Dominate Your Local Market: Proven Strategies for Carpet Cleaning Website Conversions

Mobile optimization is paramount for modern carpet cleaning businesses. With a significant portion of local business searches occurring on smartphones, businesses that neglect mobile responsiveness risk losing out on valuable leads and customers.

John Clendenning [00:00:00]:
It is seems to be in the carpet cleaning world. A lot of people don’t understand if their website’s any good. They think their website’s good. They’ve got their cousin, their brother, their uncle, their friend build them a website. They just paid, you know, all $300. I I spent $400 on a website. It must be amazing. Stuff like that.

John Clendenning [00:00:20]:
Just to tell you if it is a 3 or $400 website, it’s not amazing. Just just to tell you. But we’ll get into all of that. So we’re gonna that’s what we’re gonna talk about today is why do you have a website? What the heck is this like, do they need it anymore in 2024? Like, what is the purpose of your website? And yeah. And and how can you make it actually generate gobs of business for you? Have it generate 5, 10, 15, 20 new customers a month over what it what you’re currently getting. Do you even know what you’re currently getting? Do you know how to run the metrics and the numbers? We’re gonna get into all of that today.

John Clendenning [00:01:32]:
We’re gonna be talking about high converting websites. Every carpet cleaner needs to know about what are the secrets. Secrets to high converting websites. So let’s get into that. So as we say, turn your phones off, turn your Facebook off. If you’re in a cleaning home service business, and you’re serious about getting better results, this is where you need to be once a month on these calls, ask your questions, watch the replays, take notes. These are master classes. This isn’t just a la la la la la la la.

John Clendenning [00:02:01]:
The depth of information from a fellow cleaning business owner, carpet cleaning, duct cleaning, all that kind of stuff for 30 years, figured this out, built an entire marketing consultancy and agency around it over the last 15, 20 years. Almost 20 years. 2007 was the first time, I went from presenting at at events in the industry to actually consulting and running coaching programs and stuff like that while running my own cleaning business up until 3 years ago. So next 60 minutes can change your business. You know, if if your average job is $400 and you can get 20 more of them, that’s an $8,000 swing just by fixing this one thing. How many of these levers can you pull? Can you get 5, $10,000 more from this one pole in the water, from this other pole in the water, this other pole in the water. You’ve got to think of how many poles in the water do you have to generate inquiries, to generate phone calls, to generate, I need a I need your services inquiries every single day, month, quarter year. How many different poles in the water do you have? Because if you’re relying on one ad strategy, one marketing strategy, and you’re wondering why you’re not completely booked out, that’s why.

John Clendenning [00:03:18]:
And this is one of those covers, one or a couple of those poles in the water all in and of itself, and it’s a big daddy. It’s a big one that needs to be, thought of. So okay. So what we’re gonna cover today, top 5, website conversion boosting secrets you cannot miss out on. Without these, I am going to prove to you, hopefully, by the end of this hour, that your website’s no better than just a brochure stuck to a pin board somewhere at a laundromat, literally. It’s about as effective as going and doing that. Like, Julia, you’re driving your van. Go to the nearest laundromat.

John Clendenning [00:03:55]:
Take a brochure. Pin it to there and see how much work you get over the next year from that one thing. You might get a job or 2. Maybe if the message is right, maybe, but it’s entirely different than if you can use it as the hub of your marketing. Right? What it really what really matters, does it really matter where your phone number and social proof goes on the website? Yes. It does. Do you even know what social proof is on your website? We’re gonna talk about that too. The bounce back hack, how to win over visitors who didn’t call you.

John Clendenning [00:04:24]:
I’m gonna prove to you that the vast, vast, vast majority, like, sadly so number of people that show up on your website on the average website that we diagnose and look at, do nothing. They showed up. They left. The majority. If you get a 100 people to your website I I I audit websites every day. And I’m looking I’ve been saying, well, we just did a traffic report on you. You’ve got 10 visitors a month, 20 visitors a month. You don’t even know how to rank it.

John Clendenning [00:04:51]:
It’s not optimized. And even when they it is optimized. We’re talking about conversions now when they show up. It isn’t it’s babies lying on carpets and families and dogs sitting on couches. There is nothing about that that causes somebody to call you. Putting your prices. Oh, we’ll do your your house, your neighbor’s house, your friend down the street’s house, and your mom’s house for, oh, well, you know, 129. You know? No.

John Clendenning [00:05:13]:
It’s if you make it all price based, you have just found yourself a whole bunch of price shoppers, and you have not built a business. So things that we talk about all the time, but we wanna make sure they have a really strong call to action that turns more visitors into inquiries that wanna book with you. Right? And if you stay to the end, you’re gonna get a whole bunch of really cool stuff around websites, how to optimize your website. So a lot of stuff we talk about here and a lot more. The actual website conversion machine, the alter exactly how your website should be laid out. So if you’re using a web developer, you can go, dude, can you change it? Can you actually do it right now? Right? Or you can look at your website and go, hey. They got they got some of it right at least. Right? So you’ve got those resources plus our digital marketing checklist.

John Clendenning [00:05:53]:
If you haven’t gotten a copy of that, definitely stick to the end to get a copy of that as well. You wanna know how your digital marketing is either supporting you or hurting your business. Done right, the digital marketing checklist will walk you through how to diagnose your digital marketing program because we’re in a digital world, and you have to put about 70% of your marketing attention towards your digital marketing. Right? So you’re you own a carpet cleaning business. You are the marketer of carpet cleaning services now, 1st and foremost. Put the hat on, go clean carpets, put the hat on, do payroll, put the hat on, do the QuickBooks if you’re if that’s part of your job. You know, clean the van, clean the shop, be the maintenance guy, fix the machines, you know, all of those other things. If you were thinking of a 20 truck operation and 80 employees running around, imagine all the different roles.

John Clendenning [00:06:43]:
You’re 1 guy, you’re 2 guys, you’re 3 guys, you have a lot of hats on. But the most important one is get the phone to ring, and that’s marketing. And we’re gonna be talking about that, but these checklists and these guides and stuff like that, grass low cost grassroots marketing, all of the things you need to be doing. They’re talking about we’re talking about poles in the water, stacking more poles in the water. So all of the guides and resources and training we do help coach you and teach you on how to put as many poles in the water as possible. Okay. Who am I? Why you know, if you’re new here, why should you even care? Like, who’s this guy telling me all this stuff? So, anyways, I’ve been in carpet cleaning since 1995. I’ve owned my own businesses since 1990, my final year of high school, as I I started a window cleaning business.

John Clendenning [00:07:26]:
And then 2 or 3 or 3 years into that, decided to go into janitorial. I realized window cleaners fall to their death. I was doing high rise off the the, you know, jumping off the edge of 40 storey bill buildings and stuff like that. It was kinda cool. But, but, yeah, I realized it was probably not the career path for me. Started doing janitorial, built a janitorial business, and then had the town I was in, got it. They annexed the surrounding areas and kinda closed down the niche that we were cleaning in. Didn’t know about niches, but realized that we were really good at cleaning bingo halls and ended up having a dozen bingo halls cleaned 7 nights a week, 3 times a day.

John Clendenning [00:08:00]:
Right? So built a team in my early twenties, doing that. Why did I do night cleaning? Because I was shy. I didn’t wanna see people during the day. I was you know? So I did I didn’t wanna be employed by somebody else, didn’t wanna work in a factory, started the cleaning. And then when that happened, I jumped into carpet cleaning and said, screw it. I am going to walk into people’s homes every single day. I am gonna read Think and Grow Rich. I am going to read, you know, Awake the Giant Within, Tony Robbins.

John Clendenning [00:08:27]:
I can do all that kind of stuff. I’m going to build my personal power, all of that stuff and challenge myself to do that. And in 1995, started my carpet cleaning journey, which 3 years ago finally sold that business. In the meantime, I’d owned duct cleaning and maid services and janitorial, you know, growing businesses from 30,000, 40,000 a year to 600,000 a year in 1 in 2 years, helped the franchise network grow from 0 to a 100 and, 150, $160,000,000 in 8 years and sell sell it off to a national buyer of franchises and stuff like that in the flood restoration space. I’ve been a keynote speaker, trainer, author, wrote the book, the Internet Internet Guide to, Internet Internet Marketing for Carpet Cleaners. You can get it on Amazon. You can just go look it up. There’s the title.

John Clendenning [00:09:13]:
It’s the number one book for us cleaners. It’s beside me here. You can’t see it in a little circle, and it’s something that we train and talk about. And this section is one of the sections out of that book as well. And and, yeah, ran a high, high end carpet cleaning, maid service, duct cleaning businesses, and learned how to sell to the more affluent. And that’s kinda cool. More importantly, what do we do? We help people become number 1 everywhere and dominate to whatever the level they want. Some people wanna be 1 guy in a truck, boutique business, generate a1000, $2,000 a day, and own the shop that they’re out of, own the building, have a retirement plan that way.

John Clendenning [00:09:55]:
Other people wanna buy competitors out and and surrounding areas. Other people wanna go wide and own pressure washing and and maid service. Once you figure out marketing, you can pick whichever path you want deep or wide, and and how you wanna grow that because you don’t need to be the doer of the work. You know, I want to. If it keeps you fit, do part of it, but take make sure you spend enough time as Michael Gerber says, the E Myth, you spend enough time working on your business versus in your business. So we gotta we gotta make sure that we’ve got that all figured out. Out. So, again, a little bit of other resources around about me.

