Pressure Washing

Only from a marketing point of view....

It's a pretty dirty job, but where there's muck there's brass...

Here's a little narrative for you... no affiliation, in fact I think his course sucks . But the actual flyers are very similar to what we've used to help window cleaners, lawn mowers, handymen, and such like... They work really well...

Back in the day I did a lot of pressure washing for restaurants and there was good money in it. You can start with drive through concrete and sidewalks and dumpster areas, then get into commercial range hood cleaning. Lots of opportunities out there.

Call your Insurance agent, have a rider to whatever policy you have or invest in a separate policy, maybe get bonded.

IF you are targeting upscale neighborhoods, they are very protective of their property, and one broken shingle, or piece of siding, or scars in the deck, and you will not recover...
And being bonded and insured shows professionalism.

Get your local yellow pages, and google and yelp all the "power washers" in your area, to see what they are using.

If the lake has boaters, you might specialize in a mobile cleaning as the boat comes out of the water and goes on the trailer, if allowed.

Also, check with construction companies using heavy equipment, and do their cats, backhoes, buckets, etc. Underbellies of cars, especially where tar and stones might be used in rural areas, and don't forget small towns who have small fleets too.

Any company or agency which uses buses, especially lift buses for wheelchairs might be interested.

Be sure to master the power of the washer, and use the right power level to avoid damage, highest psi on decks could chip it.

Flyers should work, best marketing is do a job and post in neighborhood, maybe get a quick 30 second video on your phone...do it right after the job, you want a before and after...
with the happy neighbor gushing about your work.

One short video of a satisfied customer, may be worth 1001 flyers.

GordonJ

It is. The marketing for this type of stuff can be both, more difficult or easier depending on personality as much as anything else. I'd focus on finding some business immediately through postcards, craigslist ads and referrals from related business (painters?). Longer term, you're going to want people to find you without any work on your end, so stuff like Yelp is going to be exceedingly important.

Find a local one man carpet cleaning business that has commercial accounts.

Trust me, those guys turn down work from existing clients (pressure washing, window, cleaning, etc...). I have a friend that did commercial carpet cleaning, he was always trying to get other people to take the work he didn't want/need.

Do it.

Hand out or delivery flyers. Put them up everywhere.

I find the best is to contact local businesses
car garages
petrol stations
schools
any business could benefit from a clean.

Goodluck!!

This is a great idea, good luck with your venture!

I would contact your local real estate agents. They'll have lots of contacts of people looking to smarten up their properties for sale or rent, along with those properties that they're managing on an ongoing basis.

I would definitely hire someone to pressure wash my home, but it's not something that's at the top of my to-do list. In all of your marketing make sure you mention the problem that you'll be solving for people (dirty gutters/make the front of your house like new etc.) That will turn the heads of those who didn't even know they needed you!

A letterbox drop in your local area is always a good place to start as you'll have credibility within your local community which you can then turn into testimonies for your website before you expand.

Great business idea, I hope it all works out well for you

I think it's a great idea, if you and your brother in law can do it on weekends or after hours to start you might be able to test the waters while you are working your other jobs, build up some cash and start building your customer base. You may need to start with an offer, a discount or a two for one deal or something like this which you can add to your flyer or postcard. I would also consider getting a logo/brand set up which you can do on freelancer or fiiver and start looking the part. Then you can set up a free Facebook page and start building this a little for enquiries. People will want to make sure you are legitimate so you will need to look at insurance as well if you are going to be working on people's property. It's a great idea, however I would look at doing your background work. When you are charging people for a service, you do need to look the part. Finally, I would do a bit of research to see how many other local pressure cleaning businesses are in the area, to ensure your market is not saturated. You will always be able to find out if there is a niche people haven't tapped into yet, ie. commercial pressure cleaning etc.

1. Most mobile home parks have a requirement to pressure wash their house once a year (or when it gets dirty/mildewed).
2. Friends of mine who do this for a living drive around with business cards or flyers and find dirty houses. (They see them as they are running other errands or going to other gigs.)
3. They sometimes run an ad in the local freebie paper for $60 a month. One job more than covers the cost. (They don't run it all the time because they get too much work.)
4. They charge $75 for a home. They charge a little more if it's a long way to drive.
5. If you talk to someone who says to come back in a week or so (usually on payday), be sure to follow up.

