The Scrub S2E6: Secrets to Marketing Your Cleaning Business with Jonathan Rockett

Improve your organization's marketing and sales as well as management and field operations by tuning in to the Scrub. What up, everybody? Welcome to another episode of the Scrub. Sam Clayton, here alongside me, Kaden Hutchins. We are the team that is at the head at Clean Intelligence Software and every so often we get some time to put towards the Scrub, which is awesome. So glad to be here and anxious to talk about some exciting stuff as it regards to marketing your cleaning business. It's going to be a fun episode. Last time we talked about leadership on the Scrub and we were joined by Mike sawchuk, consultant of 20 plus years in the cleaning industry. He broke down the characteristics of a good leader and clarify the differences between management and leadership. And there is a vast difference. Caden, some highlights from last time.

Yeah, I mean, leadership is key to any organization's success. It creates the best work environment for employees, leaves your company able to adjust to change in the industry. And, you know, another key component of a successful company is to tell is the story you tell to your customers. And today on the Scrub, we're talking about marketing and gaining new customers for your business. So your business can't thrive without a healthy supply of new customers. Right. Sales is the key. Bringing all that in and gaining new business, that's just business 101. And actually getting those customers is a lot trickier than just saying it. So we're going to really dig in today's discussion and we have invited the digital marketing expert Jonathan Rocket to the podcast.

A longtime creative entrepreneur with a passion for marketing, sales and branding, Jonathan has excellent skills in communication and copywriting, web design and content development and and is highly knowledgeable in most disciplines of the digital marketing ecosystem, including lead generation, SEO and ppc, email marketing, and social media. Please welcome Jonathan Rockett.

What's up, guys? How's it going?

Going well. Thanks for joining us today. So exciting to have you. When we were working with the marketing team on on the next episode here, when we found out that you were coming on, we were excited because this is something new and fresh. A topic that's important but we don't necessarily talk about all the time is the importance of marketing. That's my background. I was the director of marketing before I moved into executive leadership at Clean Intelligent. And it's where it starts. That's where it begins.

Right?

And there's so many ways that businesses can enhance their marketing. So, so excited to have you on the show, Jonathan. Thanks for taking the time to start out. We want to just hear from you. Tell us about your Journey in the Jansan industry. What got you to where you are today?

Yeah, absolutely. Sam. Oh my goodness. Well, my, my journey goes back a lot longer than one podcast episode I suppose could give you, but I have a background as a teenager as a circus clown with Ringling Brothers clydebatty Cole Brothers Circus. This is not a joke. I was a unicyclist jud and clown in the circus. I went to college for theater and really developed this passion for storytelling and ultimately ended up with a job totally unrelated in interior design and had a home remodeling business in the building services industry. So there were some overlap comes and through fast forwarding 20 years, got into design on the web and web design, digital marketing and lead generation. And that brought me to Sizzling Digital, which is my company now and the company's called Sizzling Digital because I probably don't have to tell you or maybe some of your listeners the old sales adage, you sell the sizzle, not the steak, right? If you spend your time focusing on what you do and the services you offer, you're completely not listening to your customer. Right? So if you spend your time talking about the problems that you can solve for your customer and focusing on them, you're always going to have a better sales opportunities. So we're called Sizzling Digital and that's what we do now. We're a full service digital marketing agency that through Covid just in the last year we have completely turned away clients and specialized 100% in the commercial cleaning industry. So we, we focus on helping commercial cleaning companies find their exact perfect target clients and develop a consistent stream of sales appointments to grow their business. In this post Covid world.

That is exciting. That's cool too that you decided to kind of dive into that niche.

Right?

Because it is niche. Right. Anybody in the industry would agree as well that it's very fine and it's a specific audience that's in that industry, but so exciting that that there's this aspect that people can gain help on. Right? So that's awesome. What do you think are some of the biggest challenges that that industry faces cleaning businesses might face when trying to market their business?

