Type the words “house cleaning [your city here]” into Google and you’re liable to bring up a map covered in dots representing other businesses in your area.For someone about to start a cleaning business, that’s a scary picture. Seems every person in your area with a knack for keeping a place clean has decided to take their show on the road. But have no fear – when we dug deeper into the question of what makes a successful Maid Service business, we found ways in which you can find yourself business cleaning before the other maid does. We scrutinized advertisements, client comments, and various niches that maid services have taken to get cleaning contracts, and have come up with three tips that can help you get started.1. Choose a strategy for marketing and get your name out there.Sounds obvious, we know, but there are ways that work and ways that don’t. What we advocate for the beginning house cleaner is a direct marketing tactic that takes little money but a significant amount of time. Cleaning flyers. Advertise your house cleaning business to homes and apartments near where you live in the form of a carefully made piece of paper you drop on doorsteps. Entering business for yourself requires the same time commitment you’d give to a normal employer. In the beginning, spend several full days each week devoted solely to spreading the word. The flyer should really emphasize who you are (see tip number two), what you are best at, and the fact that you’re local and independent. Target a market, and tailor the advertisement to get clean up work from a specific group of people. Think creatively, here. If you’re living in a progressive part of the country, perhaps you’ll want to advertise that you are more truly “green” than the other cleaning businesses because you can walk to the worksite. If you’re in an economically depressed neighborhood in the suburbs, drop flyers by real estate agencies offering foreclosure cleanup. Taking time to set up a cleaning business marketing strategy that targets the people in your area is an excellent way to start your new business. As you expand, you’ll want to create an internet advertisement. This involves far more competition than very local door-to-door flyering, but has benefits. It is critical that you take time to make your Craigslist ad look better than that of the competition. It is an enormous boost to get registered on Yelp and to get your customers to provide feedback there. A side note: study all the feedback other maids are receiving. There’s a lot to learn by doing this about what does and doesn’t work.2. Put a face on your operation.Out of all the most highly rated cleaning businesses we found on the internet, at least one third had a business name that included the first name of the person doing the cleaning. What this shows us is that the small house cleaning business thrives on personality. If you can’t deal with obnoxious dogs, screaming children, or troublesome clients while wearing a smile and jovial attitude, you’ll miss out on word-of-mouth contracts and repeat customers. As you expand your cleaning business, these gigs will be your bread and butter. Your cleaning flyers must have your picture on them. It doesn’t have to be a shot of you cleaning. Everyone’s seen a hundred pictures like that. Let the picture be of your trustworthy face. In order to set up regular work with a client, they’ll have to love you as a person, not just the work you do. Apply the tenants of good customer service you learn in any service industry to the small cleaning business industry.3. Niche Cleaning Businesses Thrive on Promotions.There’s an advantage to starting a specific type of cleaning service, whether it’s foreclosure cleanup, business cleaning, a restaurant cleaning business, or a window cleaning service – you’re enabled an opportunity to offer promotions that aren’t economical or wise from the perspective of someone running a simple home cleaning business. In the case of a niche cleaning business, you know what you’re getting yourself into, what equipment you need, and how long it takes you to perform specific cleaning tasks regular to that niche. For instance, the window cleaner knows what window cleaning equipment will work for nearly all types of window and how long it takes them to clean a window of a certain size. As a result, bidding a sight-unseen contract becomes easier and the opportunity for strategic discounting emerges. Offer a free skylight cleaning for businesses that need you to do more than a certain amount of work, for example, or offer to clean the windows of a pet shop (in case you’re running an aquarium maintenance business) if they hire you less than two weeks from the time you advertise. Strategic promotions get interested customers to make a decision. A small deal that is easy for you to do and sounds big can push them into going with you as opposed to a different service. Keep your offers up-to-date, fresh, and seasonal.It might be impossible to succeed in starting a cleaning business if you don’t really love what you’re doing. You’ve got to be a joy to be around when you’re in someone’s home. If you market carefully and effectively, keeping in mind the entire time that the next step is the garnering of good feedback and references, you’ll be well on your way to starting a small house cleaning business that is a success.
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Travel Planning 101
Going on an out-of-town vacation can be quite demanding especially if you’re planning it personally. You have to look for the location, book an accommodation and organize your itinerary. Budget is also another issue of concern. For most of us, travel planning is not a simple thing to do, but if you know the basics then the rest will be easy. Several factors such as purpose, place, budget and time is all you need to know to get you started in your travel planning.Purpose – This is quite important to discuss with yourself and your travel buddy. Of course it is a given that the main objective of any vacation is relaxation, but as simple as it is, we as tourists always love to add a few small details. For example, do you want to go swimming? Perhaps try on new water sports? On the other hand, maybe you want to escape the busy streets and go on a hike somewhere? Or rather, you prefer sight-seeing and spending time in a foreign place or better yet experience a new kind of adventure, perhaps zip-lining, wall climbing, mountain biking, etc.Another thing, events such as wedding, honeymoon, anniversary celebration, family vacation, and family reunion or probably a trip with your friends also count as a purpose, so do consider those details. Now why is it important to know the purpose? Knowing can help you choose your destination and itinerary. Selecting a destination is much simpler if you already have an idea on what you want to do from the start.Place – A wise traveler always does his own research first. Knowing a few things about your travel destination can help you familiarize with the place. In my experience, before choosing any destination, I usually ask myself a few things such as: “Is there anything interesting that I can do here?” or maybe, “Can I afford to go on this trip” or “Do they have any type of promos or special packages?” These questions can guide you in your research. For starters, you can check out various websites that contain information about your prospect destination. And while you’re at it, check out their accommodation rates or any special promos. Researching would literally save you time and money. Doing this could probably spare you from ending up with an unpleasant vacation.Another important thing to remember, in choosing a travel destination always consider your travel buddies. For example, choose a more child friendly location if you’re planning on bringing kids with you. Furthermore, I suggest to try searching for vacation packages online or through a travel agent, especially if you’re planning for a long vacation since availing one can be quite convenient.Budget – Estimating the total budget needed for any kind of out-of-town trip depends on several things such as the destination, duration of the trip, number of people going on this trip and the manner of accommodation. For example, will you be staying on a budget or perhaps enjoy a luxurious vacation? After you have settled all of this, then congratulations! You now have an estimated budget limit. All that’s left to do is to compare this calculated amount to your estimated expense and if everything fits in smoothly then you got yourself a vacation else, you can always start again.Time – For me, this is the most crucial part of travel planning, especially if you’re the busy type of person. Finding the right time when to spend your vacation can be quite arduous, unless of course if you have a good stock of vacation leaves. This factor is also essential in determining what kind of activity is available to you. Remember that there is always what we call a seasonal vacation. For example, spending a summer vacation would mean spending a lot of time on the beach while a winter vacation would mean skiing in the mountains or traveling to tropical countries to avoid the cold climate. Furthermore, travel dates are very important if you are planning to avail of special promos and packages. However, if you can afford it, I suggest to avoid travelling during the peak season.
