Module 12 : Starting Your Own Oven Cleaning Service
The initial start up costs for an oven cleaning business How much of a marketing budget you can expect to require when starting your own independent business The Pros of Starting an Oven Cleaning Business. How to develop an Online Presence
By the end of this module, you will know:
When you may need to invest in premises.
The initial start up costs for an oven cleaning business.
How much of a marketing budget you can expect to require when starting your own independent business.
The Pros of Starting an Oven Cleaning Business
The pros and cons of joining an oven cleaning franchise .
How to develop an Online Presence.
What your website should include.
The tools you need for online and offline marketing.
Online and Offline marketing techniques.
12.1: Introduction
This is going to be an exciting venture in your life, with the potential to see you avoid the monotonous world of employer directed work forever. When you have your own cleaning business, you have plenty of opportunities to help it flourish. Before you know it, you could be managing your very own team of oven cleaners. However, in order for this to happen, you need to begin putting in a good amount of work, focusing on all the right places. Understanding the pros and the cons of working as a self-employed oven cleaner is a good place to start.
The Pros of Starting an Oven Cleaning Business
1. You can determine how long you work and when you work. Clearly it makes sense to put in more hours and meet your clients' needs in terms of schedule. However, you are not held to ransom over a specific 9-5 job.
2. The start-up costs are quite low. Although it usually costs more than starting a normal cleaning business, as you do need to have an dip tank and a van. This is relatively nominal in contrast with many other business start-ups.
3. There are plenty of franchises already available, many of which are quite affordable. If you would rather have a business plan outlined, this is a great way to move forward.
4. Work is usually repeated. Oven cleaning is one of the most hated household jobs, and many business owners do not have time to do this for themselves. As such, you can find that a client who hires you one month will return to do the same the next month. The Cons of Starting an Oven Cleaning Business
1. You need to establish your own reputation and maintain it strictly. While you should always endeavour to work hard, meeting extremely exacting standards may sometimes feel wearing.
2. You need to arrange a lot of insurance cover. You need to obtain business liability, and you need to maintain the insurance for your van.
3. As with any self-employed position, you are the only person taking control of maternity pay, taxes, and other benefits. However, by staying on top of your national insurance contributions, you need not worry about nuances like job seekers' allowance.
12.2: The Ins and Outs of Being a Self-Employed Oven Cleaner
Not paying close attention to your administrative duties can see you land in hot water with the HMRC.
At the same time, not staying on top of your marketing costs will lead to your business flopping. You therefore need to pay close attention to the following:
1. Register with HMRC online as a self-employed person and prepare for the tax period. Put a percentage of your earnings to one side after you have surpassed the annual tax allowance. When the time to pay your taxes comes, do so as soon as possible to avoid fines.
2. Arrange liability insurance or face prosecution when damage occurs. Obviously you are striving not to damage your clients' property, but accidents do happen and you need to be prepared for that.
3. Spend a little time investigating marketing possibilities. Focus on both offline and online ventures. Go for word of mouth, if it appeals to you and you have friends and family who are willing to help.
4. Do what you can to be a little niche. For example, you can tell your clients that you can prepare eco-friendly products on the day of the cleaning job.
12.3: Are You Going to Employ Others?
There may come a time when you need to employ others. If you do a particularly good job, you should be able to pass your skills onto someone else and have them carry out the work for you. Doing this means you can spend more time as a business owner, and less time as an oven cleaner. When you begin to attract more clients than you can handle, you need to start employing others. At this point, you need to allow your new employees to shadow you on a job. This allows them to see how you work and whether there are special techniques they need to adopt.
Unless you have a large start-up capital, this isn't something you should attempt from the beginning. Your employees will need to use an oven cleaning dip tank and fluids, which means they will need their own van. As such, you need to consider the initial financial implications of going down the employment route.
12.4: Are You Going to Move Onto Having Your Own Premises?
You should find that having your own cleaning premises is unnecessary when you first begin working as an oven cleaner. In fact, your garage should suffice. However, if you begin expanding onto having employees, you may need to have premises for storage purposes. There are other benefits to having your own place of operation. If you intend on attracting a lot of business clients, this gives them somewhere to visit you. In short, this creates an air of professionalism.
12.5: How Much Does it Cost to Begin an Oven Cleaning Business?
As excited as you may be about starting your own oven cleaning business, it does all come down to cost eventually. There are one or two key items that cost a lot, which means this is more expensive than starting a typical cleaning business.
You can look at the following figures as a rough guide:
£3000-5000 as an initial start-up point.
£300 on your initial marketing attempts.
£17,000 to £25,000 if you choose to join an oven cleaning franchise.
