If you own a laundromat business, one of the ways to continue to increase revenue and maximize profit from the business is to continue to welcome customers.
When a business opens its door for business, some customers might walk in to patronize the business without any effort from the owner. But if a business wants to make good returns from their investment, then they must be deliberate when it comes to marketing their goods and services.
In this article, we will look at 20 creative ways laundromats can increase their revenue and profit margin; these ideas have been proven to work globally and they are;
How Laundromats Can Increase Revenue and Profit Margin
1. Create and Promote Special Packages on a Regular Basis
One of the ways that you can market your laundromat services to attract customers is to ensure that from time to time you come up with promos that will be too tempting for customers to resist and at the same time will not deep into your profitability.
2. Partner with Key Stakeholders That Will Help You Attract Customers
Another marketing strategy that you need to adopt if you want to run a profitable laundromat is to ensure that you partner with key stakeholders in and around the location where you have your target market.
You can partner with different sports organizations, businesses and social media influencers who have the capacity to send clients across your way. Please note that you can reach an agreement with them on the percentage they stand to get when any customer comes through their referrals.
3. Develop Mailing Lists and Leverage on Email Marketing
Developing mailing lists of your target market is yet another marketing idea that you can leverage on to market your laundromat. Before launching any business, you must have in mind the people that are likely going to patronize your services, so you should go further to develop a mailing lists and always leverage on the lists to market your laundromat.
Email marketing is an ideal approach and a means of getting new visitors engaged with your business. It is also a great way to get new visitors engaged with your business, as well as maintain relationships with your existing customers.
4. Spend More on Advertising and Promotion of your Laundromat Business
If indeed you want to make more money from your laundromat business, you must be ready to spend money in order to be in the faces of your target audience. You are expected to advertise your laundromat services on national dailies, local TV and radio stations.
You are expected to promote your business online via blogs and all available social media platforms. Make use of attractive hand bills to create awareness and also to give direction to your office facility. Position your signage/flexi banners at strategic places in and around the city where you have your offices.
5. Leverage on Short Videos on Social Media
You can do much on social medial without leveraging on short video content to drive your narratives. You could create a short-but-sweet video that explains what your business does, or you could dive deep into a topic that relates to your business.
Your potential customers might be searching for how-to videos and that will give you an opportunity to catch their attention.
Short video is really valuable when it comes to marketing anything on social media including laundromat services. All you have to do is ensure that you produce a quality and easy to understand videos. You can do the video yourself if you don’t have enough money to hire professionals.
6. Get All Your Employees Involved in Marketing Your Services
As a laundromat services company, part of what you need to do if you want to continue to welcome clients, generate revenue and maximize profit is to ensure that all your employees (not only marketing and sales executives) are directly or indirectly involved in the sales and marketing of your services.
Just ensure that you create provision for your employees to earn a commission when they bring in business for the organization.
You can as well create business model that will enable freelancers to work with your organization especially as it relates to bringing in business; whenever they refer clients to your organization, they will earn a percentage of the deal.
7. Form Strategic Marketing Alliance with Players in the Sports and Hospitality Services Industry
As a laundromat services business owner, if you want to continue to welcome clients generate revenues and maximize profits, then you should look towards forming strategic marketing alliance with major players in the sports and hospitality services industry.
Good enough, there are opportunities for laundromat services companies to form strategic marketing alliance with other players in the sports and hospitality services industry due to the fact that some sports clubs or hotels usually contract their laundry services needs to laundromats.
8. Build Good Business Network
Networking is perhaps one of the most effective and creative marketing ideas needed to begin to build your clientele base and you have to put plans in place to leverage on all your networks if you truly want to do well with your laundromat, generate revenues and maximize profits.
In view of that, you should look out for gatherings where you can network with sports clubs, corporate executives, entrepreneurs, parents and college students et al.
9. Develop a Customer Referral Program
Another strategic marketing idea that you can deploy for your laundromat services business in other to generate revenue is to develop a customer referral program that will help you reward customers who refer their friends and family members to you.
This is actually word or mouth marketing. Customers that you get via referral would definitely become another satisfied customer that will help you attract other customers.
10. Engage in Guerilla Marketing
Applying guerilla marketing approach is yet another creative marketing idea to adopt for your laundromat services business in order to generate revenue and maximize profits. Guerilla marketing emphasizes creativity over budget, and strategies are often cheap and easy to implement, especially when localized.
Broadcast your Twitter handle with sidewalk chalk, use an abandoned storefront as a canvas for street art, or plaster custom stickers on urban décor that makes those who stroll by look twice. There’s a ton of room for invention here, and you don’t need a big budget to be successful with this idea.
11. Be Active on Online Forums
In this dispensation, a lot is going on online and beyond every reasonable doubt, those that patronize laundromat services are online and belong to one online forum or the other.
