What types of cleaning & restoration jobs are available during the fall and winter?

We all enjoy the business the spring and summer months can bring. If moths are starting to fly out of your wallet, have no fear; we’re here to help change that!

Question: What types of jobs are available during the fall and winter?

Answer:

1. All of your normal “maintenance” carpet cleaning and hard surface cleaning jobs still need to be done, express the importance of these cleanings to your customers and potential customers.
2. We have all heard the meteorologist say that it was going to get cold and didn’t and vice versa. Well, some times that can end up causing major problems – like water damage (or worse!) due to frozen pipes.
3. In addition, the cold weather can bring freezing rain, snow, and sleet. This can damage roofs and cause other types of “water damage.” (It will eventually melt.)
4. People will also bring in this wet slush can mix with dirt and cling to shoes or pet’s paws, causing a mess inside. #carpetcleaning
5. If your customers are like most people, they will be scrambling at the last minute before family and friends arrive to get everything perfect. This is when they realize that the carpets look dreadful or the couch smells like dog! It’s up to you to show them that you can help!
6. If you do duct cleaning, this is the PERFECT time of year for you! In the south, it is still warm enough that we don’t have to turn on the heat yet. However, up north is a different story. Therefore, it is important to express to existing and potential customers the importance of duct cleaning. (Maybe mention the safety benefits of having them cleaned.)
7. Once the family is there, cooking and socializing begins. Cooking can be a dirty business, especially if there are a lot of people to cook for. After the table is set and food is brought out, drinks will spill, food will be dropped, and stains will be made. Let them know that it’s okay to make messes because you’re there. 

If you have anything to add, please comment below! 

Stay tuned to our next blog: How to market to cleaning & restoration customers.

8 Must-Have Features for Great Cleaning & Restoration Webstites

 In today’s world, having a website is a must! Time, effort, and an assortment of other things go into making a great website. We have jam-packed this post with as much information we could without making it seem overwhelming. While you could allow your website to get lost among all of the other websites out there, we suggest you do these easy fixes to prevent that from happening. Who doesn't want their website to stand out?! In fact, you should start making these changes right away.

Quick & Important Notes:

• Most customers would like to know more about the company; you are, in fact, going into their home or business.  --- Having an “About Us” section, having links to social media sites, and/or telling about your company on your homepage is a great idea.
• Customers want to know what services you provide – Sometimes they want in-depth descriptions, while others may only want the basic information. This is where it pays to know your customer base.
• Blogs help Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and can help build brand trust and awareness.
• Customers want to know when your business is available and how to contact you: make sure those items are easy to find and accurate.
• Add additional pages if you feel you need to. Some people add “FAQs,” “Testimonials” (video or typed), “Award/Certifications,” “Specials/Coupons,” etc. Find what fits best for your customers! Go to Google Analytics to see what pages are being visited the most. (Make sure to put your IP address as an exception, so you are not viewing how often YOU visit your own website.)
• There are many “businesses” out there, make sure yours looks professional by following the below guideline. Also, have links to your top pages (navigation bar and anything else important) at the bottom of your page along with current copyright information. 

The 8 Must-Have Features:

We're all busy. If you read to this point, you have many key elements to a good website. However, if you read below, we go even further to make your website great! Some of the items are elaborations of the aforementioned items because they are that important. If you change your website after reading this blog, create a brand new one, or have already optimized your website, share your store in the comments below. We'd love to hear what you did. Maybe you could take before and after screen shots? If not to share, at least for you. (We wish we would have.)

1. Contact Information

If you want potential and existing customers to contact you through your website, you need the contact information in any easy to find place and have accurate information. Actually, we're known for having various areas on our website that show our contact information or links to it. We found that most businesses do this too. General rule of thumb is to have a dedicated spot on the navigation bar for your contact information. If you chose to have it in another place (highly suggested), we you should have it on your homepage. You are not limited to those two pages though!

Make sure that you have a valid telephone number listed for your customers and potential customers to contact you.

