How to Advertise Your Pressure Washing Business in Facebook Groups
Your job as the owner of a local service business is to build trust in your community and service area while also getting your business in front of as many of your target customers as possible. In the case of pressure washing, your target demographic is going to be local homeowners with disposable income — likely 40+ years old. This demographic hangs out on Facebook and makes up the lion’s share of people in Facebook groups. It is your job to be in these groups, but advertising your business is not straightforward. Other business owners have caught on a long time ago that advertising in these groups can be extremely profitable. As a result, these groups have been inundated with spam and solicitors have had to implement strict no-spamming rules and are quick to ban people that solicit.
Let’s help you navigate the complex road of advertising in Facebook groups without spamming, getting banned, or worse gaining a negative reputation in your local community.
How to Find Relevant Facebook Groups
You don’t want to be advertising your pressure washing business in the “Star Trek Fans”. It is a waste of time and not relevant. Instead, you are looking for groups based around local community events, real estate, and homeowners in your area. If you aren’t already a member of some of these groups don’t worry, they aren’t hard to find.
Examples of groups to search for:
Specific neighborhood / subdivision groups
New homeowners of X area
Contractor recommendations for X area
Homeowners association groups in X area
Residents of X city or county
Your Personal Facebook Profile
The first thing you have to realize is that people buy from other people. What this means is you should NOT go into these Facebook groups and post from your pressure washing business Facebook profile. If someone in a group asks about where to get exterior house washing done, they don’t want a business to chime in they want a person to chime in. Businesses look spammy.
Utilizing your personal Facebook profile not only builds trust with people but also gives them a glimpse into who would be showing up to give them the estimate or to do the pressure washing services.
The only thing I will say about having a personal Facebook profile that builds trust with potential customers is to have some friendly family pictures and to keep talk of politics to the bare minimum.
How to Engage Once You Are Accepted Into the Local Facebook Group
So you read the rules and you are now in the group. Here is the tough part, you have to slow play this strategy for it to be effective. You can’t immediately start dropping links to your company. This marketing strategy involves weeks of getting your name known and recognized in these groups. But once you are a known entity in the groups you can get away with a little more.
First, you need to be replying and commenting a lot. The goal is to add value to any post that you can. Don’t just speak to speak though. I would normally dedicate 10-15 minutes at the end of every day to go through all of the Facebook groups I was a member of and comment. When people in these groups ask for contractor recommendations for services outside of what your pressure washing company offers, I would quickly recommend contractors and companies that I have worked with before.
This does 2 things:
This shows that you do not only recommend your business, you also spread the love to other businesses when appropriate.
Other business owners are in these groups too. If you happen to recommend their business then they might recommend yours — or hire your business.
After a couple of weeks of consistent engagement, you should be a recognizable profile in the group. Now is when you can test the waters. If it is against the rules then don’t post your business, however, if the group rules allow it or you see other businesses occasionally make a post about their business and a promotion they are running then you should do the same. If you never see other business owners post their business in the Facebook group then you need to be careful. Sending a private message to the group admin beforehand might be a good idea. By this point, the Facebook group admin should already know who you are which will help your chances of getting permission to post your business.
Setting Bait
This is one of the more sneaky ways to advertise your pressure washing business in Facebook groups. You can wait around for months in some of these groups until somebody asks for a recommendation for a pressure washing company. Even then it might not happen. This is why you need a sleeper agent in the Facebook group. Have an aunt, uncle, cousin, friend, or other family member who isn’t obviously related to you (ex: sharing a last name) join the group and ‘ask’ for a pressure washing company recommendation. This is where you reply. It feels wrong typing this but I know running a business is hard. You got to do what you got to do.
Have Customers Who Are Already in the Group Post Photos of Their Washed House
This is the most powerful tactic mentioned in this article. Ask a previous customer who is also a member of the Facebook group to post before and after photos of their house after the pressure washing service. Ask them to also mention your company. You can provide them with the photos if needed. Pictures do a fantastic job of illustrating what words cannot. People will likely see the photo, think to themselves — ‘hey, my house looks like the before photo’ — and reply in the comments that they are interested. I have seen this exact conversation play out hundreds of times.