If you choose to join a franchise, then additional to your joining fees, you will have to pay a percentage of your revenue to the franchise as royalties. There are pros and cons you should know about franchising.
The pros of franchising
1. Reduce start up capital -
When you sign up with a franchise, you should get all the equipment you need. The vast majority will not include a van, but they will fit their preferred dip tank into your van, included in the cost. They will also see that your dip tank is serviced annually for you to maintain your service
2. Faster route to market -
Franchise companies choose to franchise their services as a way to expand their business to provide national coverage, instead of being restricted to local areas. As such, they will only provide franchisees the business packages in areas where they have no coverage, and as part of your fees, they will run whatever advertising campaigns they have had previous success with to give you a springboard to market.
It takes the guesswork out your advertising, and reduces the time you spend booking appointments, as larger franchises will have a dedicated customer helpline, and online booking systems in place to co-ordinate national bookings in one central database.
3. Established consumer trust
When you first start with your own oven cleaning service, you can find yourself competing with businesses who have been in the industry for years. You will find during your initial research, a number of companies advertising x amount years of experience. It builds customer trust that the company know what they are doing and have a variety of customer testimonials to back up their claims. That can be difficult to compete with as you 're a brand new start up. With a franchise, you get
to use the proven track record of the franchise brand, as they will train you and provide the exact equipment you need to clean to their company standards. You will be a part of what should be an established oven cleaning brand.
The drawbacks of franchising
1. Reduced profitability -
Your profit margins will be significantly reduced as for each job you do, a percentage will be paid to the franchise as royalty payments for using their brand name.
2. Increase start up costs -
Although you may be able to get your business a spring board into the market with the backing of a recognised brand, you are paying a significant sum of money upfront, with sometimes very little in the way of a guarantee that their marketing and advertising will be successful to get you bookings early on.
3. Reduced control of the business
Often franchises are able to reduce their operational costs by having contracts with suppliers for the stock they require. That can meant that you are locked into using only one supplier for your cleaning products, and it can be more expensive, even with the bulk buy discounts the franchise has access to.
Depending on the franchise, they could also be using the bulk buy discounts they have with contracts in place with suppliers, to sell to franchisees at a mark-up to increase the revenue of the organisation.
12.6: Getting Your Plan in Motion
After careful consideration, and you decide that setting up as self-employed is your preferred way to go, then the next thing to is to put the wheels in motion and begin your journey into self-employment.
1) Name your company
The first thing you need is a company name. It doesn't matter if you trade as a sole trader, or Limited Company, you need a name to trade under. The best company names will be memorable to your customer but will also act as your brand identity, so it really needs to be unique. That's for legal reasons too. You cannot trade under a name that is already registered by another business owner. Once you have a company name in mind, check it's not already been registered using the searchable database at http://start.biz/business_names/search.php
For a nominal fee, you can protect your own business identity on the National Business Register.
2) Domain availability
The vast majority of consumers look online when they need a service done. By registering your company name, (on a .co.uk domain) you can begin to make your presence online known. When you're at the research stage of naming your company, be sure to check with domain registrars such as 1&1 [co.uk] or godaddy.com that your company name is available to register for your website. Without a website, you will be restricted to your online advertising and placements.
3) Decide early if you are going to branch out your business
This is an important step as you will be starting out independently. A name such as Jim's Oven Cleaning Services, may be appropriate for now, but if you decide further down the line to employ people and cover surrounding areas, customers may not be getting Jim around to clean their ovens, but instead they'll get a visit from one your employees. For that reason, you may want to choose a name such as Oven Invaders. Whatever name you decide, check business directories and well as search engine listing to ensure that no other business is trading under that name.
12.7: Registering your business name
You only need to register your business name if you decide to trade as a Limited Company. If you're operating as a sole trader/independent trader, you will not be required to register your trading name with Companies House. If you set up a Limited Company or Partnership, then you are required to register your details with both the HMRC and Companies House. For starting out, until your business is gaining sufficient trading revenue, you are best to operate as a sole trader, under your own name with the HMRC.
12.8: Marketing
To get your business off the ground, marketing is essential, but you do not need a Bachelors Degree in Marketing to drive your sales. What you do need is a determination to succeed and a thoroughly thought through marketing campaign to help you reach your potential customers. There are a variety of ways to market your services, and the more you use the better reach you will have, but you must find a balance as you cannot spend all day advertising as that will limit the time you have to get out and about and do the work clients hire you to do.
To start with target letting agencies
One to two hours per day is sufficient time to focus on marketing your business, but in your early days, the fastest way to get your service out there is to target your advertising towards letting agencies.
