This is a sponsored post by Cents. Find out what Cents can do for your laundry business here. All reviews and opinions expressed in this post are based on my personal view.
Offering a laundry pick-up and delivery business is one of the best ways for a laundromat owner to expand their radius of influence, scale their business up, and increase revenue. With high margins and big revenue gains to be had, adding a laundry pick-up and delivery service to your laundromat could be a game-changer. Be acquiring new customers and scaling up your business can be a challenge. Here are 3 proven ways to increase your customer base and scale up your business.
Getting More Laundry Pick-up and Delivery Customers
If you’re starting from scratch, here’s a blog post that will tell you how to start a laundry pick-up and delivery business from scratch. It might also be beneficial to watch the video below to learn about the whole laundry pick-up and delivery process from start to finish.
Once you have the basics down, you’re ready to start scaling up your laundry pick-up and delivery business. Let’s look at 3 proven ways to add more customers to your database.
1. Have a Strong Online Presence
It goes without saying that it is more important than ever that every business has a strong online presence. Laundromats are no exception, especially if you’re going to run a pick-up and delivery service. You’ll need a way for customers to find you online and to be able to place a laundry pick-up order online.
Ways to reach potential customers online fall into two categories:
- Organically
- Paid Advertisement
Here are 3 places to ensure your laundromat and laundry pick-up and delivery can be found online organically.
- Your own laundromat website. It’s important to have a professional-looking website that you can direct potential customers to. For many customers, your website will be their first experience of your business, so make sure they have a great online experience so they will give you an in-person try. You also need a place for people to place a pick-up and delivery online and your website is the perfect place for that.
You can opt to build your own website. We put together a comprehensive tutorial to show you exactly how to build your own laundromat website. Or, if you prefer to have it built for you, check out Laundromat Resource Marketing and ask to see some example websites we’ve built for clients.
When growing your laundry pick-up and delivery service, make sure your software can integrate seamlessly with your website. Software such as Cents can help you convert website visitors into paying customers right from your website.
- Google My Business. Be sure to create and claim your laundromat’s Google for business account. Google will use this information in search results and on Google maps to help match people up with your business. Make sure you have access to the account and keep it updated. This is also where your customers will leave reviews, providing the all-important social proof.
- Yelp. While I’m not a big fan of Yelp as a company, and will never advertise with them again (and never advise coaching clients to advertise with them), it is important to claim your business on Yelp and keep your profile updated. Some of your customers will use Yelp to help them make a decision on where to do their laundry. When you own the account and monitor it you have the ability to respond to reviews and manage the narrative about your laundromat.
Here are the two most effective places that we at Laundromat Resource Marketing suggest paying for customers online through advertising.
- Google. Advertising your laundry pick-up and delivery service on Google allows you to target the people who are actively looking for this service. These are hot leads. They’re usually ready to place an order and outsource their least favorite chore to you for a fee. This is why advertising on Google can be so effective. You’re getting your business in front of the people who are looking for it right when they’re looking for it. This, coupled with your professional website, should lead to high conversion rates. Translation: More customers!
- Facebook. Advertising your laundry pick-up and delivery service on Facebook is a little different. You’re not putting your business in front of the people actively searching for your business, but you are able to target people who fall into your target demographic who are more likely to utilize this service. This gives you a wider exposure. And while your conversion rate (the number of people who order from you compared to the number of people who see your ad) will be lower than your Google ad conversion rate, you’ll likely gain a wider exposure.
2. Incentivize Your Existing Customers to Help
The second effective way to scale your laundry pick-up and delivery business is to recruit your customers to be your ambassadors and salespeople. You can do this by having them “work” for you both in-person and online. Here are a couple of ideas on how to do that.
- In person. Let’s tackle in-person first. One of the most effective ways that I have seen laundromat owners leverage their existing customer base to scale is through offering referral discounts to both the customer and the people they refer to you. I recommend to my coaching clients that they include a flyer advertising a discount for both the customer and anyone they refer in every bag of laundry they deliver to the customer. This includes the fluff and fold customers. I want my customers to be looking with and for me for new customers. Plus, this encourages that highly effective word-of-mouth advertising we all know and love!
Perhaps one of the easiest ways to grow your pick-up and delivery business is to offer incentives to your drop-off laundry customers to let you pick it up for them and drop it off at their front door. “Upselling” existing clients is usually easier and cheaper than acquiring new customers. - Online. Enlist your current customers to help you recruit new customers online by asking for and encouraging them to leave a rating and review on your business on Google and Yelp. This helps your business get noticed more, provides more social proof that you rock, and makes potential customers feel safer about giving you a try.
3. Use Promotions to Hook New Customers
Effective usage of promotions can help you hook new customers and break them of the habit of doing their laundry however they currently do it. Giving an initial discount or offering extra perks such as free upgrades to higher quality detergents can help incentivize potential customers to give you a try. Incentivizing utilization of your services on slower days can turn those slow days into some of your busiest by attracting new customers willing to try your service when it’s cheaper.
The sky is the limit on what promotions you can use to hook customers. Be creative and try to make an irresistible offer to make it a no-brainer to give you a try.
One Caveat
The one caveat to all of this helping you scale your laundry pick-up and delivery business is that once you do get a customer to try you out, you need to deliver a great experience for them to keep them coming back. Don’t put in the time, effort, and money it takes to get a new customer only to lose them to bad service or poor systems. Utilize a great software system like Cents to ensure your customers have the best experience every time. That is the true secret to successfully scaling your laundry pick-up and delivery business!