John Clendenning [00:10:34]:
I was industry leader of the year last year for Clean Facts Magazine. I’ve got stacks of them. I’ve read them for years, for decades, since the mid nineties, late nineties. Kinda kinda cool to get on the cover, speak on stage with a bunch of other people, all of those kinds of things. And we also host of the carpet cleaner success podcast. So some of the things like that. What do we do? Well, we help our clients and the industry at large help you become the top cleaning brand in in your local marketplace. Why do you wanna be the top brand? Well, as Grant Cardone says, it’s not about being best.

John Clendenning [00:11:07]:
It’s about being best known. It’s about being best known. That’s a writer downer. You want to make sure that you are the best known in your marketplace. Does every real estate agent who could refer you know you? Does every interior designer who know who could refer you know you? Does every flooring store who could refer you know you? Does every customer that potentially in your ideal demographic, you’re 35 of your residential, 35 to 55 year old college and university educated 80% skewed towards women. As the majority of those people in your town know you? Are they being impressed to know who you are, why you’re different, and why they should choose you? Right? So you do that, and you have the best clients. Really important in today’s economy, the middle class and the and and the lower class, like, lower middle class are just being beat up. Interest rates and mortgage rates and truck rates and van rates and food rates and all that kind of stuff.

John Clendenning [00:11:57]:
There is a shrinking of disposable income and things get taken off the list. Right? So cleaning for health is good, keeping allergies, keeping your carpet lasting as long as possible, be posture lasting as long as possible. Really good messages when the economy and people’s discretionary income and buying habits change based on economic factors. We didn’t deal with that for the last 12 years or so. You know, quantitative easing had a lot of people have a lot of money and they just started paying for everything. Now we’re back to seeing what that looked like before that that happened. And their consumer debt is an all time high. Who doesn’t care about that? The upper class, the upper middle class and upper class.

John Clendenning [00:12:36]:
It’s not you know, if you’ve got a high discretionary income, you’ve got a high household income. It’s not it’s not as big of a deal. A couple $100 a year, $1,000 a year on your cleaning in the home isn’t is it a big thing? Those are the customers you need to be targeting because they come they find their guy, their people, their service company. And as long as you do a great job and deliver a great experience and don’t screw them over, they’re coming back again and again and again and again. Right? So you can tar charge higher rates. We’ve got clients that are charging their average job carpet cleaning over $750 when their competitors are $99, 3 rooms and all. How do they do it? And they’re busy and they’re growing like crazy and they’re up 100 of 1,000 of dollars a year, right? From the year before, from the year before. Right.

John Clendenning [00:13:23]:
How does that happen? That happens with a different marketing and a different message. It’s it’s not by luck and feel. It’s by learning and doing. And this is today’s call is about learning and doing. And then that way you get booked out weeks in advance. We actually had a lot of our regular clients, in one of our 3 programs. We had 3 package programs for for our cleaning services, and the upper end program included a platinum pre booking them in for the year in advance so that we locked in this year’s prices. So we had clients, 30% of our clients booked a year in advance into our schedule, the way we ran our business.

John Clendenning [00:13:54]:
In a marketplace with this 70 discount carpet cleaner with 70 carpet cleaners in my marketplace, we were the number one with a bullet everybody knew. Right? That’s how we do it. How do we do this? The three principles of our omnipresence omnipresence marketing system. You have to be omnipresent. So you leverage those three principles. Maximize your opportunities to generate an ideal lead. Maximize your opportunities. So lots loaded in that that point right there.

John Clendenning [00:14:22]:
Where are your opportunities? What are the opportunities that you have to generate more inquiries? Right? And how do you maximize that? Well, your database is one of them. Are you maximizing your database? Are you talking to them, you know, 12/24. We talked to our our a list clients in our database. Had them split up in a, b, and c groups. Our a list clients 48 times a year without having them annoyed at all. You might get 1 or 2 people going, ah, that’s too much communication. That’s fine. The other 3,000 a month that got we communicated with didn’t care, didn’t complain, and bought from us 2, 3, 4 times more often than they would have if we hadn’t.

John Clendenning [00:15:04]:
So there’s an opportunity, opportunities for new leads, opportunity for referral partners, opportunities to drive people to your website. Right? You wanna maximize your brand impressions. They’ve gotta know your name. They’ve gotta know your name. Right? So door hangers, back of buses, yard signs, you know, getting your name out there in the marketplace in general by having every real estate agent here, designer, maid service, flooring store, you know, high end hair salon, chiropractor, you name it. All of them knowing you, you stop in, you talk to them, you take them out for coffee, you know, all those people. And that also maximizes your brand impressions, your van fully wrapped and looking amazing, maximize your brand impressions, wearing your uniform and going and flicking, flipping hamburgers and, and pancakes at the charity stuff, joining the chamber, being eyes, you know, all these kinds of things maximize your brand impressions. Your digital marketing has to maximize your brand impressions.

John Clendenning [00:15:58]:
It has to be part of that mix and you want to maximize your conversions. The missing piece in all of this and we’re going to talk about that on the website. But if you’ve got somebody if you’re if you’re into thinking that you need to buy leads to grow your business, right, don’t agree with that at all. Don’t agree with that at all. There’s no buying leads. I need more leads. Nope. Nope.

John Clendenning [00:16:16]:
You need to run a better business or the leads are not the problem. It’s delivering a high end service and doubling your prices becomes your biggest worry, not volume of inquiries. Right? It’s not about buying leads or turning leads on. It’s about building a better business. But one of the things you can do is if you get you know, I could hand right now 10 interested inquiries to 2 separate businesses. Right? One business has it all dialed in. They they they get a hold of them right away. They they they they have the right scripts.

John Clendenning [00:16:48]:
They have the right process. They’ve built their business properly. They’ve got the right unique selling selling proposition. They know what that means. They got risk reversal guarantees and impactful brand messaging and founder stories and all of these foundations of their business buried into everything they do, into their scripts, into their communications, into their follow ups. They’ve got a lead chase. They’ve got all that kind of stuff in place. And they could turn out of 10 inquiries, 6 or 7 of them into customers over the next 90 days.

John Clendenning [00:17:14]:
So a lot of them right away, maybe 5 of them right away. And then the other 2 over the next 90 days. Right. Really good company. And their average job is $500 They just made $3,500 from 10 inquiries, hand the exact same ten inquiry to somebody who knows nothing about what I just said, can’t even figure out the words that just came out of my mouth. And they got 2 people to book a job. And those, you know, and it was the 2 ones that wanted the cheapest deal and they took their price down and got it right. Maybe even it was part of the 3.

John Clendenning [00:17:40]:
The other guys turned away. Right. And their average job is under $200, say $200. They made $400 $35100 $400 exact same ten inquiries. Why? Because they didn’t maximize their conversions. They know nothing about that. So we’re gonna talk about that today. Right? So what’s the big problem? Right? We got a problem to solve.

John Clendenning [00:18:01]:
Marketing is a big investment, and it should be. It’s not an expense. It’s not like, Oh, I wish I didn’t have to market. Yeah, that’s called being an employee. Go work for somebody else because they have to market. You have to market your business. Everything you do is marketing. If you’ve got people referring you, you’re that’s a marketing.

John Clendenning [00:18:19]:
The way you show up, the way you smile sweetly, the way you talk to a customer, the way you teach your employees to do that, that’s marketing. Your van on the street is marketing. If it goes out muddy and dirty, less people are going to think you’re competent. That’s marketing. Washing your van is a marketing decision. Sounds weird, but it is leaving your van doors open and your hoses vomiting all over the driveway for everybody else walking by to see is a marketing decision. So marketing is an investment in time, money and energy, and it’s a big investment. Oops.

John Clendenning [00:18:52]:
And you might be getting traffic. You don’t even know. Do you do you check your Google Analytics? Do you check your Google Search Console? Do you even know what those those are? Are you checking the traffic to your website? Do you have any of those metrics in place? Do you know what your traffic is? When we diagnose clients, say, oh, yeah. I just got my website rebuilt by somebody else. I think it’s awesome. Yeah. You had 8 people show up last month to your website. Did you know that? It’s not rent it’s not SEO optimizing.

John Clendenning [00:19:15]:
It’s not gonna convert a single one of them into customers. Sorry. It’s not built to tell the right story, which we’re gonna talk about today, and it’s not, it’s it’s not designed for the search engines. Right? So you might be getting traffic, but you’re not getting enough leads or inquiries. Right? Maybe it’s a low return on investment. Right? Your marketing in general. Do you know how many poles in the water you have and how much each pole in the water generates? You we we suggest 20% of revenue. I’ve never dropped below that.

John Clendenning [00:19:45]:
I’ve I’ve I’ve consulted for years. 20% of revenue, 15 at a baseline, but 20% going towards your marketing, and your company will continue to grow if you aim at the right marketing with the right ROI. Part of that there’s a small part of that, but part part of that has to be your brand awareness to to completely wash over everybody, make all the rest of the marketing work. But, again, you might be having a low ROI. So fail. You don’t generate enough leads or inquiries for your investment, and you can’t grow. Right? So if you’re running Facebook ads as an example, I hear from guys all the time, you know, they’re running, you know, they’re paying 15, 18, 19, 100, $2,000 with the company to run Facebook ads. And the only way to get Facebook ads run, they gotta run discounts.

