[kenny9524]

For starting a home based cleaning business, how effective are door hangers in targeted neighborhoods where the least expensive home is an over 55 retirement community starting at 300k and the other neighborhoods homes with people of all ages range from 325k to 800k? Is there a statistic response rate for door hangers and house cleaning or does it just vary based on household income. I know direct mails is 1-3 percent so door hangers must be higher than that I would think. Anyone know the range? Thanks all.

[Clough]

Hi, kenny9524!

Please excuse me for asking, but are you wanting to go into this kind of business or are you asking the question because this is some kind of school assignment in terms of statistics? Seems to me that there is a lot of analyzing going on that might not be necessary.

People that have persons cleaning their homes on an occasional or frequent basis, will be choosing as to whether they are going to be wanting someone to come and do that and pay for the service. It might not be income related at all as to afford-ability or because of advertising that has been placed on a door. I know millionaires that have house cleaners as well as people with a modest incomes that employ others to clean for them.

If a person wants to go into the cleaning business, they they get some experience cleaning and then get their information "out there" in some way so that they will be noticed. If the case is that you are wanting to go into this kind of business, then it's really not that hard to advertise for free or without spending much money or time at all. Hanging things on doors costs the person doing the advertising money and a great deal of time.

I have a number of small businesses that I run. Most of my business comes from the free ads that I have placed on the Internet. I do quite well in them as far as getting responses to my ads. If you would like to know about how to place free and effective ads on the Internet, then please let me know.

Word of mouth because of the fine job that a person might have done cleaning for someone, talking to friends to see if someone needs someone to clean for anyone and putting your advertising in the proper places that look the most professional in order to get the most exposure are the best ways to go.

About once a week, I get a free circular of ads from the local newspaper that is placed in my mail box. I always throw it away. I didn't invite the local newspaper to be having things placed in my mailbox that I don't really want. If I want something, then I'm going to go looking for it rather than someone putting it in front of me that this is what they do and please hire me or buy what they have to sell. Just a hint there...

But, I would still appreciate an answer to my questions that I asked in the first paragraph above as to why you are asking the question.

You see, I really would like understand what you are wanting and want to help you. If I didn't want to help you, I wouldn't have taken the time that I already have in order to respond to your question.

Thanks!

[kenny9524]

Thanks for writing back to me. No this is not a school project. I fifnished school years ago. I wanted to know numbers because I wanted to concentrate my marketing efforts where they are most effective and get me what I want. I want and will get, multiple homes in any one particular neighborhood of choosing. That's why the dor hangers that are not that expensive at all. Really they are not. I Don't want houses all over the place like 20-30 miles away all the time. I work for a cleaning company now that does that and they can't make money on doing that. Your right,, you don't want people putting things on your door and saying, "here i am i do this and that clal me and use me," but that's the beauty of the human race. We are all different. That why I wanted to know the numebrs. I learned much about marketing from several businssess I dealt with. One is response rate in niche markets. I just don't know what it is in this market. 2 is that lots of times out of sight means out of mind. They might not be thinking of hiring a cleaner and one brochire gets the wife telling the husband she doesn't want to do it anymore call this guy etc. from different marketing jobs I found all people are different and have different views onthings. Out of sigh tout of mind. Door hangers will be put in their sight and therefore in there mind. These 300 homes in an area I want may not look at these free web site marketing places you talk of. But they will look at a door hanger. If they want a cleaner they can go to the yellow pages. I want them to go to my door hanger before they go to the yellow pages. Also, I found that just because one markets to a neighborhood and with direct mail or whatever, and get a low response rate they give up. That's great because they don't realize it takes a few times and each time to the same neighbor hood gets a new client or more(depending on stats) I need those stats. I know it will bring in business I just want to know how much the response rate is for them when it comes to cleaning houses. Most businessess work like that from what I have seen. Direct mail postcards in mortgage refinancing works like that 1-3 % respons rate per mailing. After 5 mailings to the same homes the list is pretty much exhausted. If mortgage refinancing gets a resposne rate of 1-3 percent and most of those people just don't want to refinance cause the rate wasn't good enough I wan tot know this door hanger number so I can cordinate the timing of hanging in different neighborhoods. Time, yes it will take time to hang in addition to my full time job. But time is something I am will to give for my own business. Besides, I've got the energy. I'm only 30 so if I can't work a full time job and hang an hour or to a day after work I need to start excersing again cause something would be seriously wrong with me. prioritizing is something I'm good at. Anyway,u have access to those stat numbers? Thanks again.

Hi, kenny9524!

Please excuse me for asking, but are you wanting to go into this kind of business or are you asking the question because this is some kind of school assignment in terms of statistics? Seems to me that there is a lot of analyzing going on that might not be necessary.

People that have persons cleaning their homes on an occasional or frequent basis, will be choosing as to whether or not they are going to be wanting someone to come and do that and pay for the service. It might not be income related at all as to afford-ability or because of advertising that has been placed on a door. I know millionaires that have house cleaners as well as people with a modest incomes that employ others to clean for them.

If a person wants to go into the cleaning business, they they get some experience cleaning and then get their information "out there" in some way so that they will be noticed. If the case is that you are wanting to go into this kind of business, then it's really not that hard to advertise for free or without spending much money or time at all. Hanging things on doors costs the person doing the advertising money and a great deal of time.

