Building your cleaning company means growing the accounts you have, as well as generating leads to add customers to your list, but it can be tough to find new business while you are busy running your company, managing labour, and negotiating industry challenges.

On a recent episode of ISSA’s Straight Talk, Dean Mercado, CEO of Online Marketing Muscle, offers three strategies to fill that pipeline and keep revenues flowing in.

Short-term strategy

This is a strategy for a time period of zero to 30 days in the future, where you are in need of business quickly. An example of this approach would be paid advertising, which can often yield fast and effective results. Mercado explains that customers experience three stages in the buying process: recognizing they have a problem to solve, deciding to address that issue, and then making a call on who they will choose for the project. Often, customers are already in that last stage when they see your advertising, and you can capture that business in their time of need.

If you don’t have the budget for advertising, Mercado suggests you may need to invest your time into cold outreach, where you contact cold leads via phone or email to try and generate business.

Mid-term strategy

When you have a bit of breathing room, 30 to 90 days, for example, it’s time for the mid-term strategy, which involves content marketing like social media, YouTube videos, and blogs – these are all ways to reach your audience. The key is knowing your audience and where they will most likely see your content.

This is also a great way to position yourself as an expert by providing interesting, informative content with this longer-term strategy. Once you determine the route you want to choose, focus on creating content for that space to best reach your prospects within your comfort zone.

Long-term strategy

When you are thinking long-term, look at a strategy to plan for 90 days and beyond to keep that revenue flow continuous and reliable. A long-term strategy means leveraging referrals as a result of building relationships and developing trust with your clients so that they refer you to their contacts. Building those relationships, though, and asking for their referrals takes time so this is a strategy that is certainly not a quick fix. It’s necessary, though, to engage with your customers and turn them into clients who want to refer your business.

Lead generation is a must for commercial cleaners. As Mercado says, “No leads, equals no sales, which equals no business. That’s how critical your lead generation process is.”