Yeah, Sam, that's a great question. You may have seen or some of your listeners may have seen an article in large industry study that I did for Issa today. And in the big shakeup of COVID full transparency. I was everything to everybody as a digital marketer. I had everything from yogurt companies and gymnasiums to technology products and startups as clients and a Lot of them fell away. I watched my business sort of disintegrate. And sitting back, it gave me an opportunity to see a blank canvas, to quote unquote, start over again. Of course, I've been doing this for over a decade, but to see what really lies an opportunity in the market. And I was at the idea of health and safety and infection prevention, and I watched this crazy thing happen, which you guys are fully aware of, where the cleaning industry became frontline workers, almost as highly elevated as the fire department, the police department. And we're literally talking about people deciding who helps our facilities. We have to walk in to be healthy and safe. And I'm an entrepreneur and I saw an opportunity where there's a shakeup that I feel like is a once in a generation opportunity for the cleaning industry to sort of redefine its role in the public conversation. Right. What used to be this silent janitorial service that was commoditized in the background, where you showed up at the office building the next day and the trash cans were emptied and the toilets were clean. Now all of a sudden people want to see those cleaners, they want to know what the results are. And all of a sud. Cleaning companies play the biggest role in whether or not people want to come in the building to begin with. So I saw it as an opportunity and that's why I decided for my company to completely focus in that direction because I feel like it's good for society, it's good for business, and it's good for an industry that's been in desperate need of some, some evolution for quite a while.

And that, that is exciting. Thoughts, Kaden?

Yeah, the, the aspect of what Covid did really gave this industry an opportunity to shine. Many people took it. We saw many customers have a incredible increase in business and opportunities for facilities that had to stay open and make sure that they were sanitized correctly. So, you know, with that kind of mindset of, hey, this is the opportunity to shake things up, really dive in, use this opportunity. People are valuing cleaning more than they ever have before, you know, for a business. At what point should their journey with marketing start? Like, when do they really need to take marketing seriously as they're getting going on this, this business journey in the cleaning industry?

Yeah, well, if you're, if you're talking about a cleaning company, you know, versus a facility. If I'm a business owner that owns an office and I'm looking for somebody to hire, I'm certainly based on, you know, public heightened awareness, looking for a cleaning company that's going to keep my facilities safe and that I can tell my employees, my tenants, my customers that walk through that space, we are doing everything possible to keep this place, infection prevention, you know, safe. As a cleaning company, I think that it presents an incredible opportunity because we've gone through decades where it was a commoditized, like I mentioned before, idea that we just come in and clean. Now we have an opportunity to differentiate ourselves. So if you're a commercial cleaning company, you're standing in an interesting place. And I Talked with over 100 commercial cleaning companies over 12 countries and 5 continents for this massive industry study that I put together before even deciding to like, dip my toe into this industry. And I had zoom interviews with over, you know, 25 different major players in the commercial cleaning industry, from presidents, vice presidents and CEOs of your ABM Jam Pro, billion dollar companies, down to your mom and pops with two or three employees. And what I found was, and I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to say this very, very delicately. If you don't define the narrative that you can provide a safe environment for the facility that you're cleaning, then you're not going to make it. Post Covid.

Yeah, yeah, 100%. It's so important too to understand those needs. I mean, back when the pandemic first started, you made the comment a little bit ago, it's the essential work that these people do. And so that shift of essential work being seen, needing to prove that and share that proof in, in marketing and sales and every, every aspect of the work that they're doing is, is super important. And so I love that it's true.

And one of the other things that we uncovered by talking to so many folks in the industry, it's a natural market tendency for clients to defer to the larger pedigreed national brands. So you've got your large brands, your international companies, your franchises. But as you guys know, the cleaning industry is very fragmented, right? And the average, you know, external statistics, the average cleaning company is 850 to $900,000 a year, right? So we've got thousands of smaller, what you would consider small business mom and pops who have a nice little business going, but they faced with the brand recognition fight that comes with differentiating themselves. And so one of the things I saw happen through the last, say, let's call it 18 months is smaller commercial clinic companies being faced with the reality of figuring out how to differentiate themselves, cut through the noise and still remain relevant when what A lot of the larger potential profitable clients are looking for is just a big name.

