond to reviews, but it’s equally important to ensure that you do it promptly. After all, it’s what your clients expect. In the “gimme” age, we accept nothing less than instant gratification. Besides, the longer you leave a one-star review unchecked, the more weight it has. But how can you respond in a timely manner when you have no way of knowing when you get new reviews?
#4. Set up alerts
Managing your business’s online reputation isn’t something that you can do every once in a while and forget about the rest of the time. It’s an ever-evolving monster that will only grow more vicious the longer you let it go unattended. But who has the time to check every review site their business is listed on every day to check for new reviews? It can be an arduous task, but luckily, there are several tools out there that can help.
Google alerts are one such tool, and it’s a great idea for any business that cares about its online reputation to set them up. With Google alerts, you can track any mentions of your business online, but it also gives you the ability to track what people are saying about your competitors, which will help you to gain a competitive edge. Google alerts are also a great tool that is free to sign up for.
Top Rated Local is another reputation management tool that every business owner needs to have handy. Top Rated Local is unique in that it aggregates reviews from across the web, not just on Top Rated Local, and uses the data to provide each business with a Rating Score™. The Rating Score is determined by a number of factors, including the number of review sites a business is listed on, the number of reviews and the average star rating of those reviews. With the Rating Score, businesses can get a good idea of what their online reputation looks like all around.
Plus, Top Rated Local integrates seamlessly with the Marketing 360® Reputaiton app, allowing you to build and manage a strong reputation from one place.
#5. Publish content regularly
A large aspect of maintaining a strong online reputation has to do with what ranks in the SERP (search engine results page) for your business name and relevant keywords. The last thing any business wants is for the first thing that prospective customers see online is a little bit of bad press about the business, or a negative review. That’s why it’s a good idea to publish fresh content regularly. This will help to ensure that the sites you want to rank — like your website, Facebook page, etc., will be the first thing people see about your business.
One of the best ways to ensure that your website stays relevant is to publish new content on a regular basis via blogs and web pages. Web pages are great places to put information about your business and your services; whereas, the blog is a great place to lend your clients a little industry know-how and insight.
You should also make it a point to post regularly on your social media sites. These sites are a great place to share what’s going on behind the scenes of your business, like any community outreach events you’ve participated in, photos of your team, exciting news, etc. Social media gives you the opportunity to connect with your clients on a new level, but like everything else having to do with your online reputation, managing social media is an ongoing thing that takes time and patience to cultivate.
Become a Top Rated Local house cleaning company today!
House cleaning companies rely on a strong online reputation in order to attract new clients, as well as to keep their existing clients, and one of the best things you can do to start taking control over your business’s online reputation is to get listed/claim your listing with Top Rated Local! Best of all, it’s totally free! Get started today.
Originally published on 12/17/19