John Clendenning [00:20:27]:
So now they need volume. So now they need and then there’s a lot of back and forth messaging and things like that, and that’s their one pole in the water. And they go, well, I can’t I I can’t do any other marketing because I don’t have any money. Why don’t you have any money? Well, because, you know, the only thing I’ve got working is is Facebook. And what about your repeats, your referrals, your outreach, your like, all the other stuff that that should never be your only your only lead source. In fact, paid ads should generate around the fringes. It should it should generate sort of, you know, 10%, 15% of your of your lead generation and your inquiries and your daily jobs. Everything else should should be generating the rest of it.

John Clendenning [00:21:11]:
Right? So, right, you wanna be able to make sure that you that your return on investment across all of your platforms is making sense, and you don’t wanna put all your big eggs in one basket. And you wanna make sure that when you do generate an inquiry or lead that you are able to convert them, if not right away, over the next 2 weeks in what we call the chase period or then from that point in the ongoing forever follow-up. Right? So that’s the opportunity. If you have a site that is built to convert, you’re gonna get more people that come to your site even if that’s just handing out business cards on the street corner or Home Depot in a rich neighborhood, you know, and you stand there for half a day and hand out, hey. I love you. You know, love to be your carpet cleaner. You got anything you need us to do, blah blah blah. And by the way, check us out.

John Clendenning [00:21:56]:
Not a discount. Not a deal. We’re better than the rest. Right? A better message, a better script, why you should choose us, what we do differently. And in that crowd of 100 and 100 of people that walk by, will be 5 or 10 that are your ideal clientele. You get the message in front of them. What do they do? They go look you up to see if you’re any good. They go to your website.

John Clendenning [00:22:15]:
Is your website built to convert? Right. Does it consist consistently vert convert visitors and callers into leads and inquiries? Are you do you have all the right things for them? They’re not they’re not all going to pick up the phone. They’re not all going to do something else. Right? Do you have them converting into your funnel and you’re seeing consistent growth? One of the big mistakes I see people make is they they would really like their website just to have a self booking button, have the customer book the job, and then they can just go out and clean it, and then go back home and watch Jerry Springer and eat Cheetos. Right? Sorry. I’m saying it like that, but that’s what it feels like. It’s like, yeah, that would be great in an ideal world, but have you influenced them why to buy from you? Because if you’ve got a self booking button on your website and your prices are what they should be, upper end of your market, middle to upper end, if not pushing the market pricing high. We always push the market.

John Clendenning [00:23:10]:
Anytime any of our competitors raise their prices, we raise ours higher. Right? We just wanted to be upper end and explain why we’re different. Right? So, the business I sold, the highest price program right now is a dollar 37 dollar 39 a square foot. Right? 30% of the clients still take that offer, that program. Right? Because it’s sold right well. So you wanna be making sure that you are selling a premium grade offer to the right people and that it’s growing well, and that your your website is helping support that message and converting well and all of that kind of stuff, and that’s how you create momentum. Right? So success means the phones are ringing, chats are coming in, forms are being filled out, and your business is booming on all cylinders. Right? That’s what we’re gonna get you to.

John Clendenning [00:24:00]:
That’s what today’s training is all about because your website is the hub of all of that. Sure. You need to have a social media presence because some people go there. Sure. You need to be on all the directories, Yelps and Angie’s List and Judy’s book and Nextdoor and Facebook or, Chamber of Commerce, Better Business Bureaus, you know, and and and there’s about a 150 directories that help support your Google listing. You definitely gotta be on Google. You have to do Google Maps. You you should be at everywhere that Google makes available because 60% of the population that don’t have a name in mind go to Google.

John Clendenning [00:24:32]:
Right? But, ultimately, the people that the smart people funnel down to, oh, who are these guys? Who am I gonna pick? Right? They don’t just look at your message. You’re not about being the cheapest guy on on the on the street. Right? So, right, they funnel down to, the smart people go to your website. What are these guys all about? I wonder if I I’m gonna like them. Do you think they’re gonna like you if you got a baby lying on the carpet? A 100% satisfaction guarantee. You know You know, you know, we don’t bury the dirt, we clean it out and all of those other phrases that we, you know, we clean right to the edge and all that kind of stuff. No. So so why is getting your website built to convert important to you? Check this out.

John Clendenning [00:25:20]:
Say, for example, you’re in a high end market and you get 1500 visitors a month to your website. The average conversion of a website visitor to an inquiry is 5% or less. I’m gonna prove that to you, but it is from all stats. Right? So you might get 75 calls. If you get 1500 visitors, that’s a big market and a lot of good marketing to get that volume. You only convert 30% of the people that call that have never heard of you before because you don’t have really good scripts, you don’t have any into customers. You booked 22 jobs. Your average job is $325.

John Clendenning [00:25:56]:
That’s not bad. You made 7,100 oops. So that’s $7,150. There’s an extra zero though. You made $7,150 from your 75 jobs at $325 a job. Sarah number 2, same 1500, visitors, but now your website converts, chases, follows up and causes 15% of them to become customers of yours. That’s now 225 calls and inquiries that come in. Still a 30% conversion rate.

John Clendenning [00:26:33]:
We haven’t changed that yet. We haven’t taught you how to answer the phones properly and have scripts and all that kind of stuff. All we’ve done is fix your conversion machine on the website. You’ve now got 67 bookings. Haven’t taught you how to upsell and make your average job closer to 5, 6, $700, so you only made $21,000 from the exact same website visitors. 7,021 1,000. Which one gets you to go on a cruise? Take your family on vacation? Which one gets you to buy you know, lease new vans? Which one gets you to get out of the truck, hire people, and start working even more on your business? Right? Here’s an example here, website performance, just one of our internal metrics by traffic. Organic should be your biggest traffic to to your business.

John Clendenning [00:27:18]:
Organic traffic and organic sales, that is your website and Google Maps should be the number one largest, part of the jobs that you get. If you have not put any attention to SEO, you’ve not put any attention to your website, and you haven’t done your you know, made sure that your Google Maps is ranking not just, oh, I’m number 1. Yeah. When you look at on your cell phone, but literally when anybody else looks at it, how wide around is called a proximity are you showing up in the 123 spot for how many search terms because there’s there’s if you’re running the normal 4 or 5 services of carpet cleaner, carpet upholstery tile, area rugs, mattress cleaning, maybe you do duct cleaning, maybe you do wood floor cleaning, any of those kinds of things, all of those have 20 to 30, sometimes even more search terms that generate a maps listing. And every time you change the wording, it changes your placement. Right? It’s not one thing. And every time you walk a mile or drive a mile that way on your with your cell phone, it changes your placement. It’s proximity based, it’s term based, and it’s all based on your website and and your goo your Google Maps listing and how they tie together.

John Clendenning [00:28:26]:
And below that, organically, is where 50% of people go to that are interested in knowing more. They go down below. And if your website doesn’t rank for the 3, 4, 5000 terms that people can search in for carpet cleaning. Right? So you want organic be the biggest and then you want your conversion rate to be great. Right? This is an insanely good conversion rate, across the traffic sources. Right? So you do wanna have that mix where referrals and social are gonna be smaller. You’re gonna have direct. You’re You’re gonna have the people that know you.

John Clendenning [00:28:59]:
That’s your database. That’s people with business cards and flyers and all that kind of stuff. Paid traffic should be only about 20% of your business. Right? And you should get most of it from organic. So how we get your website to convert? How do we get your website to go from 5% or less, which, again, if you’ve never walked through your conversion principles, we could do some deep dives for you and we can look at it, but I guarantee you’re around that rate. I haven’t seen many that aren’t. And how can we get you converting a lot more and telling you better a better story? So it starts with your the website conversion machine. You have to have the right things in the right place.

John Clendenning [00:29:35]:
People’s eyes look in certain areas for certain things. Their brain is working in a certain way. Robert Collier talked about, you wanna enter a conversation that’s already going on in somebody’s head in marketing and scientific advertising, by Claude Hopkins, 1921. That book is all talking it’s about the same thing. That’s these are the grandfathers of our marketing. David Ogilvy and Ogilvy Studios and stuff like that are are marketing. All talks about how you enter conversations that are already going on. You don’t wanna create a marketplace.

John Clendenning [00:30:13]:
You wanna enter a conversation that’s already happening. So when somebody makes it to your website, that conversation has already started. They are now looking for some very specific things to decide if you’re their guy, if you’re worth the time and attention to pick up the phone and call you, start texting you, message you, whatever that is. Right? And those things are very specific. So, again, you can get a copy of this at the end of the call as well, but you wanna make sure your phone number is big and bold and up the upper right corner. You wanna make sure your logo is in the upper left corner. When you click on it, it takes you home to the home page. Most people know that.

John Clendenning [00:30:47]:
You wanna make sure that’s happening. You wanna make sure that you have a risk reversal guarantee at the top. You know, what is the benefit of you, mister customer, missus customer, using my services right at the top? How can you guarantee that I’m gonna be the best choice for you? Put your guarantee at the top. Not a 100% satisfaction guarantee. Everybody has that. What is yours? What’s unique about your business? Put that there and, you know, you wanna share your business out in the right way. You wanna make sure that you have the right plugins and the right conversion elements and stuff like that. Oh, and one last thing, actually, you want to make sure it’s mobile, mobile responsive with a big, huge click to call button right on the mobile.

John Clendenning [00:31:24]:
Right? So how do you optimize your website for maximum conversion and lead flow? And, apparently, I put that over top of my face. There’s 11 critical elements. So grab your pen, piece of paper. Let’s start writing these down. You want your website to speak to your ideal target avatar. What the heck does that mean, John? Who’s the people that are your best customers? If you take a look at your last 50 customers, 100 customers, look at your database and go, oh, I really like that person. Oh, I really like that person. They pay well.

