How can I increase my business?

I do pressure washing services here in the gulf coast area and was wondering how I could increase my business, find more work, get more job calls, etc.
I'm going to choose the best answer but I wanted to thank all of you for anything you contribute!

1) Word of mouth a reputation are the best ways to increase business so make sure customers are always satisfied with the job you do.

2) If you do a job on a particular street, then put flyers/send postcards to other homeowners in the area letting them know you just did a job down the street. Homeowners often try to "keep up with the Joneses" and decide that they need their home power washed as well.

3) Leave some business cards with your client after you finish a job so they can refer you to friends.

4)Contact your past customers and see if they need your services again.

5) Advertise in your local paper on on free sites like craigslist.

6) Network with Realtors who may refer you to clients who need your services to prepare their home for selling.

7) Make sure your company's name and number is clearly displayed in big letters on your vehicle.

Above all, make sure your prices can compete with other businesses in your area and do not sacrifice service. Make sure you return calls promptly, arrive for appointments on time etc. You would be surprised how many businesses fail to do this.

There are a number of good ideas in all the earlier answers.
1) Get business cards. ALWAYS give out your cards in pairs so that the recipient has an extra card if they want to hand one to a friend.
2) Ask all your previous customers for referrals.
3) Get testimonials from satisfied customers & include in a binder showing your work, in a flyer that you can hand out or mail out.
4) Always look for prospects and have something you can leave with them. Follow up at least three times.
5) Know your customers: talk to your customers, develop a written profile(s); search the Internet for information on pressure washing customers and other pressure washing businesses (Do they have a market segment/type of customer that you could develop?)
6) Get a website, develop a blog, set up a Facebook (or similar) group; - the web has to a great degree replaced Yellow Page telephone directory ads BUT your business should also be listed in your local phone directory Yellow Pages.
7) Community newspapers often have affordable "Service Directory" or business card-size ads: if you use them be in there frequently; alternatively try ads in an appropriate Classified ads section. Remember, the key to successful print ads is frequency and reach (the extent of the readers that see them.)

Try and use social networking. It is free, and you can reach out and form a comunity that can stay conected with you. This may be an outside the box thing for construction type jobs, but I think it may worlk. Use blogs or even yahoo answers to let people know damaging molds are on the gulf coast and use them to talk about yourself, you business and exeriances. This will not have long term results, but can build up fast over time. This works well for online retail, but it would be interesting to see if you can get it to work for local service type biz.

Have you thought about gift cards? I place preloaded cards at various business around town (with their permission of course). I've loaded the cards with $5 and my average ticket size is about $25. Basically give a small discount to get traffic through the doors. Once you have them hopefully you'll be able to get repeat biz.

Mine are customized with my logo, phone number, etc. My credit card processing company offers them as a value added service. Speaking of that, you want to consider accepting credit / debit / checks via a credit card processing company. I have wireless units so my waiters can run cards at the table. The company I use is Encore Payment Systems - www.encoreps.com I really like them, give them a try.

Intially determining price is important. compare your prices with the other people running the same business. I think you are new to this business. so reduce your price to 2% compare to other business men. so provide offers weekly eg:( for washing 5 pairs of clothes 1 pair is free). Introduce such offers. print brochures on your offers to near by people. I think it would give gud response.

do a little demographic research on the kind of people that already buy your service and find out there location then advertise there (ex. older people make up most of your customer income so find where most of the older people live and put up fliers and so on in that area) you could also get real estate company's to refer you to people buying houses, that's what my uncle does for carpet cleaning and it seems to work ok, its not like he's pulling in tons of jobs just from that but it is a good thing to have during the "dry season"

You could make lots of flyers in big bright letters to attract attention. You could also go door to door and try to drum up some business. When You're in an everyday conversation, you could just casually mention your business. You could also put up a sign in your yard. Ask your family to help you grow your business. Good Luck!

Can you help with mine?

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Thanks!

go door knocking or leave flyer's at the door.
get business cards and use the 3 foot rule.
anyone that come in 3 feet of you gets a card
and a 10 second announcement