All too often, landlords have vacant premises, and the ones that are at least partly furnished, will have an oven and those often need cleaning. It's rare that tenants clean the oven to satisfactory standards at the end of their lease agreement. To help you reach your target audience, you are going to need some tools to get the job done, but they aren't a huge list, nor are they expensive.
Combine online and offline advertising for the most effective results The best approach to marketing for the long-term is to use both online and offline advertising. Naturally, if you are going to advertise online, you will need a website to do that. While there are many businesses large and small, using online advertising to generate new customers, the fastest and most efficient use of your time is to advertise online and offline. A web presence is nothing if nobody knows you from Adam in your neighbourhood. Get the word out around your town that you have an oven cleaning business, and are open to new customers.
12.9 : Word of Mouth Marketing
The rise in social media usage has splurged a great deal of businesses to the height of success due to the ease of reaching customers it provides. You can use social media from the get-go but before you do, a good strategy will help you make the most of it. The following are best for reaching out to people in your area Facebook Page
A Facebook business page is separate from your personal profile. You must have a personal Facebook account to create a business page, but you do not need to link the two together. It would be wise not to link them, as there can be times when you share things online that isn't in the best interest of your business.
Always be careful when posting to your online social accounts for business, as what you say on any platform, can have lasting implications to your business reputation. Once your page is created, the first people to notify are your existing friends and family, and ask them to spread the word. They can do that with one click on Facebook.
Twitter Page
A Twitter account only lets you put out tweets with a limit of 140 characters, but when those are used effectively, Twitter can be a real asset to your business. Ask your friends and family to follow you on Twitter to get the ball rolling, but always remember the aim of Tweets are to engage with potential customers and not for blatant advertising. If you only use social media to advertise, you are going to limit your reach as people will unfollow, or not follow in the first place.
LinkedIn is a social network for business owners. A number of local businesses will be there, but you will usually find that residential customers looking for an oven cleaning service will be around Facebook and Twitter more than they will be on LinkedIn. The benefit of being here is that you are able to establish yourself with other businesses around your area, increasing your networking reach. The more business connections you have, the more customers you can reach. Say for an example you have an electrical repair store owner connected to your LinkedIn account, they could be on an oven repair job, and have customers that could be doing with your oven cleaning
services.
Word of mouth advertising offline involves good old recommendations. Tell your friends and family about your new business and ask them to spread the word. It just takes one person to mention your new business cleaning ovens to someone else, who happens to know a landlord, or property developer in the middle of a renovation to say, you know what... That would be perfect for . Do you have their number? Your first client!
Never underestimate the power of word of mouth marketing. It's the most cost-effective way to reach new customers because it costs you zero to do.
12.10 : Useful Offline Marketing Techniques
The world has now reached a point where offline marketing techniques are incredibly affordable.
Sites like Instaprint, Vistaprint, and Overnight Prints all offer fantastic prices on a range of traditional marketing materials. However, you should consider shopping around to make sure you get the best prices.
Your offline marketing techniques can include the following:
Business cards
You can give these to people you meet who may need an oven cleaning service. You can also consider partnering with other local businesses by asking them to display your oven cleaning business cards for you.
Leaflets
If you have the time and the patience, you can deliver leaflets yourself in your local area. You may
also want to consider using a leaflet delivery service, which should allow you to reach a wider range
of houses.
Advertisements
Make the most of free business directories as soon as you can, if there are any available. You should also place ads in local newspapers and community magazines, which are usually cheap to advertise in.
12.11 : Using Promotions
When you first begin attracting clients, don't be afraid to use promotions to secure repeat business. For example, you can tell clients that they will receive a 10% discount if they use your services again within the space of a month or two. You can also offer them discounts if they choose to recommend you to their friends and family, provided it results in you securing a new client of course. Referral marketing is effective, but you must be clear about when the incentives will be made available. The best approach is to provide money off coupons to your customer after your invoice has been settled by the customer the referred to you.
12.12 : Developing an Online Presence
Developing an online presence often seems daunting for new business owners, yet it has never been easier. With social media and easy web building facilities at your disposal, you do not have to worry about whether you have the technical expertise to achieve online success.
12.12a: Building a Website
It all begins with building a website. Fortunately, you do not have to know how to write code in order to produce an excellent site. The following services are excellent, and sometimes free:
Wordpress
Blogger
Weebly
Moonfruit
Wix
The following pages will help you establish your website as a powerful marketing tool Home;
About
Contact
Services
Price List
To make it super powerful for your business, you should also add a blog page to your site to engage with your visitors. Once you start gaining business, you can also add an additional page for customer testimonials. You will need the permission of your customers to share their words on your testimonial page.
All of the above pages encourage greater customer confidence, and will eventually help with your SEO, (search engine optimisation). That's just to help search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo trust your site enough to return it in their results page to people in your area searching for an oven cleaning service. With the right set up, people will be able to find you easily online, and contact you for further details about your service.