John Clendenning [00:31:57]:
They’re a great job. They loved what you do. They refer you. They call back regularly. You pick up the phone and call them and check-in, and they’re friendly. Like, all of the things. Who are they? What age are they? What sex are they mostly? Right. What’s their household income? Think through that.

John Clendenning [00:32:14]:
You might have some really nice clients, you know, 90 year old granny in, you know, geared to income housing and wants her you to clean the little mat in front of her chair every 3 months or 6 months because her dog lies on it. Is that your best customer? Is that your best paying customer? Is that your long term customer? No. They’re great people to have. They love them to death. But who is your ideal demographic? That’s who your website needs to talk to. You want to get more and more and more of those. How do they speak? How do they think? What’s their life like? How busy is it? Are their kids and and, you know, going to dance and karate and soccer and hectic and got a career outside the home. Both both both partners in the home have a career outside the home.

John Clendenning [00:32:54]:
They entertain, they have friends over. They’ve got dogs, again, dogs and pets. And the house has a bit of a funk and stink to it that they don’t like, and they just want it taken care of. And they don’t want to know that it’s done right. It’s not wet for days. It’s not soapy and sticky. They’re not gonna need to call you back within a month or 2 because now it got dirty faster. They’re gonna want all of those things.

John Clendenning [00:33:12]:
Right? You wanna be real. Use authentic images of you and your team. No more babies lying on carpets. Every picture on the website, 90% at minimum should be you and your team, showing them what it looks like to have a job done by them. The carpet cleaning page is you, not just before and after pictures. How do you know you didn’t steal it off the web from somebody else’s before and after? You in the pictures. Right? Tile page, you in the pictures. You wanna tell stories before, during, and after stories of very successful outcomes and jobs as well.

John Clendenning [00:33:43]:
You wanna use video. Hey. I’m John here from John’s Carpet Cleaning. Thanks so much for stopping by our website. Really, really love to be your, your carpet cleaner, and let me tell you why. We are a very unique company. I built this company for a very specific reason. I had a granddaughter, a daughter, whatever that had allergies, blah blah blah.

John Clendenning [00:33:58]:
Off you go with your story. That’s your unique sales proposition, your founder story. Right? So check around the website. We’d really love to, you know, reach out to us by phone number, chat, whatever. We’d really like to tell you what we do. Come out and give you a free quote and, yep, tell you how to take care of your carpets better, show you how to take care of your carpets better, and that kind of thing. That’s great. Your carpet clean page.

John Clendenning [00:34:19]:
Hey. Thanks so much for talking about the carpet cleaning page. Wanna show you about our 22 step, perfect clean process. Right? Video. Imagine how that on its own is gonna convert. You also have an SEO benefit. The longer somebody sits on a page and sits on your website, the more Google goes, oh, they’re getting the right message from these guys. Let me move them up in the algorithm.

John Clendenning [00:34:41]:
It’s one of the many things that that move your positions in in the algorithm and let you rank for more and more and more keywords. We had one of our customers call us the other day going, you know, John, I don’t I don’t know what’s going on, but we’re getting calls from outside of our territory. And it’s like, you’re welcome. Sorry. Your website’s ranking so well. It’s not from any paid ads. They’re targeted to geo. Right? Your website is ranking so well.

John Clendenning [00:35:04]:
It’s now dominating competitors even wider. Right? Because it’s just being shown everywhere. So, that’s because people come to the website. They read, they smile, they see themselves in the job, they pick up the phone, they reach out or they start texting and stuff like that. You want to leverage social proof because that’s the other thing in their head. Yeah, these guys can tell me a good story, but, you know, is it true? Right. So you don’t you want you don’t want your stories. You want other people’s stories and best not to cherry pick them.

John Clendenning [00:35:33]:
Literally, just have a live stream of of your Google, your Yelp, your all that all pulled into a tool of some sort because then they can click on it and go right to that and prove that it’s somebody else that wrote those words. It wasn’t just you cherry picking. Right? But you wanna definitely have project galleries. Right? So anywhere that they have to fill out a, you know, a form for you to call them back to talk about your job, like, not a booking link, but a page about booking jobs with you, landing pages, things like that. All of those places you wanna be leveraging social proof. I had them come and clean my carpets, and it was amazing. Upholstery page. I had the best upholstery cleaning experience I ever had.

John Clendenning [00:36:07]:
I had stains on it. 2 other guys tried. I couldn’t get them out. They came and got them out. Those you need you need to leverage social proof in all of your marketing. It’s testimonials and other people’s experience that tells the new person, gives them a little bit more trust and tells them, I should maybe try these guys. Right? You wanna get the basics in order, talked about that, the phone number. You wanna have clear calls to action.

John Clendenning [00:36:28]:
Treat your website visitors as goldfish. Every time they scroll down the page a little bit farther, pretend they forgot everything. What to do? Why am I here? It’s like walking to the kitchen and going, why am I in the kitchen? Can’t remember. Right? Same idea. So you wanna make sure that that’s that’s happening as well. So you have calls to action. And then as they scroll down, you remind them, give us a call, fill a form, you know, whatever. Like, you remind them what you want them to do next.

John Clendenning [00:36:57]:
You can use special offers, and this isn’t discounts. I don’t believe in giving discounts. You give bonuses and rewards, not discounts. Right? So you can have promotions all the time, and the promotion can give them a carpet care kit worth $75. You know, get us into your home to do, you know, x minimum cleaning, and we’ll include this and this and this for free. A $180 value absolutely free. If it costs you maybe 20, $30, that’s worth 20, $30 to land a new client. Right? You can have those those types of things, seasonal promotions and new customer promotions and all.

John Clendenning [00:37:27]:
And you’ve got to learn how to create irresistible jaw dropping offers that makes it them feel stupid if they’re in the marketplace, stupid to not try your services out and give you a call. Right? And you wanna make sure it’s mobile optimized and the speed of your website matters. The slower it takes to load, the slower it takes to scroll. Google’s watching that, and Google’s going, no. People like things faster than that, and they will demote you. So speed matters. Right? Then you wanna make sure, number 10 and 11, that you’re leveraging live chat. We prefer chat to text.

John Clendenning [00:37:59]:
They fill it out. Their cell phone goes, and you start chatting to them in their native text app versus them having to sit on your website and talk back and forth. Website chat works good if you’ve got somebody monitoring it 247. Text chat to text works best if you don’t have somebody sitting on your website in a chat room all day long, then you wanna send them a message. Hey. Thanks so much for reaching out to us. We’ll get back to you right here in your text app. No need to sit on your computer.

John Clendenning [00:38:25]:
Carry on with your day. Right? Knows what do they do? They stop looking at the other guys, you know, and your job is still to get back to them right away. But you’ve at least initiated the conversation within seconds and you want to make sure you have marketing automation. You want to have smart forms. And as soon as they fill out the form, you get a phone call at your your your phone, your office, your your call center, whoever’s answering the phones for you, and they press 1, and it calls the customer and the 2 of you are connected within a minute or less. Right? You wanna have smart forms that do that because it’s speed to lead is really, really important in our world. You wanna make sure that anybody that you’ve either can’t get a hold of doesn’t follow back up with you, you kinda go back and forth, or kinda ghost you after a little bit, that you’ve got lead nurture in place, a plan in place called the chase plan that over the next 2 weeks, you have a process of dripping on them the right message at the right time and then picking up the phone and calling and chasing that every couple of days that within 2 weeks, you know if they’re gonna be coming a customer or not. And they’re gonna thank you so much for following up with me.

John Clendenning [00:39:27]:
I’d forgotten who I reached out to. Blah blah whatever. Right? All that kind of stuff. People come up with excuses down the road. And then if they still don’t end up becoming a customer, they were interested, they are a carpet cleaning customer, somebody that buys that. Maybe they bought from somebody else this time. Maybe they got a recommendation from a friend. Who knows if that’s gonna turn out well, and that’s gonna be as amazing as you are.

John Clendenning [00:39:46]:
So then you put them in your forever follow-up, and you follow-up with them with happy client after happy client after having a month after month after month, you give them the odd VIP offer. Let them in, you know, peek behind the curtain, stuff like that. You do good marketing over the next 1, 2, 3, 5, 9, 12, 18, 24 months, and you chase them digitally and with a few phone calls here and there to see if they want to try out now. Why? They raise their hand. They’re interested. Why why would you leave that all that money on the table? Right. So you want to do that. So what is the one element that will have the biggest impact on the results of your overall Internet marketing efforts? Think about that for a second.

John Clendenning [00:40:26]:
Of everything we just talked about, what would be what do you think one of those things is? Write that down. That’s what you have to focus on. What did you take away from that? What feels right to you? Right. So how do we optimize your website to get more leads, more inquiries, not just a phone call, but more inquiries? Well, if you can see Joe Jones through Joe Jones eyes, then you can sell what Joe Jones buys. What that means is you are not your ideal customer. If you run your carpet cleaning business and you live on Golf Course Road and you spend half, you know, every Wednesday you’re all golfing and and you’re you’re you’re talking with your buddies and about venture capitalist investments and and stock markets and and all of that kind of stuff. If that is you and you own a service business, yeah, you’re probably a little bit closer to being Joe Jones. If not, like I wasn’t, and most of the cleaners I know aren’t, you know, your middle class, upper middle class, that kinda thing, but you’re you’re not your your ideal client should be, you know, upper middle of upper class crowd, the affluent.