Yeah, yeah. To cut through that noise, oftentimes it just takes the right marketing mix sometimes. What channels do you feel like are most important for companies to generate more leads or more traffic to potentially win new business?

That's a great question. Yeah. So what it really comes down to, of course there's a saying you guys might have heard, niches make riches. And defining your ultimate client avatar, your exact target audience that you're best equipped to deal with, who you have the best vibes with if you want to put it on a woo woo scale, or if you want to put it on an Excel spreadsheet, who you actually can service the best and relate to the best. A lot of us try and be everything to everyone. As a personal example, as a digital marketing company, a web designer, you know, like I said at the beginning, I've had all kinds of of clients. But I realized that by focusing in on a particular industry that I'm passionate about learning the language of that particular client and answering their specific problems in a necessary and ultimately valuable way is important. And so for a commercial cleaning company, the same is true. You might focus on the healthcare facility industry, you might focus on restaurants, you might focus on education, schools. But if you understand your client inside and out, it's so much better to have 20 clients who understand exactly what you're doing and reap the benefits than a thousand who might be firing you next month because they really don't know what it is that you're providing for them. So to answer your question about channels, it's different for every company, but at the end of the day, it's really about how you unlock your unique market value to the clients who can benefit the most from what you're offering. You know, what we offer at Sizzling Digital is web design, SEO, you know, pay per click campaign, social media, email, all those things are not, they're commodities. Just like running a mop or broom or cleaning a bathroom are. Right. What makes us different and what should make you different as a commercial cleaning company is the way that you meet the specific needs of your client because you understand them well through using those tools. So they're tools in a tool belt.

Yeah, I think one of the things that just came to mind was I had a conversation with a client end of last year, massive, massive business. And they had 20 clients. That's all they had. But those 20 clients were worth millions of dollars each. Large scale medical facilities. And they decided to specialize in the medical arena. And they did very well. They have thousands of employees just for those 20 clients. And you're just like, my goodness, the niches make the riches. I really like that because that was very niche. Most people would say, oh, you only have 20 customers. It's not very big. It's just like, well, I mean, we still make millions. So whatever you say, you know.

That's right, that's right, that's right. Because at the end of the day, you're, you're solving someone else's problems, right? Otherwise you have no value in the market and you can't solve everybody's problems. But if you take the time to listen to a particular group problems, you can actually create a solution that services them and you can become the go to space. So like I said at Sizzling Digital, what we do is help you define what that niche is, who your target market is, or you guys have marketing background. You know, you know the term like your customer avatar, understanding exactly who you're talking to. Because everybody doesn't speak the same language. So once you understand who you're talking to, what their problems are, and what you can offer to solve those problems, you're in a much better position to create a marketing channel that, that feeds those problems and allows those, those clients to actually step up and receive the value that you're providing for them.

That's awesome. One final question, and then we usually like to end with what's the golden nugget that people should take away from our conversation today and any final thoughts you might have. But when it comes to, like you're saying that these companies, once they figure out who they need to talk to and how they need to talk to these people, what are some other final steps or other steps that they can take, these cleaning companies to evaluate the marketing effort, like, where do I stand now and what do I need to do to know where I should put my time and effort when it comes to marketing?

Yeah, man, that's such a great question, Sam. So, in fact, I went back and forth this morning thinking about coming onto you guys podcast today. And I was toying with the idea of doing something really cool for the scrub listeners. And I've never done this before, but screw it, I'm going to do it. So we do this thing called a custom growth map. I usually charge $1,200 for it. It doesn't require that you guys work with us as an agency, et cetera, but what we do is take two to three one hour sessions with you and help you define who your exact customer is, what your message is to actually solve their problems. We look through all of your numbers, your sales, your marketing channels and find the bottlenecks and put together an actual marketing BL that you can walk away with with actionable ideas to help you move to that next level. It's a one off thing that we do. But, but, but I will offer this and I'm going to put it out there right now. I hope I don't regret it. But we will offer. If you mentioned the Scrub podcast and you come to sizzlingdigital.com, book a call, we'll do it for you for free. And you can walk away with a, with absolute clarity around your marketing goals, what your channel should be, who your customer is and what value you really bring to them so that you can tell them in their own words how you're going to help them solve their problem.

