Facebook Marketing for Bin Cleaners

Chris Gentry: Hey, what’s up everybody? It’s Chris with My Service Area and Happy Cans with another video for you today. Today, we got a special guest. We’re doing something a little bit different we’re doing on the marketing side and I’ve got Bradley Robertson with BR Digital Marketing.

Bradley Robinson: Hello, hello.

Chris Gentry: Well, Bradley, thanks so much for taking the time. I’m sure if you’re in the bin cleaning business, you recognize his name because he has helped out a ton of bin cleaners. He’s active in the groups and there’s always a bin cleaner referring him.

But today I want to talk about his business, talk about Facebook ads and hopefully he will share some stories and some tips and tricks that can help the beginners as well as some of the veteran guys out there that need a little boost in their business this upcoming season.

So Bradley, give us the background. How did you get started in marketing and what led you to branching out your own and I guess specifically, you know, working with bin cleaners?

Bradley Robinson: Yeah. I mean I was – a couple of years ago, I was doing marketing for personal trainers and gyms and it was – I mean it was going great and then this guy messaged me from South Africa and the industry exists in South Africa as well. It’s quite a bit older there than in the US and he said, “Look, I’ve got this bin cleaning business. Do you think you can help?” I had never heard of bin cleaning in my life and yeah, so I thought it was really interesting.

Hey, let’s give it a try. We got going, did really well from the start and when I looked at it, I thought this just makes so much sense around the world. Everyone has a bin. A lot of – especially a lot of places where you have to have a bin. The potential is there and it’s perfect for social media marketing because we can reach so many people through social media and like I said, everyone has got a bin. So you kind of find the best way to reach them. You got a huge market there.

So yeah, I took the results from that guy. Started working with and still work with the people in Australia and in United States. Went to UK. It’s a bit of a different industry there. So found what I really liked is working with people in the United States. Really they’re growth-orientated. It’s a proper business and it has been going really well since then. That has been for – what? I mean, three years now? I mean focusing specifically on bin cleaning.

Chris Gentry: Got you. Now you said South Africa and you’ve got a bit of an accent. Where are you located?

Bradley Robinson: Exactly, yeah. I am South African and I’m located in Mauritius. It’s a little island off the East Coast of Madagascar of Africa. Yeah, I’m between Mauritius and South Africa mostly.

Chris Gentry: Got you. Now where in South Africa were you born?

Bradley Robinson: It’s a town called Durban, a little beach town on the East Coast.

Chris Gentry: Got you. In relation to Johannesburg?

Bradley Robinson: Six-hour drive.

Chris Gentry: OK, got you.

Bradley Robinson: Yeah.

Chris Gentry: OK.

Bradley Robinson: It’s more on the coast. Johannesburg is in the central.

Chris Gentry: Got you, got you. So when you talk about social media, I mean do you – when somebody comes to you – let me ask you this. When a bin cleaner comes to you, what’s the process that you work through with them before you even launch their first ad?

Bradley Robinson: So I mean you got to obviously understand where the market is at. There are basically two major avenues to go down with social media at the moment for bin cleaning. It’s Google is covering your basis on people that are searching for the service.

So in certain areas, it’s not too big, right? In the US, Google is not going to play a huge role because service awareness is still quite blurred at this time. The industry is still pretty new. But in some places like Vegas, that’s completely different where people know of it. There are big companies there that are doing it and it’s – the Google traffic is through the roof compared to anywhere else in the United States.

Then the other side is with Facebook. So luckily working with a whole bunch of other bin cleaners and having data from pretty much all of the – I would say at the moment is I’ve got a kind of system where I can build an effective lead generation strategy without needing too much in-depth research into the market.

Like when I start off with someone, I work off the stats straight off the bat. So I go with what has worked, what has been working for other people, what is currently working and start with that, start quite broad and then with the stats that you’re getting straight away, you can start paring it down and that’s kind of the beauty of the digital experience.

We get those stats straight away and we don’t have to pay a huge amount for billboards or anything like that and then realize it doesn’t work.

Chris Gentry: Yeah.

Bradley Robinson: So probably not – I don’t necessarily break down the specific – I mean I do the typical breaking down of what we – who were you trying to target in the area, what the business is getting, but it’s a simple business. Everyone has a bin. We go with what’s going to work, what sort of structure works for a bin cleaner that I’m going to work with, who he’s going to target and we can get started pretty soon.

Chris Gentry: So you just mentioned your target demographic. When you’re starting off with a new bin cleaner, are you helping them with their territory that they should service? Because, you know, fuel prices are going up. They’re not coming down anytime soon. You know, the key to being successful in this business or, you know, a lot of home – service businesses where you have to travel to their location to complete the job is tight routes, high density. You know, be as efficient as possible.