John Clendenning [00:41:33]:
Right? That is the ideal client, to get more and more and more of those into your into your database. Right? Not it’s not gonna be a 100%, but you’re working your way towards that message that people you gotta be able to talk to them. The people that drop 800, 1200, $2,000 on a carpet cleaning job today. Right? If you’re not getting $1,000 jobs, 2, 3 times, 4 times a week per truck, You’re not targeting the right people. I get those got those business sold, in towns of 30,000 people. There’s still they still exist a couple of times a week easily. The average day for 1 guy in a truck should be, what, 1500, 18, 102,000. A slow day should be 800, a $1,000.

John Clendenning [00:42:20]:
Right? So if you’re not hitting those now and that’s not 6, 7 jobs to do that, that’s 2 to 3 jobs a day. Right? If you understand that there’s there are people cleaning for those people right now, if they’re not you, it’s somebody else who’s got this figured out. Let’s get that figured out for you so you can start taking over some of that work as well. You can see what they buy. Right? So you need to know who your ideal customer avatar is. We talked about that a little bit earlier. So what does that mean? Homeowner, 35 to 55, typically female, married, 2 to 3 kids, head of the household. That’s a way low number.

John Clendenning [00:42:49]:
That should be closer to about a 100 and 100,000, $110,000 annual to a 120, a 150, 200,000 annual household income. Right? Not sure where that number came from. Family oriented, reliable. These are the what these people are. They are pet owners about 75% of the time. Take pride in their home and their home decor. You know that by walking in the door, you look around and it doesn’t there isn’t a pile of crap everywhere. It is clean and well maintained when you walk in the door and when family and friends walk in the door.

John Clendenning [00:43:16]:
That is your ideal customer. Where do they live? Who are they? What do they think about? What magazines do they read? Think about it. That is a unique type of person. They like to help others and expect the same in return. Right? They’re friendly as all get out. They like gardening and crafts. The front of the house looks amazing, all that kind of stuff. They usually live in, you know, upper middle class neighborhoods, suburbs, interested in their community.

John Clendenning [00:43:37]:
They’re involved in stuff, PTAs. They can’t get carpet cleaning company on the phone, frustrates the crap out of them. They need to get the carpet and furniture cleaned. Obviously, that’s a pain frustration. Things aren’t smelling fresh. They’re too busy to deal with it. They just wanna solve it right, not cheap. Right? They’re worried that the, the situation is unhealthy, and they just wanna find their person.

John Clendenning [00:43:58]:
Right? We know these people. Fears being ripped off. How do you take that fear away? Right? Paying too much for something they could have gotten elsewhere. Right? People want value. They don’t want the cheapest price. There’s a huge difference between those 2. And if you can provide the best value and still sound like the most expensive guy in town, but what when they the educated ask you, well, how much extra I have to pay for you and you load it with so much value, they’re going, holy crap. That’s a great deal That you got that right.

John Clendenning [00:44:28]:
And that’s in your messaging. That’s your avatar, so message them properly. You have, they don’t want their home damaged by faulty workmanship. They don’t want somebody showing up in jeans and a t shirt, hat on backwards, tongue of their shoes hanging out, you know, piercings and tattoos everywhere to be the clean that might be the nicest guy in the planet. Might be just, you know, an absolute church going, god fearing, you know, member of the community. It’s not gonna make the right impression to have them want to choose you. If they see that person driving around in a van, they’re gonna make a different assumption. And and the neighbors looking out the window go, oh god.

John Clendenning [00:45:02]:
Glad I didn’t call those guys, but don’t take them off my list. Right? You’ve gotta represent what the avatar wants to see if you wanna grow. Right? So they don’t want to wait around for the carpet cleaners. They got to know when, you know, are you texting ahead? Are you letting them know when you’re coming? All that kind of stuff. Inconvenience, coordinating it. Are you gonna show up? Do you just keep calling all the time? And, oh, I got, you know, the office go, oh, the technician was sick today. Can we reschedule? Yep. Most people roll their eyes.

John Clendenning [00:45:29]:
Yeah. I guess. They also mentally checked you off the list for next time. Right? So you gotta make sure that you leave the house cleaner when you leave than when you arrive because that’s one of their fears as well. Right, and they wanna, you know, all of those kinds of will the bill bill be more than they can afford, not just be ripped off, but more than they can afford. So you gotta know how you you gotta let them know how you’re gonna price ahead of time. You don’t have to give them a quote on the phone. You can give them an estimate.

John Clendenning [00:45:52]:
You can tell them we gotta come out and give you an estimate, and here’s why we have to do that. We’ve got clients that just don’t give pricing on the phone at all. They might give a range. Oh, it’s gonna you know, our pricing depending on the client, what we see, and what we all could do. Anywhere from 300 to $800. Don’t really know where you’re gonna fit in. I wanna come out for free, healthy home assessment audit, test your carpets out, check everything else out. And in fact, not only is that free, I’ll pay you for that visit.

John Clendenning [00:46:15]:
And that’s a marketing moment. Right? And then how do you pay them for it? Well, we we can jump on a call and talk about that, but it’s a program. It’s a way to get more people to say yes than no. That’s a conversion principle. Right? So they wanna get their carpets clean. They have issue, having, having the issue put behind them, that’s their goals and desires. Well kept home. They typically, you know, the the the one of their goals is to drive a nicer car, maybe to drive a Tesla, maybe they want, you know, maybe they they want, you know, you know, electric vehicles, things like that.

John Clendenning [00:46:44]:
Maybe their goal is to live in a nicer, more luxurious home. That could be a goal. Maybe the maybe in today’s economy, their goal is to stay in the current home, you know, keep the maintain and preserve their money. So they wanna make sure that you’re solving a problem so they don’t have to replace the carpets, move out of the house, do all replace the flooring, do all that kind of stuff. So what are the kinds of messages that work? Safe, eco friendly, natural carpet cleaning. 100% satisfaction guarantee, or it’s free. Right? That one is very weak, but or it’s free. Oops.

John Clendenning [00:47:13]:
Let’s go back to that. Or it’s free helps a little bit, but you wanna even be a better guarantee than that. Right? You’ve 100% satisfaction, you should find a way better way of wording that. Well, the cleanest, fluffiest, healthiest, longest lasting cleaning you’ve ever seen or it’s free, or you don’t pay, things like that. Right? Highly trained technicians, trustworthy, bonded, insured, background, like, those kinds of things help them think. Phone answered live during business hours. Right? All that kind of stuff. Honest pricing, no sales gimmicks, no hidden cost.

John Clendenning [00:47:44]:
You choose your package, you choose your program. 3 programs to suit cert you suit you best. That kind of idea. Right? So your website, now we know how to speak to our ideal client. How do you put that on the website? Right? Carpet cleaning that’s healthy for your family and your carpets. There’s a message, there’s a conversation, there’s a bit of text, Google. So SEO, right? We got carpets. We got healthy.

John Clendenning [00:48:09]:
We got we got all those kinds of SEO elements baked in there. Eight reasons why you you’ll love complete carpet and tile cleaning name of the company. Eight reasons why you’ll love them and safe, healthy cleaning, exact appointment times, arrival windows. Does not have to be the exact minute, but exact times, not, hey. We’ll call you at 7 o’clock in the morning and tell you what time today. Stay home for the whole day. Nope. You’re scheduled between 9 and 9:30.

John Clendenning [00:48:31]:
First job of the day. You’re scheduled between 11:30 and 1 depending on how the first job goes, somewhere in that window. We’ll call you just as we’re wrapping up the previous job, you know, or just as we’re on the way over about 20 minute heads up. Just let you know we’re en route, but it’ll be both in that window. For any reason at all, I’m running late or ahead of time or behind, I will call you with more than enough notice. Right? We don’t cut corners. We clean them. A little bit of a tagline, but you’re explaining your world class staff, you know, one call service, all the things that you do, and how we want you to be a customer for life so we’re willing to stand behind it.

John Clendenning [00:49:01]:
That that makes the the homeowner that understands this message go, that’s what I want. Right? Example, Brent here. Be real and authentic. Right on the website. Here’s our story. When did it begin? Dad started the business. Right? We’re telling stories. Number one page on All Seasons website after the home page is the about page because the whole entire website leads, hey.

John Clendenning [00:49:27]:
To hear the rest of the story, click here. Right? In some of the social media marketing, hey. To hear my story, click here. Right? So now you’re driving everybody to learn more about the company. Do you think once they learn that story and read that, as dad grew older, blah blah, all that kind of stuff, they’re not heart warmed that Brent has been, doing this business for years years years years. Right. We know that because because he has been telling the story on his website and in video and in storytelling throughout all of his marketing. Door hangers tell the same story.

John Clendenning [00:50:06]:
All that stuff, right? You put your marketing together, tie it all together. Videos, examples of videos on websites get interviewed by the local news. These guys actually paid for it. They paid a package to get interviewed by the local Channel 4 in Utah and then have that promoted out. Right? Because Channel 4 has a program in place for community news, where they will, you know, highlight businesses. Do you know that that business has to pay to be highlighted? And so what? Pay for it. Put it up there. There’s another.

John Clendenning [00:50:36]:
Now you get your name out there and you can use this forever. Right? Carpet cleaning. There’s us cleaning a nasty ass carpet. Right? Go show it. Do it. Put it on YouTube. Right? Share it out on social media. Put it on your website.

