Leaflets For Window Cleaning

Are you starting a window cleaning business and wondering if leafleting is an effective strategy to attract customers? In this video, we dive deep into the impact of leafleting as a marketing tool, exploring its benefits, limitations, and how it can fit into your overall customer acquisition strategy.
Join us as we share expert tips on designing eye-catching leaflets, targeting the right neighborhoods, and measuring your results. Whether you're a seasoned pro or just launching your business, this video will provide valuable insights to help you grow your customer base effectively!
👉 Don’t forget to like, subscribe, and hit the notification bell for more tips on building a successful window cleaning business!
*Hashtags:*
#WindowCleaning #SmallBusinessTips #MarketingStrategy #Leafleting #CustomerAcquisition #EntrepreneurLife #BusinessGrowth #StartupSuccess #WindowCleaningBusiness #LocalMarketing #CleaningService #LeadGeneration
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[@gotocov]

I have leaflets in my van and at the beginning I dropped loads door to door and didn't work. I advised in a free magazine that cost me around £36.00. I advised in around 10 of them and it's working out good. The clients are senior citizens with more Disposable income than most. So I Quote for a window clean then up sale if there driveway needs pressure washer etc, it's worked out fantastic have a good relationship with the magazine owners. Don't do on line but will next year to build more customers. Fantastic video as always chris 👍🏼

[@ChrisAddis]

Thanks buddy. Glad you enjoyed it 😊

[@stevematthews4214]

Yes mate!!!!

[@stevematthews4214]

Good evening, everyone. Firstly, thanks Chris for your kind words. Lets get right into the knitty gritty! No, leaflets don’t work and never will work…..if they're SHITE. I find people always distribute small A5 size leaflet….SHITE! Who the hell is going to see that amongst a pile of other letters? No one, I know because I tried it. Everyone knows you need to stand out from the crowd and your competitors…..go big or go home. Send the biggest leaflet Royal Mail will deliver, A3 folded and make them 130GSM non of this 100GSM crap. The biggest mistake I see with leaflets is “your logo is wank” everyone one you see has “NICK WILLIAMS” in mahoosive letters and window cleaning in letters as small as your thumb nail. People don't want to know who are they want to know what you do, so hit them with it as big as you can. Transparency - get your pricing in the leaflet, on google and on your website, ppl love the fact that we don't just turn up and pluck a number out of thin air. Chris, is right we spend around £20,000 - £24,000 a year on leaflets…..ONLY LEAFLETS! We get a return year on year of around 2-3 job per 1000 drops which yields a 0.25% return….in more basic numbers 200,000 drops allows us to put another van on the the road once every year, which is 500 jobs per year bringing in £8000 per month - 3 months we have achieved our ROI. Not as hight as Chris mentioned at 3000…but that number is definitely achievable given more drops No bullshit here…i have physically shown Chris the figures on Cleaner Planner. Handing over the hard earned for a campaign is the easy bit, but to do so to you have to make harsh decisions and make sacrifices like selling your car, to fund the 1st campaign like I did. As it got busier I cleaned the extra work on a Saturday and Sunday that money went to one side until I had enough money for another campaign…rinse and reapet. I worked 7 days a week for 3 years. You have to spend money to grow. Canvassing is a fabulous tool if you do it yourself or train a confident staff member to do it, I have never knocked a door in my life, I have very little confidence and suffering with ADHD along with being on the autism spectrum I struggle socially. You get to a size where knocking doors can no longer match what you get from leaflets. Royal Mail will drop 200,000 leaflets in a month, can you knock that many doors in a month? No. Canvassing companies don't care about your business, they care about their business, they lie and cheat their way to a sale, they're salesmen….and salesmen are twunts. We have a “4 point of interest” rule Leaflets Website Google Van I am struggling to remember what else Chris mentioned in the video, 😂 I will leave you with this “I promised myself one thing “I will never be outworked” I will be happy to answer any questions, guys.

[@yourcleanerwindows6969]

When you put it like that it makes sense. If someone said give me £20k and I’ll give you 8k a month back for years, no brainer. Thanks for explaining it so clearly.

[@stevematthews4214]

@@yourcleanerwindows6969 you're most welcome, mate. This is the thing, people don't understand that the like of Pryors, MB window cleaning (midlands) and us have got the numbers and data to prove leaflets work…. Data which my good mate Chris has seen.

[@yourcleanerwindows6969]

@@stevematthews4214 everyone wants the results without the hard work and expense. How many campaigns a year do you do and how many leaflets per campaign?