12.12b: Promoting Your Website
It is necessary to discuss blogging first and foremost. When it comes to organic SEO, you cannot expect the results to flow in if you do not invest time in a blog. Static websites are pretty much done for these days, with even the largest of corporations using a blog to engage with their existing customers, and help them attract and retain new customers.
They do this through engagement, and the best way is through a blog. The aim of blogging is to produce regular, useful content. As an oven cleaner, this can be tough. Rather than aiming for something every day, try once or twice a week. When blogging, you can focus on tips and tricks. While this may seem as though you are giving your business' secrets away, being useful is a proven technique for securing customers. It shows that you know what your business, establishes trust, and builds on customer confidence, which ultimately attracts more clients. You can also blog about other areas of cleaning, which means you are less likely to run out of content ideas and more likely to keep the traffic coming through referrals, and from search engine listings. The more solutions your blog posts solve, the more “how to” terms your site can show up for.
Not all will attract local clients, but every visitor has the potential to share your information with others, and that can have a significant impact on your visibility within search for your local area.
12.12c: Making the Most of Social Media
Social media is your best friend when it comes to promoting your oven cleaning business. Whenever you write a blog post, you need to make sure you share it via the social media channels you use. However, that isn't where your social media efforts should end, especially when it comes to Twitter. Avid Twitter users who regularly engage with others are more likely to succeed. You can achieve this in several ways.
Follow a few people and businesses in your local area, while making it clear on your Twitter bio where you are from. This increases your connections and also makes it more likely that others will see your feed suggested to them. You should also check every so often for conversations about oven cleaning and cleaning. This can be from regular users who are having problems, in which case you can point them towards your blog posts.
Try to ensure your social media sites promote each other every so often and link to them across your site and at the bottom of blog posts. This increases the number of people following you and engaging with you.
12.13 : Paying for Advertising
There may come a time when you need to pay for advertising. Do this right and you can cut the costs significantly, but it does take practice. The largest online advertising program is Google's AdWords program. It works on keywords that users type into Google to find what they are looking for. The advertisements displayed on Google results page are sponsored by local businesses such as yours.
Get a Google account
You do need a Google account to sign up for this service. The tool you will need to use is the Adwords Keyword Planner. Insert the keyword phrase you'd like your business to appear for, and you can bid for listing. The higher the advertiser, the higher the cost. Say for example, you plan to cover the Surrey area, and want to appear when a user types in “oven cleaners in surrey.” Using the keyword tool, you will get a suggested bid price for that term. At the time of writing, the cost per click has a suggested bid price of £3.54 per click.
Using this method of advertising can be expensive if you get things wrong because you pay for each click on your ad, and not when you gain a new customer. It could take 30 people clicking your advert in search, before someone places a booking with you. 30 x the suggested bid price of £3.54 is £106.20. That would be your customer acquisition cost and it is high.
You do not need to place bids at the suggested bid price. You can go lower, but these bid prices are auction style. The highest bidder for a keyword phrase gets top positioning in search results, but
they must meet the criteria set by Google, and achieve a high quality score rating. To achieve that, the page on your website that you are advertising for people to reach when they click your ad, must be relevant to the search term you're advertising for. If you're advertising for Surrey and located in South Wales, you will not get a high quality score, and may not be allowed to run the ad anyway.
The advert must be in line with what a user is searching for. Relevancy is huge and can never be underestimated.
If you do choose to use Google AdWords, always set your campaign daily limits in your budget, so you are not spending more than you can afford.
When using this service you need to fine-tune the area you target. There is no use targeting people who live in Edinburgh if your business only operates in South Wales. Always remember to set your maximum Cost Per Click (CPC) limit, and target keywords that are long. This makes the process cheaper. Finally, set a daily spending limit that is within your budget.
Try Facebook ads too
You should also consider using Facebook. Facebook allows you to fine tune ads further than Google by choosing particular demographics. You can even select people according to their gender, working status, and profession. With a little market research and trial and error practices, you can determine which groups are best for you to aim for. When you do spend money on advertising, always make sure you are tracking the efficacy of your efforts. By doing this, you can determine whether you are simply throwing money away, or whether your hard earned cash is well spent.
Module Summary
Why a franchise gives you the fastest route to market Advice on choosing your trading name Why you should find a domain name to match your business name.
Registering your business name Where to research existing business trading names, to make sure your name is unique to your brand identity
Making the most of social media marketing.
The most influential platforms to include in your social media strategy.
Using the largest online advertising platform (Google AdWords).
The type of customers to attract from the start.
Using referral marketing to gain new and repeat customers.
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