Wow, that is awesome, Jonathan. Thank you so much. We will make sure to tease that so they have to dig into the Scrub to do it.

Find that out.

That's right. Listen, and you might get a nice offer from Jonathan. Awesome. Awesome. So final thoughts. If you had to leave our listeners with one final thought, like, hey, take this, run with it, grab your running shoes because this is what you need to do next. Right? What can you leave our listeners with?

Absolutely. If you are in the commercial cleaning industry right now, you are in a literal once in a lifetime shakeup. That is an opportunity to redefine what you do to the American public or international public. If you're not listening from America and you have an opportunity to grow your business in a way that you never had before on the back of, unfortunately a very difficult situation with COVID by being a major player in helping all of the buildings that we go into be clean, safe, healthy.

Awesome. So good, Jonathan. Thank you so much, everybody. You can go check out Jonathan on LinkedIn, go connect with him and we'll be sure to keep everybody excited and posted about new happenings with his company. So thank you so much, Jonathan, for joining us. Have a great rest of your day and we'll chat later.

My pleasure, guys. Thank you so much. Big fan. Thanks you guys.

We'll see you. All right, everyone, we appreciate Jonathan's thoughts. One of the things that just stood out to me, one of the things I wrote down was the USP or the unique selling point as he was talking. This unique selling point that you have the opportunity to offer comes from a careful study of your target market. Right. And I loved what he said about understanding pain. The separation of, hey, I get what you're going through. When I was mentioning just earlier, the dial in of one of our customers only having 20 clientele but yet extremely successful, massive portfolio is because they understood a very, very specific point, right? The unique selling point and their success literally delivered their financial success and revenue and the opportunity to employ thousands of employees because they understand that. What a cool thing to think about for your organization.

Yeah, I love that. Because the question is, how do you cut through the noise? How do you make yourself be different from others? And that's it, Understand them, figure out what you do differently and then speak to them. And that is the porcelain thought of the day actually, is that people buy from people. But I want to take it a step further because I've heard that a lot lately is people buy from people. And I agree, even in business to business, it's P2P. People to people, right? But more so, I believe that it's people buy from people they can trust, right? And so beyond just buying, it's just super important to build trust. Trust is the critical factor in any business transaction. Regardless. I saw this example, I thought it was funny. Whether it's a hamburger at a diner or you're selling a multimillion dollar consultancy service, it's all the same, right? You have to have trust. And so there's, there's a level when clients are considering you, right? And you're sending marketing stuff, you're doing sales, you're calling them on the phone, building those relationships. They're asking themselves potentially two questions. Can I trust this company and its team and executives, and do I respect the company and the representatives? So it's trust and respect because that's what they want. They want to be putting their money to someone they can trust that they respect and they want the same in return, right? Beyond a return on the investment when it comes to monetary things, right? So some ways that I've read up on when I thought of this idea was to build that trust. Listen to what the customer has to say, right? Or the prospect. Make the discussion more personal. Get to know them, right? Be clear and transparent, be consistent, demonstrate your expertise, but don't brag about it, right? They just want to know that they're talking with a human that doesn't have all the answers but is willing to go work with that person to find those answers. Be authentic, don't cut corners, don't skip things out. Just be real, right? And then make sure they feel like they're the top priority and that you do as you promised. Those are some of the things that I've listed and had found in my research that I thought was really, really valuable. And when you consider the idea of people buying from people that they trust and that they like. And if you do those things that. That could help. So anyway, thanks for listening to the Scrub. Sam and Kaden here signing off for another episode. We'll catch you next time. 3, 2, 1.