Independent Truckers and Small Trucking company's should also be considered. A friend of mine use to drive a box truck for a company that own 2 or them. Once a month a company came in and power washer them during the Summer. It would also work in the Winter to get off rode grime if you live in a warmer environment.

Aside from flyers, make sure that you always have your business card with you. These traditional promotional materials never go out of style and could give loyal clients/ customers.

Update....

First things.....

We did the family and friends route trying to figure out what we are doing. After five houses it became clear the pressure washer just wasn't going to cut it. We learned A LOT about the actual work of pressure washing. You got to know about house siding, not killing plants, chemicals, oxidization, etc.

I'm not looking to become a pressure washing guy but you got to learn some stuff .

So now after realizing our gear sucks I'm at a point where I need to decide if I want to drop the money on professional gear, if the brother-in-law can handle the work load that will make the investment worth it, etc.

So I decided to take a few hundred bucks and target an area with high incomes AND could be mailed using EDDM. The results were pretty damn good.

My basic line is that the response is great so we are backed up a couple weeks. If we decide to keep it going we can still do most of those houses and we have a piece that works. I also have a few tricks up my sleeves if we move forward.

I learned that residential is where it is at. Commercial doesn't pay nearly as much as it is more of a bidding process NOT a marketing and sales thing, thus the lower payoff.

You can rent a pressure washer if needed. A friend started his deck business just cleaning and staining them and he rented everything until he got the money to buy, thus proving his abilities first.

Yeah, I didn't know the costs of a rental. My friend just rented as needed while trying to live out of the money he made while saving. I'm surprised a week's rental is more than the cost of buying a good washer.

Good for you for making something out of this regardless. Who knows, maybe you turn loose in the Spring and kill it. Thanks for updating.

DWolfe's suggestion above is where I'd start actually. Owner-Operator truckers will spend $100+ to wash their rig and their trailer. It's their business and a major investment for them and a clean rig keeps the DOT (Dept Of Trans) from hassling them. Don't know if there are any truck wash facilities in your area (usually near a major truck stop) but a trucker's time is worth a mint and they hate nothing more than having to wait in line at some truck wash after being forced to wait for hours at some shipper or receiver during the day. That's where you come in.

Take your mobile power washer to them instead. Visit small-mid-size trucking companies and offer your services on location. You can knock out a bunch of tractors on a volume basis once a month right at their facility on a weekend when the trucks are more likely to be parked.

I have a couple friends who own their own rigs and spend money every month on a wash job to keep them looking good. And a clean big rig, rides better, gets noticed and shows pride of ownership.

Plenty of good suggestions in this thread but if it were me, I know from experience I'd start hustling the tractor-trailer side of bringing home the bacon because of the potential upside. Get some referrals and give those customers a discount for every referral that uses your service and your business will grow quickly.

Lots of upside...good luck!

Create a free listing on Google My Business. Create a business name, business address, and business phone number on the Google my business account. it should look like this.

Example-

Big Boys Pressure Washing
2424 Elm St
Santa Maria, CA 93445
(555) 555-1234

On Google my business listing account fill out everything it asks. Once you finish, Google will send you a post card with a code to you to that mailing address you used. The reason they do this is to verify that you are the owner of that business. Once you get that post card, it will have a code. Enter that code to finish up your Google My Business account. Once you do that Google will place your business into their local bsuiness "Map Pack" on their local search.

Here is a sample for a tractor work guy I helped him make.



Nothing better than getting free leads from Google!

Only problem with this is that you have to compete with other pressure washing businesses in your area. They only place 3 into the "Map Pack" and to get into that all you have to do is to start putting that exact address that you used on your Google My Business account into online directories. The more directories you can put that business NAME, ADDRESS, PHONE NUMBER the better.

That is called a citation. The more citations you have the higher you will rank in the Google Local Map Pack.

I have been working on another business in San Luis Obispo, CA for an asphalt business and so far I got it number #2 in that local map for that city.

Get yourself a simple site created with a strong lead capture form, and link it to a Yelp profile with the correct categories listed. You should definitely get leads from Yelp, of course once you get several 5 star reviews, it'll increase your visibility on Yelp resulting in more leads.