If you have a form for them to contact you through the site, check it periodically to ensure that it is working properly.

If you have any other information, such as an e-mail address or physical address, make sure that the information is correct. 

We have notice that maps are often pointing to an incorrect location. You may have to go to Google, Bing, or Yahoo! and ask them to correct the map location for your business. Google allows you to fix the map location yourself if you have verified your business address with them. 

It can be frustrating to a potential customer if they call and no one answers, especially if the hours are not online or said you were open. Therefore, ensure your hours are correct on your website and anywhere you have your business listed!

2. Logo Design & Appearance

If you want to be seen as a true professional, make sure you have a logo. Whether professionally created or not, it must look the part! This logo should be the same one that you use on your business cards, on you van/truck, on your invoicing, etc. You can have a simple or a complex logo as long as it looks clean and clear.

3. Images and Videos

Visitors can’t just know how well you clean carpets, hard surfaces, upholstery, etc or how well your company cleans and restores after fire, smoke, water damage, etc by your name or a list of services you do. They can, however, be “awed” by the before and after photos of extreme jobs. These photos should be high-resolution and professional.  Cell phone pictures are usually too small and fuzzy to work for websites, unless your cell phone has a high-resolution camera.

It's suggested to have photos on the first page. Depending on how you set-up your site, it may be applicable to have photographs on multiple pages. (This is discussed below.)

Lighting is an important factor when taking photographs, especially if you are trying to emphasize a particular subject (stain, mold, dirt, etc). Sometimes using the on-camera flash will make the image too bright or even too dark in some spots. Try the flash first. IF the photograph does not turn out well, try one of these techniques. Open the blinds or shades of nearby window(s) to allow more light. If there are no windows or the room is still too dark, try shining a cell phone light on the subject - about five to ten feet away. (The “flash light” for cell phones come standard with most iPhones but will need to be downloaded for Androids.)

Videos are great ways to demonstrate a step of the cleaning process or the entire cleaning process you use to the potential customer. This could be on your first page or where you detail about that service/cleaning process.

Video testimonials are great ways to have real customers tell about their experience with you and your company. We suggest keeping these videos short: 30 seconds – 1 min. You may choose to have a “favorite” testimonial on your homepage but it is wise to keep the majority of them on a dedicated “testimonials” page.

4. Clean Graphics

It’s the 21^st century; and there are plenty of inexpensive and free online graphics as well as cameras that you can use. Some templates even come stocked with great graphics!

5. Navigational Ease

Remember, we are in the age of everyone multi-tasking and wanting information quickly. If your site is slow, does not work properly, or is hard to navigate, potential customers will go elsewhere.

Your navigation bar, or menu bar, has to make sense. Don’t use “Technical” to describe “Services” or “About Us” to put your “Contact Us” information.  (Make “About Us” and “Contact Us” separate.)

Make sure that all of your links and videos work. If you have broken links and videos, people will not want to visit your site. They may also lose trust in your company.

Periodically go through your site and check your links, videos, and downloads to ensure they all work properly. 

Most important, as you are building your site or going through your site, ask yourself "Can customers easily go from page to page?" and "Can they find the important information easily?"

6. A Strong “Call to Action”

You may be wondering “what is ‘a call to action.’" Simply put, a “call to action” is something that you want your customers to do. Do you want them to join your email list? Call or email for a free quote? Visit your blog? Add you on Facebook? Write a review on Google?

Whatever it is, you decide what the customer’s or potential customer’s “next steps” should be. Then, you create your site, primarily your homepage, around that.

Usually, people highlight their “call to action” at the very top of the page like we do (above) or to the right of the page either beside or under the page's media (video, image slider, etc).

Some businesses find it very effective to use an on-screen “pop-up” for their “call to action.” Many times companies will ask you to join email lists this way. The other options are just as effective as the pop-up method but are less aggravating to customers.