Brainstorming The Ideas for Influencing Your Mobile App Audience
Once the app is downloaded, you have little time to take a sigh of relief, and then again start focusing on making things easier for the them till their goal is achieved.
According to the AppsFlyer, an app marketing company, the global uninstall rate for apps after 30 days is 28%. Entertainment apps are most frequently deleted, whereas apps based on Finance is least frequently deleted. No matter which app category you belong to, your strategy should be to remain in the mobile phones of users for a long time, and not just sit around but to fulfill your purpose as well.
If we analyze the encounters of users with an app step by step, it can help us unveil the critical factors that influence mobile app audiences, so that we can work upon those and achieve our purpose. Here are the details:
Step1. Finding Your App in Appstore
For this, we have to first find out what exactly users type to search an app. Based on a research, it has been found that 47% app users on iOS confirmed that they found the app through the App Store’s search engine and 53% app users on Android confirmed the same.
What have been their search queries? Interestingly, as the per the data provided by the TUNE research, 86% of the top 100 keywords were brands.With little scope for non-branded categories, most of the keywords were either of games of utility apps. Common keywords in the non branded category are: games, free games, VPN, calculator, music, photo editor, and weather.
Leaving brands aside, if we analyze the user-type of a Non-branded category, we will get two types of users:
1. Users are informed, and they know what they are search
2. Users are exploring possibilities, have no precise information in mind.
If you are a mobile app development company, targeting non-branded users, then your efforts must be directed to creating apps that compel these two types of users. To do so, we have to analyze once they are on an app store, what keywords they use to search. Regina Leuwer, with expertise in marketing & communications, bring some light to the subject. She reached out Sebastian Knopp, creator of app store search intelligence tool appkeywords, who shared with her the data of unique trending search phrases. And according to that data, in 2017, there were around 2,455 unique search phrases trending in the US.
Now, if we study these data to get information, we will find that name of the app is critical to attract the attention of the users.
If your app belongs to non-branded category, then make sure your app name is similar to the common search queries but also unique in comparison with your competitors. So that when your app name is flashed, they click it on to it, finding it purposeful and compelling both.
Step 2. Installation
Remember your users are on mobile devices has limited resources, from battery to storage and RAM to Internet. Everything is limited. So better create an application that is easy to download or say get downloaded with 5 minutes. One critical advice here:
1. Keep the application file size small.
If you are a developer, use APK Analyser to find out which part of the application is consuming maximum space. You can also reduce classes.dex file and res folder that contains images, raw files, and XML.
Step 3. Onboarding
After the user has successfully downloaded your mobile application, don’t leave anything on assumptions. Guide them properly. This you can do through an onboarding process, where users can learn the key functionality and where to begin with the mobile app. Below are the 3 things you need to keep in your mind when creating an onboarding process for your users.
Short and Crisp: The entire guidance of features and functions should be completed within few seconds, with easy options loud and clear option to skip.
Precise Information: Don’t introduce them to the app. They already know what they have downloaded. The objective to inform about the key functions and features.
Allow Users to Skip: Let the tech-savvy users skip the intro. Your app is to meet their requirement and not to have a friendly session.
Step 4. Purpose and UI
Here, the stage is set for your app and it is the golden chance for you to impress your users. What is needed here is the collaboration between purpose and UI of the app. It totally depends on the problem-solving capability and ease of use of the mobile app. Interface design plays the critical role, allowing the users to access features of the apps easily and quickly to perform the task for what they have downloaded the app. When it comes to interface design, make sure that the design is interactive and task-oriented. Here are some factors that you must take care off while creating mobile app interface:
1. Usability: The Mobile phone is an epitome of convenience and if your users find it difficult to use your app, then there is no way there are going to make the space for it in their mobile phones. From screen size to the color of the app, there are many factors that are equally critical and need attention.
2. Intuitive: To create an intuitive User Interface, you have to read the mind of the users, and develop a model based on that. The next should be precise, clear and ‘obvious’ in an interface.
3. Availability: Key features should be hidden in the drop down menu or even if so, it should be obvious for the user to look into the drop-down. An intricate work of design and research is required to make essential features available for the customers and they don’t need to navigate here and there.
If you need more help with the user-interface and innovative ideas for a mobile app, write to me [email protected] and I promise to get back to you with interesting mobile app designs.