LinkedIn is probably the greatest marketing tool ever invented – if you know how to take advantage of it. But that’s the problem. Many cleaning contractors are not aware of its potential and how to benefit from it.
It may take a little time, but it is certainly not hard to learn. For cleaning contractors and contractors in all industries, here are some ways to harness the marketing power of LinkedIn:
Create a Premium Account
The basic “free” LinkedIn account does not provide enough bells-and-whistles to make it useful. A Premium Account, which costs about $65 per month, will allow you to find more prospective customers, gives much more information about these potential customers, and more options to contact them. LinkedIn has different Premium accounts; your best option will likely be the Business Premium Account.
Write Your Profile
Once you have your Premium Account, your first step is to create a personal Profile. There are several excellent sources online that can help you with this. Look for the most recent articles and resources. LinkedIn is constantly changing and has changed a lot over the years. What might have been an effective Profile a few years back, might not make the grade today. Also, add an image to your profile
Searching for Prospects
Now we get into the marketing magic of LinkedIn. The magic is all in the search and filter functions. For instance, let’s say you primarily work with property managers. Type this into the LinkedIn search and thousands of people with “property manager” in their business title will come up.
Now let’s narrow that down. Type the following:
“Property manager + your city “(referring to your service area).
That will reduce the numbers significantly.
Our next step is to determine what types of facilities you are most interested in servicing. Let’s say we would like to clean more health care facilities. If that is the case, type:
‘Property manager + your city + health care*
This will help you find property managers in your city that manage healthcare facilities.
Connecting on LinkedIn
The goal of the search is to form connections. When connecting, it is always best to write a note, not just click the “Connect” button. Your note can be as simple as this:
Hello,
You have a very impressive profile and we share some businesses interests. I would like to connect with you.
Thank you,
Your name.
If you know one of their connections, use this person’s name in your note.
Contacting Your Connections
Let’s say we have now connected with 250 property managers in your city that manage healthcare facilities. Our job now is to contact these people and tell them a bit more about ourselves and our services. Let’s discuss how to do this.
While LinkedIn did once allow us to download the contact information of all our connections, that quietly disappeared. As we mentioned earlier, LinkedIn is always changing things, without giving us any reasons why.
We now must contact our connections individually. You can find their contact information by visiting their profile. The problem with this method is that it is slow. However, it is much more personalized, which can produce better results.
When you first start working with LinkedIn, start slow. Mistakes are hard to cover up. Once you get the hang of it, I advise contractors to keep making connections on LinkedIn every day, even when they can’t take on any more clients. Marketing, in other words, should always be an ongoing routine.
Ron Segura has over 45 years of experience in all segments of the professional cleaning industry including ten years as Manager of Janitorial Operations for Walt Disney Pictures and Television. To contact him, call 650-315-8933.
*Use the “+” sign between words or type “AND” between words; in some cases, words like health care may also be spelled “healthcare,” one word. Be sure and test both formats.