So when you talk to them, is it – you know, do you help guide them as far as, “Hey look, you may only want to go 10 miles, 12 miles outside of your home base and let’s focus all our efforts on this 10-mile radius”? Is that the approach?

Bradley Robinson: Yes, exactly. The people starting out in the beginning that haven’t really established routes, whether it may be different cities or zip codes, whatever it may be, I say, look, easiest thing to do is start from your home base, whatever the track mark that you’ve got and go a certain radius from there and that’s how you can also target with social media is a certain radius from an address. Literally you drop a pin on your actual address and say, hey, five miles. Is the population big enough? I will look at that.

Chris Gentry: Right.

Bradley Robinson: If it’s big enough to work with, then that’s your starting base. You can expand later on but for now, you got to keep it dense.

Chris Gentry: Got you. It makes perfect sense because with – I didn’t start in the bin cleaning business. I bought into an existing business and after three months of running it and understanding it, that’s where I realized that I have got to fire some customers, these outliers, that are just traveling too far and taking too much time.

You know, there were some days I would travel 100 miles for these clients. You know, roundtrip for a day and that was ridiculous. But talking about Facebook ads, to be honest, I was shocked at the results because in my mind, I’m thinking people aren’t going to Facebook to learn – to order bin cleaning. But then it was like the “ah-ha” moment of “Wait a minute.” The approach to Facebook ad is more of brand awareness. And what is it? People need to see something seven or eight times before they actually make a purchase or something.

So then it started to click with me. Well, no wonder these guys are seeing the results that they are with – I don’t know why this dude – this balloon thing keeps popping up. Sorry about that. Then I understood why the results were because they’re running these ads consistently and then finally that Facebook users go on ding. You know, the lightbulb goes off. My bins are dirty. I’m going to order it and it kind of just snowballed from there. Is that the conversation?

Especially in a market where there’s not already bin cleaners. It’s like let’s educate the population. This may take 30 days. It may take 45 days, whatever that number is, and then you will start seeing those clicks and then you will see the conversions and then it will gain steam. Is that what – you know, for a new territory, is that – am I on track there?

Bradley Robinson: Exactly on track. Yeah, that’s what a lot of people who are getting into it don’t realize. Like a normal sales funnel, the first step is awareness and that awareness is going to be a longer process because it’s not just your business awareness. It’s service awareness, especially if you’ve got no competitors. You’re in a new area.

Chances are everyone you reach has never heard of bin cleaning before. So that’s the great thing about Facebook and this business really is that because there’s no – because everyone has a bin or potentially every homeowner has a bin, then we’ve got an endless supply within a locality of this – too many bins really for one business. So it’s just providing awareness, getting that awareness out there, yeah. Starting with service awareness and then you can start leading them towards your business itself.

Chris Gentry: Right, right. Talk to me – I’ve heard conflicting things about this. But boosting a post. I mean is that really worth the $5 or $10 that you’re doing? You know, you’re spending on this. Talk to me about that with boosting a post.

Bradley Robinson: It doesn’t give you as much control as what you’re looking to do. You can – I think when you boost a post, I’m saying this as someone who on the frontend of Facebook doesn’t – would never boost a post because it’s – there’s the frontend of Facebook. We can do that. I click a few buttons and your post is out there. In the backend where you can have a lot more control over where it goes

Like certain things, for example Facebook has 15 ad placements. Fifteen different places where you can be advertising and if you’re just boosting a post, you have zero control over that whereas like with my ads, I select one because the one has the best return on investment. So you turn off all the rest. It’s those small little things like getting down into the nitty-gritty of the actual demographics, targeting who you want to be targeting. It’s stuff you can’t do over a boosted post..

So that’s why people say, you know, boosting posts are a waste. It can be – if you have the budget, it can be good for a bit of brand awareness. It’s not the worst thing in the world. I’m not going to say it’s like completely wrong but you just probably aren’t going to see the same ROI as doing a proper system.

Chris Gentry: Right, right. When you’re creating an ad, you know, for someone, do you recommend part of the ad they offer a discount or what’s kind of the school of thought there in regards to launching your first ad? Because I’m not a big discount guy. So for me, I’m curious. You know, it’s starting out on a Facebook ad, what your recommendation is there.

Bradley Robinson: Yeah. I mean the discount argument is quite a hot topic sometimes in those groups and I guess the argument against discounts is people say that the service is so cheap. You don’t need a promo or that it devalues the service. I’m guessing that’s your sort of school of thought.