John Clendenning [00:50:48]:
Talk have a voice over on it. All good stuff. Make sure that you’re leveraging your social proof. So what do I mean by that? You wanna make sure that you have your most recent reviews streaming on your website, not just the cherry picked ones, but actually and you you wanna have a whole page about reviews and, you know, local reviews and stuff like that where it just gobs and gobs and gobs of them. But you wanna have it when they click on them, it actually opens the review. You wanna have a what called a quarter pop. Every one of the pages on your website needs to be cycling your latest feedback and your latest reviews. So not just reviews, but about 10% of the population will write reviews for carpet cleaners.

John Clendenning [00:51:24]:
Like, if you’ve got a 100 reviews, you probably did a 1000 jobs or more. If you’ve got if you see somebody with 2 100, 300 reviews, they probably did 2, 3000 jobs or more. Right? It’s pretty average, but you can get about 50 to 75% of your clients writing feedback. I’ve done it for decades. I did it from a self addressed self addressed stamped envelope, and then eventually as a digital program, we’d really love you to tell us how we did about all these different things, and we’ll enter you into our feedback contest. Then you ask for a review afterwards. Right? But now you can have feedback and reviews in all your marketing, and those can show up on your website as, again, as corner pops that just cycle through cycle through. As soon as somebody clicked on it, it overlay on the whole website.

John Clendenning [00:52:01]:
They can click through 100 of them and just see all of them. They’re legit. Anyone that’s on Google or Yelp or anywhere like that, they click on. It goes right to the actual person’s review. It ties Google in. It’s another SEO element, but it’s also a social proof. You have now just converted another person. Right? Every one of these things converts 1, 2, 3 more people that show up at your website.

John Clendenning [00:52:21]:
Good SEO, good traffic, and then convert them. Right? Promotions. Again, not discounts, but promotions. Do you have a web offers page? And on that web offers page, do you have things that are matched to what your your your customers are interested in? Free pet order evaluation, 15% off any second service you add on. Right? Save $33 on any 3 piece upholstery. Whatever. Right? Do you have you don’t have to drop your pants. You don’t have to be, like, discount, discount, discount, But can you if you add 2 services together, can you give the the one of equal or lesser value a bit of a savings while you’re in the home? Minimum charges apply on each service.

John Clendenning [00:52:59]:
Whatever. Yeah. Of course, you can. Give them the offers that will help them convert more with you. Make sure it’s mobile friendly. 4,800,000,000 people now have mobile phones on planet Earth. 3 out of 5 customers reach for a local business by smartphone. They start their search on smart, and then they end up on desktop if they need to do deeper research.

John Clendenning [00:53:21]:
Right? So your web your website has to look amazing on on a cell phone. Right? And, you know, Google reports that 40% of mobile consumers turn to a competitor site after a bad mobile experience. Do you know what your mobile experience is? That’s not just speed. That’s when when it scrolls down, it does funny things. It doesn’t look like you shouldn’t your phone should look like Instagram. Your website sorry. On your your website, on your phone as you scroll down should look like Instagram. Picture words, picture words, picture picture words, you know, like it that’s what it should look like.

John Clendenning [00:53:51]:
And and your website should be built to be mobile friendly and calls to action every couple of scrolls, calls to action. What do you want me to do next? What do you want me to do next? It should be a different layout to your website slightly, on a mobile device than it is on a desktop. And again, click to call. Right? So again, here’s an example of a website. Right? Get a free estimate that goes to a form. Click to call now. They press that. Boom.

John Clendenning [00:54:15]:
Call? Yep. Right? There’s your little corner pops popping up. There’s the story. There’s the actual business owner actually in his van. What it’s actually gonna look like promoting healthier homes and workplaces, like, you know, on and on and on. Like, this is all of this ties together. If you’ve got none of this, right, if you don’t get your fundamentals right and you don’t have any of this, your website is not converting. I can tell you right now, most of your traffic that comes to your website does nothing.

John Clendenning [00:54:41]:
Right? Phone number in the upper right corner, risk reversal guarantee. That’s what they care about. What’s in it for me? Social proof, smart form. They fill it out. Their phone rings. Right? Chat to text. All of those things are all part of it. Right? So you wanna offer live chat to text.

John Clendenning [00:55:01]:
We talked about that. Let’s go a little bit deeper in this. On average, 5 less than 5% of website visitors take action at all. Call, fill out a web form, do anything. 9 that means 95% of your web visitors leave without reaching you. But we know that they’re in the market for carpet cleaning. They came there for a reason. We just got it.

John Clendenning [00:55:19]:
We didn’t influence them well. We didn’t give them the right options. Some people don’t wanna pick up the phone and call. Some people don’t don’t fill out forms, but they’ll start a chat. Other people only fill out forms. Give them like, don’t force somebody to do what you want them to do. Meet them where they are. Find out what their mode is and meet them where they are.

John Clendenning [00:55:40]:
Right? So chat is proven to increase leads on a on a website by 35%. If you are generating 100 leads right now, you will generate 135 leads just by putting chat, oops, on your website. Right? So just make sure you have some sort of chat to text on your website. Go away with nothing else. It will pay for itself. All of these things, well, John, I can’t afford it. Can you afford 35 more inquiries and you’re good at you’re actually good at answering the phones and book 50% of them as a on-site quote, which you’ll then get 90% of them booking yes to the job or as an on-site quote or as a cleaning visit? Right? 35 means 17 roughly, more jobs. If your average job is $300, there is $41100 if my math is quick math in my head is right.

John Clendenning [00:56:30]:
Correct me in the chat if I’m wrong. But roughly $41100 just by putting if you get a 100 inquiries a month from your website right now, you can add $41100. Is it worth investing a couple $100 into an automation system to put on your website to generate another $4,000 because you’ve now give found more people that just didn’t back out and go find somebody else. So then you want to tie it all together with lead nurturing. We lead generation. Everybody knows that I need to generate more leads. I need to write more leads. That’s just new, new, new, new, new spend money, get new, spend money, do more, get new, get new.

John Clendenning [00:57:07]:
What about all the ones that came in that didn’t book? That’s lead nurturing. That is the biggest part of what people are missing out on. And your website is the starting point for 99% of that. Right? Calls that are not answered live and inquiries that are not followed up with within 5 minutes. Live calls during business hours, inquiries within 5 minutes by form or text. Gone are the days that you check your email at the end of the day. They have moved on already. Right? They go cold.

John Clendenning [00:57:38]:
Every status proven that. Or go and what that means is they go to the competition. They have found somebody else. There has to be a compelling past client referred to you and they’re giving you a second chance. Nobody cares that much about you to wait till you get back to them. Right? So you have to answer the phone as it rings. In fact, if you’re running Google local service ads, if you don’t answer your phone within the first 3 to 5 rings, you are being demoted whether you know it or not. They know how important that is.

John Clendenning [00:58:07]:
So there’s they’re selling you pay per call. That’s what local service ads Google guarantee, and you can go check. We just did a training on that last month or 2. But go back and check out all that training. That’s a huge part of that as well, making that work. If you don’t do that, don’t even try to run local service as they work amazingly well. You might be paying as high as $65 a phone call, and that still works amazingly well in carpet cleaning even at that price as long as you’re answering your phones the second it rings within 2 to 3 rings and you have a script in a way to convert these people into a on-site quote or job. Right? So or lead nurture follow-up.

John Clendenning [00:58:40]:
Average customers must be followed up with 5 to 7 times before they book. Right? Some people book over the phone right away. Some do. Right? But how many people don’t just understand they would have if you had a follow-up plan? You go, well, John, they they they said, oh, let me think about it. Yeah. Did they call? Well, some call back and book. Now all the other ones, them and everyone else, did you start following up with them, telling them why you’re different, how many people like you, happy client stories, testimonials? Like, there is an actual proven process to follow-up with people 5, 7 times over the next 2 weeks. It’s called the chase formula, and you follow-up with them.

John Clendenning [00:59:17]:
And it’s proven to work. It’s been used for, you know, for decades decades in in b to b, b to c sales. Why can’t it be used by carpet cleaners? We I learned it mid 2000 use it. I’ve coached on it for years. We’ve built automations around it. You need to be putting understanding that you are the owner of a business. You have to work on your business more than you work in it. These are one things that it takes a couple of hours to learn it, maybe a couple more hours to put something like that in place, give it a test, and then you tweak it and make it refine it, make it better.

John Clendenning [00:59:49]:
You’ve just spent 4 or 5 hours once on your business learning something, putting it in place, figuring out the tools that you need to do it, and you have now grown your business permanently for the next 20 years. How many of those can you stack? That’s your job as a business owner. Right? Today’s, consumers now prefer to interact via text and chat message versus phones in a lot of cases, and you have to learn how to sell by chat. It’s entirely different than influencing with your words. Right? You can paint a picture with your words. How do you do that with your thumbs? You can’t vomit, you know, pages and pages of text to them on their phone, but you have to be able to tell a story. So you tell a story of pictures and videos and and asking questions and trying to get them off of text onto the phone, showing them some, giving them a link to something while you’re while you’re figuring out an estimate. There’s a whole bunch of ways we actually have a sell by chat training all for that reason.

John Clendenning [01:00:39]:
Right? So here’s a proven solution. I built a solution called carpet cleaner lead pro carpet cleaner lead pro is a lead automation database. It plugs into all of your websites, plugs into landing pages and, you know, for pay per click and social media and every other chat source. And it allows you to build a database of leads that get nurtured until they buy or unsubscribe. I used to say buy or die, a little harsh, but until they buy or unsubscribe. It leverages marketing automation, right, to follow-up with with web forms, message, chat, right away, and then automates the follow-up going perpetually. Build a lead list. You should have a lead list that’s 10 times bigger than your customer list.