If you would like the bar that we have on our site, you can go to https://www.hellobar.com/ once you have secured your domain name. You have several "call to actions" options. If you want the button to link to a popup box once clicked for instant action completion for email sign-up, that is possible. However, it requires a few extra lines of code. So, if you are a little more tech savvy, you may want to look into it: http://www.dtelepathy.com/blog/filament/make-your-hello-bar-open-a-fancybox-modal. 

If you prefer the side bar look, you would use a form or social widget; or you could create your own if you are building your own website. Each website platform (Wordpress, Joomla, Xara, Drupal, etc) have their own widgets specific to that platform. With any platform, there are free and paid options.

7. Quality Content

Choose who your target market is. This is the time to be picky, especially if you are new to the business. What are their demographics? What city or cities do they live? Do they have kids or pets? What kind of jobs do they have? Think of your ideal yet realistic customer. Then research city data to see if it matches.

When planning this out, if you know you can do a great job at cleaning carpets and upholstery after animals have made a mess on them but are not great at cleaning red dye stains, you could focus your efforts on pet lovers and not professionals who drink red wine or parents with little children. Of course, your best bet is always to learn how to get over any hurdle you may face in the cleaning industry. If you are unsure on what techniques or products to use, call us so we can walk you through the most popular and proven methods and tell you what products are used to complete those jobs. 

8. Keywords

You should pick about 3-5 keywords. “But my competitors are ranked for more than 3-5 words.” It’s easier to be great at a few things than to be great at 100s or even 1000s of things. This is absolutely true with keywords. More than likely your competitors are paying for advertising or have been in business for a long time. There are many aspects to being ranked high on Google, such as social relevancy, quality content (keywords), and backlinks but that would really be too much to cover. Not to mention, Google changes their algorithms often which can make sharing important information difficult. Everything in this post should not be affected by any Google algorithm changes, since it has been true for at least a decade, if not longer.  

Even if your website platform allows you to write keywords or you are able to write code for the keywords (building your own), search engines ultimately decide your keywords. Make sure that whatever keywords you chose are words that you have on your site. Keywords are based on content. If you are creating a new site or are willing to change your current site, make sure that your content (words, links, hover text, etc) matches the keywords you want.

An easy way to help strengthen your keywords’ credibility is to actually have pages based on those keywords. For example, if you clean carpets, rugs, and upholstery, you could have a navigational button that says “services” and lists all of the services you provide with a brief description. However, you can also have a drop-down menu under “Services” with additional pages – Carpet Cleaning, Rug Cleaning, and Upholstery Cleaning. Here, you can list a key word (the words just mentioned) as the titles and again in the first paragraph. You can describe the processes you use, how long it takes, or any additional information the customer may need to know. If you have any certification for these areas, HERE is a great place to put them! You can also add photos or videos to these pages.

With all of this information, you will be on your way to creating a fantastic website that is sure to grow your business.

Let us know if you have used any of the above methods and how they worked for you in the comments below!

Good Luck,

Cleaning Supply Network

How to Clean Candy, Chocolate, and Other Halloween Stains and Residue in Carpet

     

Halloween: the one time of the year where children and adults alike are able to be whoever or whatever they want to be. Of course, this can involve elaborate, or not so elaborate, costumes, face paint, glitter, nail polish, and make-up. While some children and adults stay home to pass out candy, many scour the neighborhoods for treats. Throughout a sometimes long night of trick-or-treating, children become more and more impatient as they eagerly await unwrapping the delicious candy they just received. While a few children are tidy, most are not, meaning chocolate and candy will go everywhere. Hopefully, everywhere doesn't include your carpets or your customer's carpets. If it does: we have you covered.

      While the innocent and their family and guardians have a playfully sweet Halloween, many adults and teens attend Halloween themed parties late into the night. With decorations galore, food resembling everything Halloween, and scary movies and rooms (eeek!), it is easy to see how Halloween parties can leave big messes.

     Regardless of the where you choose to go or the costume you decide to where, you may face a few messes along the way. Cleaning Supply Network (and Service Products in San Antonio) has put together a list of carpet cleaning products and techniques that will help you with these tough stains. Feel free to print this list out, save it, and share it!