I have a number of small businesses that I run. Most of my business comes from the free ads that I have placed on the Internet. I do quite well in them as far as getting responses to my ads. If you would like to know about how to place free and effective ads on the Internet, then please let me know.

Word of mouth because of the fine job that a person might have done cleaning for someone, talking to friends to see if someone needs someone to clean for anyone and putting your advertising in the proper places that look the most professional in order to get the most exposure are the best ways to go.

About once a week, I get a free circular of ads from the local newspaper that is placed in my mail box. I always throw it away. I didn't invite the local newspaper to be having things placed in my mailbox that I don't really want. If I want something, then I'm going to go looking for it rather than someone putting it in front of me that this is what they do and please hire me or buy what they have to sell. Just a hint there...

But, I would still appreciate an answer to my questions that I asked in the first paragraph above as to why you are asking the question.

You see, I really would like understand what you are wanting and want to help you. If I didn't want to help you, I wouldn't have taken the time that I already have in order to respond to your question.

Thanks!

[kenny9524]

I guess in a nut shell what I'm asking here is, have you ever used door hangers and if so what was the response rate you received. The saying for post card direct mail marketing is that th post card is the mail everyone always reads. Most people do anywas cause its not in an envelope. Hard not to read it. I guess its like this. Have I ever went to the store, fair, mall etc and bought something that I didn't even go there to get just because I saw it in front of me and said "mmm, i could sure use one of them." same concept. Like I said, direct mail for mortgages is 1-3 so door hangers for cleaning has to be higher. Has to be.

[HBF]

Door hangers work pretty well, but statistics show that middle class families are more prone to obtain your services. I would target middle class neighborhoods.

[seahippie]

Sorry what is a door hanger? Im from Australia, I haven't heard of 'em before.

[Clough]

Hi, seahippie!

A door hanger is advertising that can be hung on the doorknob of a door. Usually, they are made of thin card stock.

[Fr_Chuck]

I doubt if direct mail is anywhere near 1 percent. My guess would be closer to 1/10 of one percent perhaps. If you are getting a 1 percent on mailing, I would be mailing and mailig and mailing every day

[sheph86030]

I market for Cleaning companies and I also have a Christmas Light decoration business that services only high net worth clients. First of all this is a very valid question and here is the answer from my experience. You can hang about 30-50 door hangers per hour in a nice subdivision depending on how big the lots are. You will get a response rate of .8% to 1.5% depending on the neighborhood you are targeting. These are usually very solid leads and will close at 60% or more. These response rates might not be as high as you were thinking, but you have to take into account the reduced cost per piece. If you send out a post card mailer you would be lucky to get a 1.5% response rate (at least in my experience) and it would cost you around $0.55 per piece with print, postage, etc. I used doorhangers.com to get 10,000 door hangers for $299.00 which is about $0.03 per piece. Now of course you still have to get them to the door so if you pay $8.00 per hour to someone and require them to hang at least 35 doorhangers each hour you are looking at another $0.23 per piece in labor for delivery to the door. Obviously if you get higher quality door hangers it would be a little more, but I did a test this last year and found no difference in response rate for nice door hangers verse, the cheap ones. They are usually weather worn by the time the home owners finds it anyway and the idea is just to get across a quick message and find the people that were already thinking about hiring a service like yours.

One other tip for leaving door hangers. Don't actually "hang" them on the door, at least half will blow away, irritating the residence, cluttering up the subdivision and reducing your response rate. Roll them up and slide them into the door handle or between the storm door and door jam.
On a side note, I quickly read a couple of the other responses and I do want to assure you (not that you don't already know) that the target market for a residential cleaning company is determined 95% by income. This percentage would be a little less if you offer "one time cleanings", but if you are going for the weekly or bi-weekly cleaning, target individuals that make $90,000 to $500,000. I would not recommend going over this amount because the market that makes over $500,000 has full time "estate managers" that take care of all this and it is very hard to make that sale. Just so you know I offer lead generation through telemarketing for $90 per lead and I can usually generate 5-30 leads per month for three months depending on the service area and budget. [Solicitation and contact information removed.] I basically get times blocks from you each week for when you are available to run leads and then fill in those time slots for you, which makes the leads really solid. I guarantee that you will close at least 1/3 and it is possible to get up to 50 or 60%. Anyway, sorry to give you the sales pitch, but I hope this response helped you as far as doorhangers go.

Have a great day!
James Shepherd

[Clough]

Hi, James!

Your information is good! However, I did need to remove your contact information because this site is not to be used for advertising. Please keep all information right on the threads so that others can also benefit by the information that's shared.

Thanks!

[Stringer]

Hi Kenny,

Sheph86030's information (other than the personal advertising) is noteworthy, good input.

Stringer

[Clough]

Thread is old and the original poster hasn't returned to it in a long time. Answers have been sufficient enough. Thread also appears to be a magnet for spam advertisers.

Thread is now CLOSED.

[SparkleCleaning]

Interesting opinion. We with counterparts from <a href="http://seattlescleaning.com/">Seattle House Cleaning</a> have considered some excellent ideas. All many thanks.