Chris Gentry: Yeah.

Bradley Robinson: OK. But now go back to what we were saying is that how we need to educate the public and these are people that have never heard of the service before, chances are. I mean when you’re doing this, we may have one percent – not even. I’m going to say one percent of the people that have actually heard of the service before. So now if you’re a middle aged person who has never had their bins cleaned and never even heard of the service before, what’s going to make you want to try that?

Chris Gentry: Right.

Bradley Robinson: And that’s – and we all know that once people have their bins cleaned, that they love it. Very few people actually turn around and say, “Oh, that was a waste of my money.” You know, in this industry, what we are going for is the lifetime customer value. That’s the whole business model of this recurring business model. It’s the lifetime personal value.

You’re not going to make a decent amount of money over one bin, one customer. But that one customer might be worth a lot over time. So what is it? Giving away something small in the beginning, to get them trying it, give them a little taste and then converting them to a lifetime customer because as we say , they all like it.

Chris Gentry: OK. So question there with the lifetime value of a customer. When you’re creating a campaign and working with a bin cleaner, are you – would you – with that approach, would you rather focus on a discount for a monthly or a quarterly cleaning versus a one-time clean and probably steer the bin cleaner away from – you know, well, let’s do a special on a one-time clean? Because then your chance – I mean a lot of my one-time cleans will – they will turn into quarterly or monthly clients because I’ve never been in a business where it has been so sticky. I mean I even had clients that they literally do one-time cleaning twice a year.

I mean if I go back and look at their history, they don’t want to do monthly, they don’t want to do quarterly. They will pay the high price for those one-time cleanings but for the last three or four years, they’ve gotten their cans cleaned twice a year.

So do you – with that approach, do you say, hey, let’s – if you’re going to lead them in with a discount, let’s do it on a quarterly or monthly option. Is that kind of the approach there and the thinking?

Bradley Robinson: It actually depends because you will see that with – because people don’t know the service, the one-time cleaning has the lowest barrier of entry. People will be more likely to opt for that out of nervousness that – well, not necessarily nervousness but that they’ve never had this done before. Why do they need it done every month now all of a sudden?

Out of from never having it done to having it every month can be quite a big stint. So a one-time clean is by far going to be the most popular option at the first step and it’s all about upselling after that. So it’s the typical sales process of – and well, the sales process of getting them in, having them try it and then upselling them.

So often what we can do is actually offer some kind of discount on any first clean including a one-time clean and then when they’re up for a one-time clean, the discount might actually end up being – you might be getting a lot more than if they were to sign up for a monthly right off the bat because that price say – let’s just say it’s a fixed percent job and your one-time is a lot higher. You might actually be fitting a lot more at first clean.

And then you upsell them on to recurring ones after they’ve tried it. It does work really well. Like if I was to offer all the services, monthly, quarterly and one time out there on a promo, say 50 percent off the first clean, you will get probably 70 percent of people up for a one-time and then out of those, that’s where you’re going to be landing most of your recurring customers because down the line, they’re going to be keen.

Chris Gentry: Yeah, and you get their contact information and you can implement a drip campaign of some sort to them who – hopefully convert them to a quarterly or monthly customer. So let’s talk about – there are a lot of do-it-yourselfers out there in this industry, which on a lot of levels I respect that on different areas. There’s – you need to outsource it. You need to hire somebody like you who’s a professional that knows the ins and outs. So what are some mistakes that you have seen of people trying to run their own ads?

Bradley Robinson: Yeah. I mean firstly credit to those people. Some people are actually nailing it on their own. They’re doing a good job and it actually depends on the area. Some areas just take off so well and some need a bit more – like a bit more time to do some research and figure out what’s working. So I mean some of the biggest mistakes, I see people expecting that they’re just going to put an ad out there and someone is going to see it, click it.

Chris Gentry: The instant gratification.

Bradley Robinson: And sign up, yeah, exactly because – and it goes back to what we – this is all about is that people don’t know the service. I mean they’re not going to click on it, go to your website and just enter their credit card details. They’ve never heard of the industry before let alone your business. Even big businesses give free trials on stuff like that to try to entice people just to get a bit of reputability for the business itself, let alone the service or the industry.

So there’s that. There’s overcomplicating your marketing strategies and your content, you know. You’re a local business. Be proud of the fact that you’re a local business and make your content look like that. When you have these massively graphic design things, they often don’t work very well. You know, you got to look the part and look local. Your track is your rolling billboard. Get that involved. Get you involved.