 Always Scrape, Blot, Vacuum, or Otherwise Remove (Carefully) Excess First

Candy (Sticky Candy, Lollipops) - (No Dye) Completely saturate with Blood & Spot Remover (our suggested detergent); allow detergent to set 1 minute; tamp vigorously with brush; flush with water; and extract or blot dry (whichever you prefer). Repeat if necessary.

Candy (Sticky Candy, Lollipops) - (Dye) [Before use, test a small, inconspicuous area.] Completely saturate area with Dye Stain Remover. Cover with a white cotton or paper towel. With the towel still over the stained are, use a steam iron, wallpaper steamer, or some other type of steamer to steam for 15-20 each pressing. Unwanted coloring/ dye should transfer to towel. Keep area saturated during transfers. Move to clean area of towel each pressing until dye is completely removed or transfer stops. Flush with water, blot dry, or extract.

Chocolate - Completely Saturate the area with Blood & Spot Remover . Allow to set for 2 minutes. Agitate with tamping brush and flush with water. Extract or blot dry. Then, apply Stand Alone to the chocolate stain and allow to set for 2 minutes. Extract or blot dry. Tough Spots: If the spot is still there, the chocolate may have been dyed. For that, please refer to the instructions for Candy (Sticky Candy, Lollipops) - (Dye), which is directly above this section.

Make-Up & Lipstick- Moisten Spot with Volatile Dry Spotter and blot with cloth, removing as much of the make-up and/or lipstick as possible. Moisten with a POG, agitate with tamping brush. Flush with Blood & Spot Remover and agitate with tamping brush. Then, extract or blot dry.

Alcoholic Beverages, Beer, Soda/Cola, Soft Drinks - Completely Saturate the area with Blood & Spot Remover. Allow to set for 2 minutes. Agitate with tamping brush and flush with water. Extract or blot dry. Then, apply Stand Alone to the chocolate stain and allow to set for 2 minutes. Extract or blot dry. (Tough Spot) If the spot is still there, the chocolate may have been dyed. For that, please refer to the instructions for Candy (Sticky Candy, Lollipops) - (Dye), above.

Food Dyes - [Before use, test a small, inconspicuous area.] Completely saturate area with Dye Stain Remover. Cover with a white cotton or paper towel. With the towel still over the stained are, use a steam iron, wallpaper steamer, or some other type of steamer to steam for 15-20 each pressing. Unwanted coloring/ dye should transfer to towel. Keep area saturated during transfers. Move to clean area of towel each pressing until dye is completely removed or transfer stops. Flush with water, blot dry, or extract.

Vomit - Depending on the amount, sickness, and severity of the vomit, there are different cleaning and removal techniques. Choose whichever you feel is appropriate for the job.

1. Saturate are with Blood & Spot Remover and allow it to set for 2 minutes. Agitate with tamping brush, flush with water, extract or blot dry. Apply Stand Alone and allow to set for 2 minutes. Extract or blot dry.

2. Mix 1 ounce of 2112 in a quart of hot water  ( 120-140 degrees Farenheit). Apply solution to the area. Cover with a warm, damp, white towel. Allow solution to set on area for 20 minutes, flush out with water, and extract or blot dry. Repeat if necessary.

3. Saturate the area with Blood & Spot Remover. While using the tamping brush on stain, flush with water and extract or blot dry. Saturate area with Enzyme Deodorant and extract or blot dry.

      

Everyone here at Cleaning Supply Network and Service Products hopes that you had a happy, fun, and safe Halloween. Now you will be well-prepared for any messes THIS holiday may bring to you or your customers. 

For more information on carpet cleaning and restoration techniques, keep checking back for more blog posts. We also host classes, primarily at our Austin and San Antonio locations, which you can call to sign up to attend. You can go to our website http://cleaningsupplynetwork.com to check out our current classes for all stores and click the links for detailed class information per location.