The Pros and Cons of Offering Discount Coupons in the Residential Cleaning Industry

Do discount offers work?

If you were offered a $20 discount coupon on a $2,000 color television, would you be (a) compelled to buy or (b) inclined to feel insulted? Well, considering that a person interested in hiring your company to clean for them on a regular biweekly basis will be spending $2,000 or more (the current average biweekly cleaning price today is closer to $3,000 annually) with you over a year’s time, how do think a 1% discount offer might be viewed?

There’s no doubt that discount coupons do work. All kinds of companies use them to induce potential customers to buy their products and services. Discounts are used to sell everything from pizzas to cars – in fact the automobile industry has trained consumers to wait for the next big factory rebate and dealers have a difficult time moving vehicles when rebate promotions are not being offered.

Discounts need to be meaningful relative to the original asking price

That being said, you never see a factory rebate offer of $300 on a $30,000 automobile. A one percent discount offer on anything – let alone an expensive car, isn’t going to attract a great deal of interest. Yet, if you’re looking for someone who is going to spend $2,000 to $4,000 over the following 12 months, that’s what a $20 discount coupon equates to in terms of the overall investment your client will be making.

Granted, your $20 discount (or whatever amount of discount you’re offering) is generally advertised as “$20 off your first cleaning visit”. It’s intended to be an inducement for the potential customer to book that first time cleaning and not perceived as a discount off the total first year’s cost. Obviously, if the cost of that first cleaning is $100 and you offer $20 off that price, that’s a 20% discount and on that basis may be a meaningful inducement.

Avoid the appearance of "bait and switch" marketing

However, most first time cleanings require a lot more work and can take several times longer than subsequent routine cleaning visits. It’s not unusual to spend more time cleaning one bathroom on the first visit than it will take to clean the entire home on future visits. The first cleaning should be done the way you would perform a “spring cleaning”, for example. For this reason, it can cost two, three or even four times as much on that first visit over what you’ll charge the client for ongoing weekly or biweekly light house cleaning thereafter. This creates another problem:

Most prospective clients expect you to quote them a price for cleaning their home that will be consistent on every visit – including the first time cleaning. They don’t think of the difference between “old” dirt and “new” dirt. So, they call you after being motivated by a $20 first time cleaning discount and you then visit them to determine how much work will be involved. After a thorough walk-through in the client’s home, you calculate the cost of the first visit is $325 and that you can thereafter clean their home on a weekly basis for $120 biweekly. All of a sudden that $20 discount seems like a bait and switch; the prospect now feels you tricked them. If they do business with you, they’re going to fork out $305 for the first visit after the $20 discount – BIG DEAL!

If you don’t make it a practice to charge more for that big, first time cleaning, you may not run into this problem. If you’re prepared to bite the bullet on every first time cleaning and not charge what the work is worth in order to get the customer, just be sure your workers aren’t the ones being penalized. If you charge $120 for a job that’s really worth $325, be sure to pay your cleaners based on $325 worth of work.

Do you really want to attract price-sensitive clientele?

Another disadvantage of discount offers is that you’re likely to attract people interested in a one-time cleaning. Not only are they more likely to balk at paying what the job is worth but, advertising for clients is too costly to attract a lot of one-time customers. If it costs you $100 or more in advertising expense to attract a new client and you offer a $20 discount, you’ve got at least $120 invested for this one-time job.

What you really want are discerning clients who are interested in the kind of superior service and value-added benefits that come with doing business with a quality cleaning service. If you advertise low prices or discounts, you’re going to attract individuals who are price conscious and you’ll find yourself in price negotiation on virtually every occasion.

Yes, you’re likely to get more phone inquiries from price advertising and discount offers. But when you’re playing that game in this industry there’s always going to be someone willing to do it for less. I recommend putting the emphasis on the satisfaction and peace of mind prospective customers will enjoy from doing business with your company rather than setting yourself up for trying to compete on price with those shadowy cleaners who work in the underground economy on an uneven playing field.

Instead of offering discounts in your advertising, focus your marketing on the benefits clients will enjoy by doing business with you:

• Professionally trained and supervised employees to ensure quality.
• Insurance, bonding and workers comp to afford peace of mind.
• You remit all required taxes on behalf of your workers so the customer doesn’t have to.
• You bring your own professional equipment and supplies. Your client gets to stop shopping for all that “stuff”.
• *Satisfaction guaranteed or their money back.
• *Reliability – you’ll always show up as promised on their scheduled cleaning day or you’ll perform the next visit FREE.

 *(Even if a few customers take advantage of these last two promises, its still cheaper than discounting $20 off every first time cleaning).  

The bottom line is that you can’t be all things to all people. You can’t sell a luxury automobile to people on a Volkswagen budget. If you’re intent on building a profitable residential cleaning business you need to concentrate on attracting a clientele who appreciate and can afford to pay for top-notch service.