You are – and especially in the beginning, most likely it’s just one person and you are your business. Get involved with your marketing material. It’s going to do a lot better than say an animated video of – you got to capture people’s attention through an actual real human and yeah, I mean that’s kind of – I’m trying to think of anything else. I mean in the trash bin cleaning, as a whole, a big misunderstanding is that it’s going to be a quick fix. You’re going to – you think it’s a great idea and you think you’re going to have businesses straight off the bat because you’re like, “Oh, this is a great business.” So you think that the growth is going to be huge.

Chris Gentry: Yeah, right.

Bradley Robinson: And I do see it as a snowball effect.

Chris Gentry: Yeah.

Bradley Robinson: The more are you out there or you’re going to be in people’s faces, like those touchpoints you mentioned, seven or eight touchpoints, that could be you driving past someone’s house.

Chris Gentry: Right.

Bradley Robinson: Then they see an ad or whatever it may be. Those are the touchpoints that we do. I mean that’s how you need to educate the market and then you see – educate the market on your awareness and then you position yourself as the go-to business for that service. Yeah.

Chris Gentry: I like that.

Bradley Robinson: Yeah. So it’s just not expecting people to just fall in love with it really.

Chris Gentry: Yeah.

Bradley Robinson: It boils down to – it takes a bit of hard work but then it does go on a snowball effect and starts picking up a bit of steam.

Chris Gentry: If it was easy, everybody would do it, right?

Bradley Robinson: Exactly.

Chris Gentry: So I’m going to be mindful of your time here. But a couple more questions. So when you look at Facebook ads, do you put focus on Instagram as well?

Bradley Robinson: I always test it. You never know, especially with the way things are changing hugely. Like look how TikTok is taking over. Instagram is simply a push of a button on the backend of Facebook. It’s always through the Facebook and maybe a little bit of a redesign on the actual ad itself. 

But really what I’ve seen time and time again still to this day, start of 2022, Facebook has been the best return because it has got the demographics that we’re looking for. In terms of the people on Facebook, are those people that we want to target? And I also think like people will say, OK, we’re starting – especially with females, middle-aged females are starting to go on Instagram. Not to get too into it but – which can be a lot of the lowest-hanging fruit for the bin cleaning business.

But at the same time, Instagram has a different sort of feel to it. People are going through content a lot. They’re scrolling through. They’re liking. There’s a lot of engagements. It’s just simply liking a photo or a video whereas on Facebook, a lot of it is a lot more engaged. It’s reading comments and that’s where we’re going to be getting people is when they actually take time to read.

Chris Gentry: Yeah. I think you just probably shared a golden nugget there for the do-it-yourselfers is the middle-aged woman should be your target, your target market, if you’re starting out. So if you’re doing an ad yourself in Facebook and you’re – in the backend and you’re doing your demographics and you’ve got your 5, 10, 12-mile radius, target those middle-aged women, right?

Bradley Robinson: Exactly. Start with that. See how it goes and well, just another golden nugget is target people who – I mean have your ads speak to who you’re targeting.

Chris Gentry: Right. 

Bradley Robinson: Don’t just do the same thing and target different people and expect the same results.

Chris Gentry: Right.

Bradley Robinson: You know, Father’s Day is coming up. Target fathers.

Chris Gentry: Yeah.

Bradley Robinson: And have your picture reflect that as well.

Chris Gentry: Yeah. Good advice. Now how can people get in touch with you? I know that you’re – usually your client list is full and you don’t have spots open. But if somebody wanted to reach out to you, how could they find you and get in contact with you?

Bradley Robinson: Well, you can send me an email at brad@br-digitalmarketing.com. That’s the same – my website is br-digitalmarketing.com and on there, you can contact me through there as well. It’s probably the easiest. I’m all over the Facebook groups. So if you look up Bradley on the Facebook group, I don’t think there’s any other Bradleys there yet. I don’t know. There actually are but I’m there.

Chris Gentry: Fantastic. Well, I will put the link in the show notes as well for you guys to reach out to him and one thing that I will say about Bradley is that if you’re not in the Facebook groups, join the – there are two or three or four Facebook groups that are really active. 

Bradley is always commenting in there when it comes to marketing stuff and a very valuable asset to the bin cleaning industry with what he’s doing in helping bin cleaners get started and again, you know, helping those guys out there that have been around or ladies that have been around for a while, you know, tweak some stuff. So thanks so much Bradley. I appreciate you spending some time with us today

Bradley Robinson: No problem. Thank you.

Chris Gentry: All right. Have a good evening.

Bradley Robinson: All right. You too. Cheers, Chris.

Chris Gentry: See you.

Bradley Robinson: Bye.

Chris Gentry: Bye.