[@stevematthews4214]

@@yourcleanerwindows6969 too true, they also don't want to make sacrifices, either. Campaigns - right this is where is gets interesting…. So I live on a small island out to sea called Anglesey, the town I live in is called Holyhead. From our HQ we work 60 miles out East….we don't have the luxury of being able to market North, East, South and West of where we are based. So, our marketing area only consists of 202,000 homes, given our reduced budget in the early days of marketing we used to target the areas as and when we could afford so year one we ran 8 campaigns Last year we did two 100,000 drops Nest year we will drop the 202,000 home 2 hopefully 3 times if we can stretch to it….i will more than likely take a pay cuts for a few months to make the 3rd campaign happen.

[@yourcleanerwindows6969]

@@stevematthews4214 thanks for being so transparent. Very interesting. I’m not in it to build a huge business but it makes you think.

[@clynton1]

Hi Chris slightly off topic but recently seen your video about using a hotbox to use warm hot water to clean windows in one of your vans ive been looking into this myself and was wondering if it was something you had adopted in futer vans and if it was worth the outlay ad they aint cheap 🤣 and if you have what one do you use bud?

[@ChrisAddis]

It's fine buddy. Hot box was good. But we got rid of it in favour of a bigger tank. Couldnt really justify the heater and additional tank space, due to weight... It's nice to have but not essential. There was an issue when I broke a window due to thermal shock etc (the water was too hot). Was great using on facia cleans etc but the £3k outlay was probably a bit of overkill. We get by just fine without it

[@knobbyrusset1386]

Agree, to do the big leaflet campaigns needs cash as the results won’t be immediate. Looking at ROI over the lifetime value of the customer, this might be great but doesn’t help if you not got the money to pay for them now. Canvassing is free and effective, so when starting out you have the time, but door knocking can be psychologically hard work!

[@stevematthews4214]

Great video, buddy. I am well thanks. I could write a book in reply to the comments here. I have a lad off this week on leave so I am on the tools, yep, even the big boys have to still get their hands dirty from time to time 😂 I will write a more detailed reply this evening. BTW when are you coming to see the new offices? Chris.

[@ChrisAddis]

Soon brother, been crazy up here. I await you analysis 😄

[@benswindows]

Theres a company near me in Surrey called Pryor's, the biggest residential company in UK, 23 vans and well over 10k customers, all he does is leaflets but at a million a time and gets royal mail to deliver them, if I remember he said it cost between £50 - £60k a time , so i would say they definitely work, but i like to knock and meet them.

[@ChrisAddis]

Lee Pryor is doing REALLY well thru leaflet and royal mail. Fair play to him.

[@stevematthews4214]

Lee is my business mentor. He has been guiding me for nearly 3 years.

[@johnshields4348]

Good content again Chris, yes leaflets do work if done at scale & as part of a plan. It is a big investment each campaign that we do but the investment works. But I also get why people say that leaflets don’t work as you did 👍

[@ChrisAddis]

Thanks John. Hope you're well mate. Keep saying we're due another brew....keep being busy 😂

[@johnshields4348]

@@ChrisAddis yeah definitely mate, I’ll give you a shout soon and call up to see you

[@uniteallaction]

Leaflets can still be effective, even in a world moving increasingly online. While receiving one in your mailbox may seem old-fashioned, they work if you approach them correctly. If they aren’t working for you, it's likely you're either using a poorly designed leaflet or not distributing them frequently enough. You don’t need to blanket an area with 20,000 leaflets. I prefer the "neighbor nudger" approach, where you occasionally drop one off to the houses nearby. This way, if your service is needed, the residents are likely to think of you since you're already familiar in their area. Additionally, I think you're mistaken in believing that distributing 20,000 leaflets will automatically lead to 3,000 customers. Your business might struggle to handle that level of work. The issue isn’t having too much business; it’s about not having enough staff to manage it, which is why growth is important. Using tools like GoCardless makes it much easier to scale your business. If you're still relying on manual bank transfers, you’ll find it hard to grow. I’ve said this before, Chris, and even the business you mentioned earlier uses GoCardless. It’s impossible to run a company of that size with so many employees and jobs without automating payments through systems like GoCardless or Stripe.

[@ChrisAddis]

A slip of phrase...I meant £20k worth of leaflets..not 20k in leaflets.

[@stevematthews4214]

I agree with you here, without Go Cardless we could not have grown to the size we are. GC is the golden tool in the tool box. I do disagree with some aspects, too. Like you don't need to drop 20,000 leaflets….no you don't you need to drop a minimum of 50,000. We have tried lower numbers, it just doesn't work.