So, one of the ways to market your laundromat services business is to belong to and be active in various online forums especially forums that contains the demography of people who would readily patronize your laundromat. Just be willing to answer different questions and of course take advantage to market your laundromat.
12. Brand Your Official Vehicles
If you run a standard laundromat business, you are expected to have pool cars for marketing. If this applies to you, then one of the ways of marketing the business is to brand all your official vehicles in such a way that people would always make enquiries on how they can patronize your laundromat.
Aside from branding all your official vehicles, you can as well paste stickers of your company on clients’ and family members’ cars. It will go a long way to communicate your brand and also to attract customers who would make enquiries and perhaps patronize your services.
13. Leverage on Customer Satisfaction Survey
No doubt, customer satisfaction survey is one of the ways of getting feedback from your customers. A customer satisfaction survey is not only a great way to learn about your customer base, but it is also a great way for customers to remember you.
Trust me, if a customer is satisfied with your services, you can easily push for them to help you market your services to their friends and family at no cost.
14. Partner with Social Media Influencers
Another result yielding marketing idea suitable for marketing a business is to partner up with influencers on social media to help elevate your social media presence and of course market your services. Send them a gift and they might feature you in a post or on their story on Facebook or Instagram.
If you are lucky to have a family member or a friend who is a social medial influencer, they can help mention or advertise your brand and product for free on all their social media handles.
But even if you don’t have any relationship with a social media influencer, you can pay them to help you market your laundromat services. Trust me the result you will get will be amazing because most of their followers believe in them and would want to patronize any brand that they endorsed.
15. Market Via Your Social Media Handles
Opening a social media handle is free and you can use your handle to market your products and services as long as you abide by the rules and regulations of the organization. So, once you have your social media channels up and running, you just have to maximize them.
This means using those channels to interact with your customers who are either reviewing you or commenting on your posts. And during the course of interacting with them, you can market your laundromat services to them. Just ensure that you leverage on the internet and social media platforms like; Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google + et al.
16. Create Your own Infographics
Another creative marketing idea suitable for a laundromat is to leverage on infographics. With all this conversation around data, it should be noted that infographics are super-powerful marketing tools—and are relatively easy and inexpensive to make. Infographics are visual and easy to understand, which is why many people love to share them.
You can use online services right in your browser, such as Visme—no software or design skills required. You can also step it up a notch and pay for a freelance designer to create a set of infographics for you—which would come in as a relatively inexpensive small business marketing idea.
17. Publish Distributed Valuable Contents on Various Blogs
One of the marketing ideas that is suitable for any business including laundromats is to engage in distributing valuable contents via different blogs; you can become a guest blogger on highly visited blogs that cover your industry. And although you can still invest in publishing on those sites, consider alternative content distribution networks when you’re searching for free marketing ideas.
For instance, Reddit is an old-school social network that bills itself as the “front page of the internet.” To market on Reddit, you need to find a niche—known on Reddit as subreddits, or message boards—related to your industry or business. There, you can find scores of people already interested in what your business has to offer.
You don’t want to overtly advertise on Reddit without making it feel authentic to the community, so study your subreddit thoroughly before opting to post. You might also consider LinkedIn: The business-focused social network is often overlooked but can have a great impact.
By joining professional groups, participating in industry conversations, and sharing your own content, you can reach the right kind of audience that will bring you business. While this small business marketing idea will take some time on your part, it doesn’t have to cost money.
18. Leverage on One-to-One Marketing Strategy
Leveraging on one to one marketing strategy is yet another workable marketing idea that is suitable for a laundromat. One to one marketing is a customer relationship strategy aimed at boosting personalized interactions with customers.
With one to one marketing, it means you can work up to a potential clients in a gathering or in a bus and talk them about your product and services. Even if they are not ready to buy from you at the moment, you can collect their data and make use of it later.
With all the data collected, you can leverage on a good CRM software to carry out strategic marketing. Finding a good customer relationship management (CRM) software can also help automate this process. Besides, personalizing interactions with customers can foster greater loyalty and a better return on marketing investment.
19. Place Adverts on both Print (Community Based Newspapers and Magazines) and Electronic Media Platforms
Another creative marketing idea to leverage on to market your laundromat services is to take advantage of the media. You are expected to place adverts of your services on both print (community – based newspapers and magazines) and electronic media platforms.
Although this will definitely cost you money, but you are sure going to customers patronizing your services when they come across your adverts on print media.
20. Organize Online Contests on Regular Basis
Organizing online contests on a regular basis no doubt is one of the creative marketing ideas that you need if you run a laundromat services and you want to generate revenues and maximize profits.
The prizes don’t need to be expensive but the bottom line is that you should give out stuffs that are valuable, stuffs that will make people go out of their way to participate in your contest. As a matter of fact, contests are a great way to gather potential customer data—like emails—while also getting them to spread the word about your business to even more potential customers.