This post is generally geared towards those who have been in the industry for years.
For you old-timers, do you still market? If so, has marketing effort at least dropped as the years go by? My thinking is that ideally, you would have a base of regular customers who come to you year after year thus eliminating the need to market to new customers, saving thousands of dollars and hours.
Is this a realistic goal? If so, how did you achieve it?
Depending on your market area, youāll probably get a lot of people who only have their house power washed at the point they can no longer stand it anymore. So maybe every 3-10 years 
.
Iāve definitely found a lower rate of repeats compared to window cleaning. So itās hard to rely on repeat service alone.
If you want to build a self-sustaining business, youāve got two main choices:
Build up recurring commercial work (condo associations, etc.)
Stay in the public eye. Keep your website and free business profiles (Yelp, google, FB, etc.) up to spec with fresh reviews, posts, and photos. Post yard signs at the jobs you do.
The second option is pretty inexpensive. If you do good work and make the posting and asking for reviews a habit, it will barely feel like youāre āadvertisingā.
My āadvertising budgetā is only a few hundred bucks a year. It includes our website, some replacement yard signs, and a few embroidered shirts each spring from Queensboro
I definitely do less active marketing than my 1st year. I have found myself being able to turn down business if its not something Iām interested in. I hope to do less marketing my 3rd year than this year. But I hear ya, house washing may not be an annual thing. But between the roof, concrete, fences, decks, etc. Iām hoping to have most of my customers hire me at least once/year. Getting my marketing budget down to a few hundred bucks/year sounds like a dream. I was STOKED to be able to cut out home advisor this year and still am staying busy.
Good for you man, keep it up. You donāt need those leeches.
Itās absolutely realistic. I havenāt paid for marketing in probably over 6-7 years, the negatives of that is that you donāt grow. as time goes by youāll develop a database of customers that feed you more than you can handle. That just naturally happens with time. For instant results you would market till the cows come home.
Sounds like time is the main ingredient hereā¦
I havenāt marketed in years.
Marketing would create a work load we couldnāt handle.
My motto for this industry is āmean and leanā.
Sure we could have 8 trucks and non stop chaos, but Im all about what I put in my pocket āprofitā as an owner at the end of the season.
15 to 20% more for 150% more stress is not worth it in my mind.
2 trucks and 2 fulltime employees is my sweet spot.
Just my 2 centsā¦
I appreciate the input! Glad to know itās a goal worth working towards.