[@sapamergenderson5769]

we do leaflets for Lee pawing, it depends how much u scale, we deliver door to door, and it depends always how much u homes cover and how often... many people who tries once, like 10k a week and drops u off cuz it doesnt work always mever makes it... we been with one roof company and pawing company over 2 years and they always have jobs daily and makes loads of money and only invests 20-35%... most of start up people expects quick results in doing something once... it takes time and repetition...espacialy in advertisment of what busines you are in😊

[@jasonbowyer3958]

I'm 6 weeks into my own business, I'm traditional, I bought 1500 leaflets, I too have turned forums inside out and most say leaflets are a waste of time, I've probably posted just under half of them so far and picked up 6 customers from them.

[@gerardmcmanus]

For me you might get 1 lead in every 100 flyers. You should convert 30%-50% of your leads. So 2-300 flyers per new customer. It's a numbers game just keep at it. I find Google business listing and our website gets most of our new work. We usually get 3-5 leads a week through that. Keep your leaflets simple. Three points. Who you are, what you do, how to contact you. Don't write a book, it's an elevator pitch. Also write about them. Don't use the word 'we' or 'I'. Write 'you/your'. Include pictures.

[@PottersWindowCleaning]

0.5% is an unusually good return. I did 600,000 this summer over five months and got 0.15%-or 900 customers, I don't hit them 4 times though, I do 600k individual houses. From 100k leaflets, you'll get around £2.5k-3.5k extra services (gutters, etc.). With all things accounted for it works out about a 3x cost per customer, obviously this depends massively on your individual fee structure, mine is fairly high. You also end up paying higher costs when you get into high volumes as local leaflet delivery operators can't handle the workload in the timeframe that's needed for it to work, so you have to use Royal Mail, which is much more expensive. I spent £63k Ex VAT this summer.

[@JBWindowcleaning-vw9rv]

I think it realy depends on area. I think in big city’s where people get more junk mail it may not be as good. I usually get 2-6 customers per 1k posted on their own. Yea it’s expensive but they are usually good customers all signed up to go cardless.

[@thailandheron]

Yes. 0.5% is a very good return

[@easyspeak101]

I noticed that mail thru letterbox with royal mail has "junk mail" related to recent webpage searches on my phone which suggests advertised payment with royal mail might be a thing for new customers..

[@NorthernSmog]

Interesting approach with scale, obviously not something a small operation can do though lol I tried leafleting in a small way like you at first it didnt work same as you. So I started door knocking way more effective, however I do have a method of leafleting I personally use which has a way higher success rate then those professional ones you buy lol I print my own. Small squares with my basic information and what a typical service includes, all black and white. I fit 8 on one piece of A4 so it's incredibly cheap to print thousands of these things but the one thing I do different is include a "Personal Quote" this is front and centre of the slip. I simply write my quote, post and move on. The return on these little gems is amazing and you don't really have to set aside time to do it either. I mix it in with my cleans, when I get new customers I'll clean their windows and then drop a few "Personal Quotes" I encourage anyone to try this for themselves and see how well they work.

[@ched999uk]

That's quite a big investment plus imagine trying to add 3000 jobs to your schedule all within a few weeks!!! Chapping is good as you also get to asses the customer and their property. I suppose on that scale you win some, you loose some, so all good.

[@stevematthews4214]

With the right systems and processes in place its easier than you would think to add 3,000 customers. Don't get me wrong the girls in the office have their work cut out adding them all to Cleaner Planner 😂

[@aidanbrady2449]

Leaflets only for the big boy's 👍

[@ChrisAddis]

I think so. Its not something that everyone can or should do that's for sure

[@carlcrockford8540]

Genuinely think there isn’t a one box solution for anyone we have tried everything our best luck is telling existing customers we are looking for more work, seems a lot harder over the last few years but imo strong organic growth beats anything else. People don’t want to hear that but customers that ‘come to you’ will stay with you, we have had a a nightmare with canvassing, got no where with social media campaigns and leaflets blind dropped are a waste of time in my opinion.

[@ChrisAddis]

Each to his own, but we agree that the best advertising is a happy customer that's vocal enough to help get you more work

[@chackn3y888]

How are you advertising? We are starters and get alot from social media atm and word of mouth,

[@ChrisAddis]

A mix of social media, canvassing etc. We just keep it simple. Upselling to existing customer also does well and we have enquiries from Google thru the website also

[@chackn3y888]

@@ChrisAddis cheers chris 👍🏻

[@Jack_Warner]

I found leaflet drops to be pointless. For every 1000 leaflets, I posted, I got one job. Just not worth the effort.

[@ChrisAddis]

Again, I see your point. It's something that works with scale...its just that few businesses of small size can match it to be effective.

[@stevematthews4214]

What sort of return where you expecting, mate? I find a lot of guys have unrealistic targets. Believe me 1 job per 1000 drops isn't rubbish. The 1st thing you should do then is double your output. 2nd thing is look at better design.