John Clendenning [01:01:20]:
When you’re in business, after the 1st week, you should have a lead list that’s 10 times bigger than the customers you’ve been able to land. After the 1st month, after the 1st year, after the 1st decade, if you’ve seen 3,000 clients, you better have a lead list, a database of 30,000. It should be 10 times bigger than your customer base. And your customer base really is the last 2 to 3 years, 5 years at the most. Most people after 2 or 3 years, if they haven’t coming back, it’s because the either this granny that only needs you every 5 years or they’ve moved out of the area or something like that. So you want to make sure that you’re talking that your database is the most active, the 24 to 36 months at the latest, and you want your lead list to be 10 times bigger than that, your active lead list. So marketing automation looks like this. People come in from all different sources, landing pages, website, the chat in the bottom corner that we talked about, the form fill, and they get messaged.

John Clendenning [01:02:13]:
You get messaged. They get asked questions. They get brought in. Would are you interested in this or this? Oh, and that takes them down a different path. You know, it reminds you, hey. It’s been 3 days. You called the person right away. You didn’t get a hold of them.

John Clendenning [01:02:25]:
You haven’t moved them from an inquiry to having had a conversation, so call them again. Try again. Say this. Right? You’ve gotta be reminded. So very, very important role in your company to have somebody chasing that first two weeks of lead chase and then letting the nurture happen if they didn’t book now. Maybe they went with the other guy. As I said, maybe 9 months from now, they didn’t like the other guy, but they got their carpets clean. They don’t need you.

John Clendenning [01:02:52]:
9 months from now, they need their upholstery cleaned. They’re definitely not calling that guy, and you’ve been in their inbox and messaging them and staying in front of them, give them healthy home advice, tips, sharing hap funny stories, all that kind of stuff, entering them into this contest or inviting them into contests and things like that for the last 9 months. Who do you think they’re gonna reach out to? You influence them. You become their carpet cleaner for life, and then you put a cage around them so they don’t end up calling anybody out neck anybody else next time. Right? So how does this work? Here’s an example of one of our clients. Actual real case study. 164 leads were came in on average. That was their average monthly leads.

John Clendenning [01:03:28]:
I think this was actually one snapshot month. Conversion rate was about 30%, hadn’t figured out phone scripts and did no follow-up. They are getting leads from all of the inquiries from all these services. So these are cold. These aren’t these aren’t repeat clients, referrals, all that kind of this is just marketing generated inquiries, organic Google Maps, Facebook ads, directories. These were all the stuff that we do, referral program, everything that we manage for them. This was just that list, not their own customers. Right? No follow-up, no nothing.

John Clendenning [01:03:58]:
They booked 49 jobs. Average job 325 made just under $16,000. $15,595. Add in carpet cleaner lead pro. They made an additional $19,000 Got 70% conversion. Not right away. They went from 30% to over that 1st 2 weeks, about 45, 50% with good follow-up. If you’re answering the phones better, chasing the people better, they they generated another 20%.

John Clendenning [01:04:27]:
Where did that last 20% come from? Month 2, 3, 4, 7, 9, 12. When the purse when the people finally said, you know what? I wanna try you guys. Maybe their car broke down. They had to pay for that. And once they finally decided, okay, that that expense is behind us. Let’s aim back at the carpets again. That might go a month or 2 before they made that decision again. Now we’ve got a 114, not 49 jobs.

John Clendenning [01:04:51]:
Nothing else changed. Didn’t teach them how to upsell 3 separate services packages, all that kind of stuff. Nothing else changed. Now they’re making almost $40. Same exact people, same list, same inquiries, just better conversions. Conversions can double and triple companies if you get this right. So understanding conversion optimization is a huge missing piece, and your website’s a big part of that. So we talk about it a lot.

John Clendenning [01:05:17]:
So key ideas here, real authentic images of you, your team, on your home page and throughout your website. You wanna add video elements to your website. You know, welcome videos, videos on service pages, videos explaining why someone should contact you versus the competition, things like that. Showcase your online reviews more prominently on your website. Get the basics in order. Website or the phone number in the upper right corner, ensure that there’s a web form that the customer can fill out above the fold. So the old days of newspapers when the newspaper sat on the stand, that was above the fold. When they flipped it over, they they flipped below the fold.

John Clendenning [01:05:49]:
Right? We just adopted that terminology for websites as you what you see on your website screen right now, that is above the fold. If you have scroll down, that is below the fold. Most people don’t scroll more than 2 or 3 times. Google bots do. So you wanna make sure you have tons of really good user friendly, easy to read content that the bots are getting. Oh, I know what this page is about. Oh, I know all of it. You know, you build the authority, helped your SEO rank more and more and more, but you build it in a way that is persuasive to the person who’s reading farther down the page.

John Clendenning [01:06:18]:
Most of the people that show up in your website will see above the fold and one scroll. And that what we find from heat test is about 60 to 70 percent of your traffic will make a decision there, right? So you want them to stick. You want to be telling some stories. The other 30 to 40% will scroll down a little bit, pick a page, go to the about page, check a bunch of stuff out, maybe check out your services and stuff like that, and they’re just going deeper. And if every page shows what you do, how you do it tells a story. Happy client stories are all over your website as well. We call them project capture stories. You’ve got all of that kind of stuff.

John Clendenning [01:06:53]:
They just start feeling like you’re the company for them. Right? So you wanna showcase all of that. Calls to action everywhere they go on the website. Every time they scroll a little bit, oh, remind them how to call you. Click here to call or click here to, you know, reach out to us and have the chat popping up in the corner all the time. Right? You wanna leverage offers. Right? Hey. New client offer.

John Clendenning [01:07:14]:
Whatever that is. Get a $175 bonus package. New clients only. Right? Maybe you clean one area rug while any carpet cleaning job or any minimum floor cleaning job, you will clean an area rug, you know, up to a maximum of 5 by 7, whatever, absolutely free to show them your area rug cleaning. You will do whatever that you can do a package, you know, pay me $500, and I’ll give you a $189 worth of free stuff. Try us out kind of idea. Right? You wanna have 2 way chat, you wanna have automation. So ask yourself, is your website optimized for conversion? We’ve talked about a lot of stuff.

John Clendenning [01:07:50]:
We’re wrapping up now. Is your website optimized? Right? Can you get more inquiries from your same website? Can you squeeze more juice out of that lemon? Right? You wanna get more juice for the squeeze by a lot, and there’s a lot waiting in there. There’s 2 and 3 times as much. Growing your business isn’t that hard. Right? What is is implementation. Implementation is everything. I’ve actually trademarked that term as a t m. It should be beside that.

John Clendenning [01:08:18]:
Implementation is everything. I wrote a book on it. I did training courses on it back in the mid 2000, flown around the world, teaching carpet cleaners and cleaning business owners how to implement better. Right? You’ve got to pick 3 items. Put them on your list for the next 30 days. Break that down. What is item 1, item 2, item 3, and then what are all the things that are needed, right before to complete that item? Who’s going to do them by what date? You just pick what you need done and you reverse engineer it. Right? So, you know, you you want to start dating.

John Clendenning [01:08:57]:
Well, okay. You wanna you you see, you wanna get into a relationship. Say that’s your end goal. Okay. Well, you gotta start dating. Okay. Well, that’s one step before that. I gotta start dating before I’m gonna get into a relationship.

John Clendenning [01:09:08]:
That makes sense. Okay. Well, how are you gonna start dating? Well, I guess I’m gonna have to be on the dating apps. Okay. You’re gonna have to be on the dating apps. Right? So what’s one step before that? Well, I look like a bum. I probably should get my haircut. So what’s the first step? Go get your haircut.

John Clendenning [01:09:23]:
Right? Work your way up. That’s what implementation is. Take the task, break it down into its basics, and check it off your list, and get other people to help you if you can. But put deadlines and dates on it. This is gonna be done in 30 days. What’s step number 1? You just reverse engineer it. That is a muscle you learn. Some of you already know that some people go, oh, that sounds daunting.

John Clendenning [01:09:45]:
Pen and a piece of paper. It’s not daunting. It’s pen and a piece of paper. We’re business owners. We have to be the entrepreneur of the business. The E Myth is the entrepreneurial myth. You have to be the entrepreneur of your business. You have to be the person that works on the business, not in it.

John Clendenning [01:10:00]:
Your business will never grow and you will just repeat your 1, 10, 20, 30 times and buy a new one and a new truck mount and and fancy equipment and think you’re amazing and not grow the business because you didn’t focus on the marketing and the business growth. Implement, implement, implement, test, test, test. Not everything you do is going to work out. So what? Raise your prices. If it doesn’t work out, lower your prices. Guaranteed it will work out if you do it right. But if it if you wanna give it a try, next 10 customers, try a higher price. Go up by 10%, 15%.

John Clendenning [01:10:37]:
Put packages in place. Test it out. Right? Figure it out. You ready? Fire. Aim. Fire. Aim. Fire.

John Clendenning [01:10:46]:
You don’t ready. Aim. Oh, am I right? Is this going to work? Oh, let me think about it. Oh, let me clean the gun. No. Ready? Fire. How close was I? Aim. Fire, aim.

