Google Ads for cleaning companies
Cleaning is a subscription business disguised as a service business. Every decision in the ad account should follow from that — especially how much you are willing to pay for a first booking.
No sales call required. WhatsApp, text, email or the form — written answers only.
Get your free audit
No sales call, ever. Tell us about your business and we’ll reply in writing, usually within one business day.
How customers in this market actually search
The economics here are unusual. A one-time deep clean might be $300; a client who books biweekly for two years is worth many thousands. If your account bids as though every lead is worth $300, you will lose every auction that matters to a competitor who has done the lifetime-value arithmetic and is happy to pay more for the click.
Demand also splits into three quite different markets: recurring residential, one-time deep and move-out cleans, and commercial or office contracts. Commercial in particular behaves nothing like the other two — longer cycle, procurement involved, much larger contracts — and belongs in its own campaign with its own landing page.
The campaigns worth separating
These are the splits that usually matter in cleaning. Each one deserves its own budget, because a shared budget always drifts toward whatever converts most cheaply — which is rarely what pays you best.
- Recurring house cleaning, weekly and biweekly
- Deep cleaning and one-time cleans
- Move-in and move-out cleaning, which follows the local rental calendar
- Post-construction cleaning, higher ticket and steadier than it looks
- Commercial and office cleaning contracts
- Specialty work: carpet, windows, short-term rental turnovers
Negative keywords from day one
Every cleaning account we build launches with a negative list, and it grows every week from the search terms report. A starting point for this trade:
This is a fraction of a real list. Mature accounts in this category typically carry several hundred negatives, most of them discovered from actual search terms rather than guessed in advance.
Timing and seasonality
Move-out cleaning tracks the local rental calendar — end of month everywhere, plus late summer in college towns, where demand can double for a fortnight. Spring produces the annual deep-clean wave. Short-term rental turnover demand follows the tourist season in your area. Commercial enquiries cluster around budget cycles and are noticeably quieter in December.
What counts as a conversion here
Track booking requests separately by type, and value them at expected lifetime value rather than first invoice. A recurring enquiry should be worth several times a one-time deep clean in the account’s eyes. If you use online booking, the completed booking is the conversion worth optimising for — form starts and phone enquiries are useful, but they hide a great deal of drop-off.
What the landing page needs
Paid traffic in this category should not land on a homepage. The page that receives the click needs, at minimum:
- Transparent pricing or an instant quote tool, which lifts conversion sharply here
- Online booking with real availability, not a ‘we will call you back’ form
- Background checks, insurance and bonding stated plainly
- Recurring discount shown next to the one-time price
- Separate pages for residential, move-out and commercial
We build these when the existing site cannot carry the traffic — it is the one design service we offer, precisely because the campaign depends on it.
The mistakes we see most often in cleaning accounts
- Bidding against first-clean revenue instead of lifetime value
- Mixing commercial and residential in one campaign
- A quote form that takes three days to answer in a category where people book same-day
- Not blocking the huge volume of cleaning-job and how-to-clean searches
There is no phone number to call on this website, and that is deliberate. Everything happens over WhatsApp, text message, email or the contact form. You get written answers you can re-read, forward to a partner and hold us to — instead of a forty-minute discovery call you have to schedule two weeks out.
When something is genuinely easier shown than written, we send a short screen recording or a voice note you can watch whenever it suits you.
The order the work happens in.
- Week 1: free written audit of the account or the market
- Week 1: conversion tracking rebuilt so a lead means a lead
- Week 1–2: campaigns split by value and urgency, negatives loaded, ads written
- Week 2: controlled launch on a limited budget
- Week 3 onward: weekly search term work and a written Monday report
Who owns the account?
You do. Built under your billing, and everything stays with you if you leave.
What does it cost?
$899 a month for management, published on the pricing page. Your ad spend goes directly to Google.
How long am I tied in?
Month to month, thirty days’ notice, no exit fee.
Will you tell me if this is a bad fit?
Yes, in the audit, before you have paid anything.
Questions from cleaning owners
How much can I afford to pay for a cleaning lead?
Work out what an average recurring client is worth over twelve months, multiply by your close rate, and a sensible target cost per lead falls out. For most companies that number is far higher than they assumed, which is precisely why they were losing the auctions.
Is online booking worth building?
In residential cleaning it is one of the highest-return changes available. The category is impulsive and comparison-driven; the company that lets someone book in ninety seconds beats the company that promises to call back tomorrow.
Should commercial cleaning be advertised the same way?
No. Different keywords, different decision-maker, much longer cycle and far larger contracts. It needs its own campaign, its own page, and patience — judging it on a thirty-day cost per lead will mislead you.