Google Ads · Commercial Cleaning Firms
Google Ads for commercial cleaning, priced across the contract not the month
A commercial cleaning enquiry that turns into a three-year office contract is worth around fifty times its first invoice. Almost every cleaning account we look at is being judged on the first invoice, which is why the budget is always too small and the campaign always looks disappointing.
In short
Google Ads for commercial cleaning firms in the UK needs a different build from a generic Google Ads account, and this is how PipelineOS structures it. The first job is exclusion, and it is bigger here than in any other sector in this set. The word cleaner attracts an enormous volume of people looking for work and an equally enormous volume of householders wanting a domestic cleaner. The first ad group to build is Office and workplace contracts: the core group. The most common way this goes wrong: launching without heavy exclusions for job seekers and domestic cleaning, which in this sector can consume half of a first month’s budget before anybody looks.
How we build it
The first job is exclusion, and it is bigger here than in any other sector in this set. The word cleaner attracts an enormous volume of people looking for work and an equally enormous volume of householders wanting a domestic cleaner. Before a penny is spent, block jobs, vacancies, wanted, part time, hourly rate, salary, agency, house, domestic, ironing, end of tenancy, oven, carpet, upholstery and student. Then read the search terms report every few days for the first month. Skip this and half the first month buys applications rather than contracts.
Structure by contract type, because the buyers are different people with different procurement processes. Office and workplace cleaning is the core: recurring, evening or early morning work, bought by an office manager or a facilities lead. Specialist sectors — schools, medical and dental practices, food premises, gyms, care settings — each have requirements around vetting, infection control or audit that justify separate ad groups and separate pages, and they carry less price pressure because fewer suppliers qualify. One-off work sits in its own campaign entirely: builders cleans, post refurbishment, window and high-level cleaning, deep cleans. It converts fast, it is useful cash flow, and it must not be allowed to eat the contract budget.
Scheduling and geography behave predictably once you accept who is searching. Enquiries arrive during working hours, overwhelmingly on weekdays, and cluster around Monday and Tuesday mornings. The radius should reflect where you can actually staff a site with reliable people at six in the morning, not where you would take work — the constraint in commercial cleaning is always labour, and a contract won forty minutes from your nearest cleaner will bleed staff turnover for as long as you hold it.
Landing pages must answer procurement questions rather than sell cleanliness. What insurance you carry, whether staff are DBS checked where required, how you cover sickness absence, how supervision works, what happens in the first week of a transfer, whether you handle TUPE where an existing cleaning team is being taken on, and how quickly you respond to a complaint. That last cluster is what an office manager is genuinely worried about, because they have been let down before, and no photograph of a mop addresses it.
Ad groups
The account structure in practice. Ad groups stay tight so the ad can genuinely match the search, which lowers cost per click for the same position.
| Ad group | Example keywords | Bids and handling |
|---|---|---|
| Office and workplace contracts | office cleaning [city], commercial cleaning company [county], workplace cleaning contract, cleaning company for offices | The core group. Weekday hours, manual bids on low volume, landing page built around cover, supervision and insurance rather than around cleaning. |
| Regulated and specialist sectors | school cleaning contract, dental practice cleaning, food premises cleaning, care home cleaning company | Fewer qualified suppliers means less price pressure. Separate pages covering vetting, infection control and audit documentation win these on credibility. |
| One-off and project cleans | builders clean [city], post renovation cleaning, office deep clean, end of lease commercial clean | Fast-converting cash flow and a route into a contract conversation. Own budget, because otherwise it will absorb the contract campaign entirely. |
| Specialist services | commercial window cleaning [city], high level cleaning, commercial carpet cleaning, washroom services | Often the way into a building. A client who trusts you with the windows is a short conversation away from the daily contract. |
| Company name defence | your company name, company name cleaning reviews | Cheap protection. Contract cleaning is heavily tendered and competitors do bid on incumbent names when a contract is coming up for renewal. |
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Call 07443 392243WhatsAppBudget and the arithmetic
This is the sector where valuing the first invoice destroys the account. A modest office cleaned three evenings a week commonly bills £900–£2,000 a month; a larger site or a multi-building contract runs well beyond that. Commercial cleaning contracts are sticky when service is reliable, and two to four years is a fair working assumption. So a single office contract at £1,300 a month held for three years is £46,800 of revenue, not £1,300.
Margins are thin and must be modelled honestly. Labour dominates, and after wages, employer costs, materials, supervision and equipment, contribution is commonly 12–20% on a competitively won contract. Take 15% of £46,800 and the contract contributes around £7,000 across its life. Win rates on tendered commercial work are modest — one in five or six is typical, since buyers shortlist several suppliers and some enquiries are benchmarking an existing contractor — so a genuine enquiry carries roughly £1,200 of expected contribution.
That is the number the campaign should be judged against, and it changes everything about how much you can afford to bid. Commercial cleaning clicks commonly cost £4–£12 and enquiries £60–£220, which against a £1,200 ceiling is comfortable, but only if you also measure over a long enough window. Tenders take two to four months from enquiry to start date, so a campaign reviewed at thirty days will always look like a failure and will always get cut just before the work lands.
Four ways this goes wrong
- Launching without heavy exclusions for job seekers and domestic cleaning, which in this sector can consume half of a first month’s budget before anybody looks.
- Judging the campaign on the first month’s invoice value rather than the contract across its life, then concluding the cost per enquiry is unaffordable.
- Reviewing results at thirty days when commercial tenders take two to four months to reach a start date.
- Landing pages full of photographs of clean offices, answering none of the questions a facilities manager has about cover, supervision, insurance and TUPE.
- Letting one-off builders cleans share a budget with the contract campaign, so the fast-converting work takes everything and the recurring revenue never gets bid on.
The two pages behind this one
This page is the intersection. For the wider picture:
Google Ads in general
Everything about marketing for commercial cleaning firms
Questions
How do we stop attracting people looking for cleaning jobs?
An aggressive account-level exclusion list before launch, covering jobs, vacancies, wanted, hourly rate, salary, part time and agency, then weekly review of the actual search terms for the first two months. It is the single highest-value housekeeping task in a commercial cleaning account, and it is never finished, because the language people use to look for work keeps shifting.
What should the landing page actually say?
It should answer what a facilities or office manager is worried about: insurance levels, DBS checking where relevant, how sickness cover is arranged, how supervision and spot checks work, the transfer process in the first fortnight, TUPE handling, and how a complaint gets resolved. Those specifics convert; photographs of clean desks do not.
How long is the sales cycle for a cleaning contract?
Two to four months from first enquiry to a start date is normal, longer for schools, healthcare and anything tendered formally. Set a long conversion window, record enquiry dates and start dates separately, and review the account quarterly rather than monthly. Judging it on a calendar month tells you almost nothing about whether it is working.
Is one-off work worth advertising?
Yes, on its own budget. Builders cleans and post-refurbishment work convert within days, help cash flow and put you in buildings where a recurring contract may be about to be awarded. The rule is simply that it must never share a budget with the contract campaign, because faster conversion will win the budget every time and the recurring revenue will disappear.
Related
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