John Clendenning [01:10:57]:
Right? So we’ve covered 5 critical elements of enhanced conversion, where to place your phone number, and social proof. Simple trick to convert visitors that don’t call on, you know, on on the first visit. The the stuff I promised at the beginning, we have just covered. Right? What are your takeaways? Write them down. Take them away. What are the three things? Think about it. Do something about this. Let’s let’s let’s get your website becoming the machine it should be.

John Clendenning [01:11:26]:
It’s one of the 20, 30, 40 poles that you need in the water to grow a service business properly. Let’s put that in place. That is one of the poles that maximizes those levers. Right? So you want to make sure you have this poll figured out really, really well. Dial it in. Talk to people, right? You want to become the best known cleaner. Our best known cleaner omnipresence marketing system is how you tie together websites ranking so that most of your work comes from the work that isn’t repeat and referral. Again, 70% of your day should be repeat and referral.

John Clendenning [01:11:59]:
The other 30%, the cold traffic, most of it should come from organic. When you’re running a massively growing business, organic is is where a lot of that comes from. You run some paid ads to complement. It’s still worth it. It’s just your most expensive lead. You reach out on social media, make sure that’s some of your brand awareness and let everybody know about you. Why? Because everybody’s on social media. Be there too.

John Clendenning [01:12:21]:
Right? But what do you be there with? Well, there’s a right mix. There’s a right recipe for that. We talk about that on master classes as well. You want to get your Google Maps. So SEO and Google Maps play together in the same playground. Reputation and social media tie all everything all together. Right? Reputation is the conversion principle. It’s not just about having more reviews than anybody else.

John Clendenning [01:12:41]:
No. It’s not about it’s it’s about having your reputation shared around the web. So reviews, feedback, customer stories syndicated in every nook and cranny of the Internet so that anywhere anybody goes, they’re hearing about you. As soon as they know your name, they’re hearing about you. When the friends start talking about it, they’re hearing about you. Everywhere you go, your business is showing up. That is omnipresence. Right? And it looks like this.

John Clendenning [01:13:06]:
It’s a breakdown. It’s a formula. It’s it’s a blueprint. Right? Digital dominance method. Do you have a compelling sales proposition, risk reversal guarantee? Do you have an engaging logo? Do you have a hyper personalization? Do you have SEO, local SEO baked into everything you do? Do you have are you building your authority in the marketplace? Do you even know what that means? Are you syndicating out your reputation? Do you know what that means? And then are you becoming visible everywhere to your database, to your lead list, to your referral partners, and and to your potential customers? Do they see you see you see you? I tried somebody else. I wish I didn’t do that. See you see you. I’m gonna try these guys this time.

John Clendenning [01:13:41]:
Boom. Your business is growing, and you’re you’re doubling. In the early days, you should you know, 0 to 10 couch to $10,000. Any any service business. I I did $10,000 a month by the end of year 1 in 1995. No Internet, shy kid, no yellow pages yet. It came out in March. I started my business in May.

John Clendenning [01:14:03]:
I was doing 10,000 a month in a town of 30,000 people. I just moved to as a shy kid because I didn’t know what I was doing, so I panicked and I read every book on the planet. E Myth and, Chet Holmes, Silent Sales Machine. I believe I’d written read that by that point. I think that one had already come up by that point. Dan Kennedy, magnetic market. Like, I just I knew none of it. I had to learn it and I started doing I just started implementing stuff.

John Clendenning [01:14:27]:
I pumped myself up and walked up and down the main street. I joined Chambers. I did all that kind of stuff, right, because I needed to find a way to get visibility. And then it just starts like you just keep doing it. 3 years ago, 30 years after I started my business, well, 27, 28 years after I started the carpet cleaning business and I sold it up to the week before the sales date, I’d already signed the deal. It was being May 21st. I was still out meeting with customers. I was still meeting with, commercial customers, checking in on them, walking in every 3 months.

John Clendenning [01:15:00]:
I was meeting with referral partners. I was still working the business. I had never stopped. I learned it early on, never stopped. That became my I was only in the truck for a year and a half, 2 years in my early twenties. Didn’t need to be in the truck anymore. I’d figured out I bought competitor businesses out and started to grow as a naive kid because I knew how to I’d learned some of the little pieces that became all of the pieces. And that’s what you need to be doing in your business.

John Clendenning [01:15:26]:
If you’re not, you know, couch 10 ks should take you 90 days. Right? From 10 k to 20 ks might take you the rest of the year. So a month, 20 k a month. You’re not doing at least 10 ks a month in business after the 1st year to it, though, I wouldn’t even say to 1st year. You’re used there’s things you don’t know. You don’t know what you don’t know. Learn it. Do it.

John Clendenning [01:15:45]:
Figure it out. Jump on these calls. Give us a call. Get on my schedule. Let’s talk about it. Let’s figure out how to make you the best known cleaner. There’s coaching, consulting, services, all that stuff you need to get out of the way and start running your business. Right? If you already know how to do that, is there paces that that need better, that need fit in? Does your current service provider know the cleaning industry inside and out the ideal customer avatar? Do they go deep on the psychology or do they create a pretty website and a pretty brochure for you? Do they create a door hanger that’s all full of babies lying on carpets and giving away discounts and deals? Or have they taught you how to strategically think about your core foundation, your compelling sales proposition, your risk reversal guarantee, your founder story, your impactful brand messaging, taking all of that and putting that into every piece of your marketing message, thinking that through, and then iterating that everywhere people see you.

John Clendenning [01:16:42]:
Sounds like a lot. Well, you decided to run a business. You learn stuff. You have to learn your your way through. Any job you have, you have to learn your role. Well, this is your role, is to build a better company. So, anyways, anyways, if you wanna get on that schedule, carpet cleanermarketmasters.com/schedule. We’d love to see where you are in the marketplace, see where you, you know, nip at some corners and some edges, and really help you grow that business.

John Clendenning [01:17:06]:
Make sure that we wanna, like, help you make your average job 3, 4, 5, $600. There’s ways that we can help with that. And then, you know, a service provider like us or anybody helping you with marketing, it’s like 1 or 2 jobs pays the bill per month. It’s not hard. And everything else is, you know, is growth and gravy. Right? So those are the types of things we wanna talk about. So if that makes sense to you, pick a time, jump on a call. We’d love to chat with you.

John Clendenning [01:17:33]:
Love to have that conversation. If you’re enjoying these these these trainings, definitely check out the rest of ours on YouTube, on Spotify, on Apple. There’s we’ve got them as podcast, in the mix. Carpetcleanersuccess.com is the website for the Carpet Cleaner Success podcast, and also we put a lot of these trainings on there as well as our own website, Carpet Cleaner Marketing Masters, but carpetcleanersuccess.com. If you wanna be a guest on an upcoming podcast, very huge value for your business. We like talking to carpet cleaners. And, you know, if you’ve been in business 10 years, you’re a lucky crowd because only about 4%, 5% of of service businesses, small businesses make it to year 10. So you’ve stuck with it.

John Clendenning [01:18:18]:
You’ve done well. We there’s lessons to be learned, pitfalls, things to help out with, you know, that other people can listen to. We help you promote that into the marketplace. We give you what’s called a media kit on the back end of it. Very, very valuable to you. It’s about a 30 minute conversation. Just pop on a video like this, not live. We ask questions, chat up, and then give you that.

John Clendenning [01:18:37]:
We use it to help the entire industry grow and get better. That’s my give back. That’s what I wanna do is help the industry grow and get better. So if you wanna do that, go to carpet cleanersuccess.com and and sign up there. There’s buttons all over that website to to ask to become a guest. And one of our team members, Fabio or Krisha, will reach out to you, and we will get you on to get you in the schedule. And you’re gonna get a huge value and tons of backlinks and all that kind of stuff. And the industry is going to get a huge value from you as well.

John Clendenning [01:19:08]:
And the final thing is go to go to, actually, where am I sending you? You’re going to we have a, a private Facebook group called Carpet Cleaner Marketing Secrets where I just try and start the conversations, get everybody chat. We’re just starting to grow it. We’d love to get you on that group where we just talk about marketing. All the stuff we talked about here, we go deep on. Right. So and we’re sharing stuff. There’s a young fellow from Australia on there. He messaged me quite regularly now.

John Clendenning [01:19:37]:
Kyle. And he’s got lots of great questions and lots of great ideas, and he’s very energetic about marketing. Love talking to him. So we like people like that in the group as well. Come in, share, think, be open. Right? I will share as much as I can in that group as well. My team is sharing in that group, and it’s just a good place, just an open environment to talk about marketing because marketing is the lifeblood of your business. You need to understand that everything you do facing a customer, facing the public is marketing.

John Clendenning [01:20:05]:
So anyways so yeah. So you can, you can reach out to us about joining that Facebook group. We’ve got lots of links all over the place, to get on that. Follow us on all of our social medias. We’re constantly reminding people to join the Facebook group from there. So go find us on Instagram, carpet cleanermarketmasters.com on Instagram. You can find the link to there as well. And yeah, just enter into this world.

John Clendenning [01:20:26]:
Tons of free stuff. We give out master classes and free stuff. We want to help you grow your business in any way we can. So hopefully, you found this valuable. Really appreciate your time today. We got in just just just under 90 minutes, which is great. So, yeah, if you have any questions, anything that this triggered or anything else that triggered in your marketing, ping us. Reach out to us.

John Clendenning [01:20:46]:
Message us back on the email or the text message that we sent you to get you on this call. And, yeah, just follow-up with us, and we’d really love to help you any way we can. Thanks so much, everybody. Take care. Till next time.