Social media can do wonders for your commercial cleaning marketing, but which platforms are best for reaching your target audience?
Over the last few years, social media has redefined how businesses connect with their audiences. A recent blog post by Hootsuite says that social media advertising budgets have doubled worldwide since 2014. That’s a big jump in such a short period! With so many businesses turning to social media for audience engagement, commercial cleaning marketing would do well to follow suit.
But which social networks are effective for an industry like commercial cleaning? After all, it’s not going to be as easy as reaching a 20-something consumer with the latest fashion offering. Commercial cleaning is a business to business (B2B) endeavor, and only appeals to a relatively small population of people. Thankfully, social media’s low cost and broad reach make it possible for even niches like commercial cleaning marketing to see a revenue increase. The trick is figuring out how to use each platform to your advantage.
The most prominent social media platforms
First, let’s take a look at the available platforms.
Facebook is a massive social networking site that’s primarily for personal content, but it also gets leveraged for business to customer (B2C) and B2B marketing. Though it probably has the widest reach, it’s also one of the most challenging sites for audience targeting. Still, it’s a good resource, which we’ll talk more about later.
LinkedIn is a professional network that’s designed to connect with people in similar industries based on work and career. You might say it’s the professional version of Facebook.
Instagram is a platform through which you can share pictures and videos with followers. Though primarily a consumer-based tool, there are some practical ways to use Instagram in a B2B capacity.
Twitter allows you to create blurbs of up to 140 characters, including links. Hashtags connect non-followers with your content, but there is a LOT of content on Twitter.
YouTube
YouTube is a video platform that lets users subscribe to channels they like and search for videos that may be of interest to them. YouTube is as much a search engine as it is a social network, which can work to your advantage.
Those are the platforms we’ll address here. As for others, like Snapchat, Google+, and Pinterest, while they have value for some kinds of advertising, they probably aren’t the platforms to focus on for commercial cleaning marketing. If you have an idea to leverage one of those platforms, by all means, give it a try! Otherwise, here’s how the others can be of help.
How to use social media channels in your commercial cleaning marketing strategy
One of the most attractive things about Facebook is that its ad space tends to be cheaper than space on other social channels. However, most of the audience is consumer-based, which can make it challenging to reach the businesses you’re looking for. Still, through targeting local advertising and smart organic content generation, Facebook can be a good, inexpensive tool to give a little boost to your revenue streams.
On the flip side, LinkedIn has some of the more expensive ad space out there, but its users are all in some business or another. The site allows you to create posts similar to blog posts, which you can then share with the entire LinkedIn community—a great way to drive more traffic to your own blog or website. You can use LinkedIn for free, but you might want to explore the paid options as they tend to offer richer advantages.
Instagram has some paid advertising you can purchase to reach people (it actually uses the Facebook ad platform), but the best thing about Instagram for commercial cleaning marketing is the ability to quickly share a picture or video of your services with your local followers. Add hashtags to your posts to draw more eyes, and you can demonstrate the quality of service your company offers, which is an advertisement that sells itself. The drawback is that you can’t link to anything in your picture caption, but you can put a link to your company website in your Instagram bio.
You can buy ads on Twitter (a little on the pricey side), but the benefit for commercial cleaning marketing is that you can also use the platform to plug blog posts or promotions you want to share with others. Using Twitter will also help with search engine optimization of any blogs you want to promote, which will help drive more traffic to your sites.
YouTube
Finally, YouTube has some value if you’re willing to put the effort into quality video production. A lot of people search YouTube for how-to videos, which can be a great way for you to connect with would-be customers. Just remember that if the video looks hastily thrown together, you might be more likely to deter customers rather than attract them.