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Zenmaid
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How Zenmaid Grew
Scheduling software for cleaning businesses
How did Zenmaid grow?
Summary of the sourced claims below
Zenmaid initially grew through cold outreach, including cold emailing and cold calling, which helped acquire their first 100 customers. Building a website that allowed clients to book and pay directly increased visibility and became a significant lead-generating channel. They also utilized paid advertising such as Google Ads and maintained a presence on multiple marketing platforms to increase reach. Content marketing, SEO efforts, and community building through Facebook groups and events contributed to ongoing growth.
Channels
27 channels · grouped by how Zenmaid grows
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Organic social media
· 9 mentions · 9 sources“And sometime in that, in that like phase is when we began to get more of the inbound marketing working. And so, so around there, so, so it was essentially outbound for maybe the first year, year and a half, and then around 18 months in, then we began to see people coming to us, hearing about it f...”
highShow 8 more quotes
“These days we do regular Facebook Lives and feature many of the industry’s leading experts :-)”
high“The Maid Summit was massive. We got 50 plus industry influencers to do like talks for this thing that all happened in one week. So for like a one to two week period, everyone was just talking about the Maid Summit. Most a lot of people didn't realize that we were the ones behind it.”
high“it's almost like we experiment a lot more with the copy of like our social media, right, and our email and all of those things”
high“Convert more website visitors into leads and get new cleanings in your inbox with high-converting booking forms.”
medium“My first hire was in June 2019. I posted jobs on Facebook and Indeed, did interviews at the local coffee shop (since I was running everything from my two-bedroom apartment), and my very first hire ghosted me before training even started.”
high“If any of you have heard any of my content before, you know that I would never suggest anybody start out under, at minimum, $40 an hour.”
high“Build a simple cleaning business website It’s pretty easy to set up a simple cleaning business website nowadays, especially with so many sites offering pre-built templates. ... Whichever you choose, make sure you start with a booking page or a basic site. Include your services, pricing, reviews, ...”
high“Now we contribute to the industry with events like the Maid Summit, communities of #zenmaiders like the ZenMaid Mastermind on Facebook, and amazing free content like you'll find on this very page.”
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Facebook Community
· 7 mentions · 7 sources“2015 is when we launched the Zenmaid mastermind. So that's when we built a community for, um, for our actual niche. ... the Zenmaid mastermind was a really great one because it was the first big community on Facebook. ... And a lot of people don't feel like they're endorsing the Zenmaid software....”
highShow 6 more quotes
“And finally, what we’re best known for in the industry, is our Facebook group, the ZenMaid Mastermind. We built the first widely joined community ... it’s still where we get lots of leads, content ideas, and feedback on our software!”
high“So we have two, um, two Facebook groups. One is just for Zen made customers. The other is for all made service owners, regardless of what software like they use. So that keeps a plugged into the industry, like nicely. Right. So, so that already is quite helpful.”
high“I don’t know how much money our community on Facebook brings us and I’ve never been able to tell you that, but we have 8,000 dedicated maid service owners in our group now and I guarantee that adds a ton of value to the business in ways that we probably like, can’t even put a number on even if we...”
high“Community We maintain two Facebook groups: The ZenMaid Mastermind, which welcomes everyone in the industry, and the ZenMaid Inner Circle, which is exclusive to our software users and trial members. These communities are central to the broader ZenMaid ecosystem... making community a crucial pillar...”
high“Now we contribute to the industry with events like the Maid Summit, communities of #zenmaiders like the ZenMaid Mastermind on Facebook, and amazing free content like you'll find on this very page.”
medium“Strong user community (Mastermind Facebook group, Filthy Rich Cleaners podcast)”
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Partnerships
· 5 mentions · 5 sources“But mixed in with that was also one lucky partnership that actually came from our cold email process. It wasn't actually a cold email, it was actually like a LinkedIn outreach that was like kind of part of like the same like outreach campaign that we were doing that turned into a partnership with...”
highShow 4 more quotes
“And all of this has led to speaking engagements for myself and partnerships with almost every big name consultant in the industry. It helps a lot when we have a bigger audience than they do so at some point there was a snowball effect where most influencers chase us rather than the other way around.”
medium“around 100 customers, we landed our first… our first partnership with a coach or like an industry, like an industry influencer. And so she sent us a nice amount of business that helped us to go from like maybe 100 to 150 customers”
high“In August 2021, we got a call that would change everything. Fort McCoy, a local military base, needed help with a massive project: cleaning facilities for 15,000 Afghan refugees. We were asked to be one of the local subcontractors managing the janitorial side...”
high“Partnerships We got lucky with an early partnership that, combined with our cold email efforts, helped us reach about 200 users and created a strong foundation. Today, partnerships are central to our marketing strategy, contributing to our content, paid marketing, and community initiatives.”
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Content marketing
· 4 mentions · 4 sources“So essentially like the same way that the media that's out there, you can pay for ad space. So like there's a cleaning magazine, there's like a publication for cleaning companies that I could go and I could pay $500 a month to put an ad in there. It was looking at every single place that we could...”
highShow 3 more quotes
“we quickly branched out from there to do content marketing which helped with SEO and a variety of other things.”
high“Content marketing We've been creating content since the early days, documenting what works for us and other successful businesses in our space. The ZenMaid magazine (our blog) and YouTube channel are showing promising growth.”
high“He’s also created an incredible content marketing ecosystem around ZenMaid—from YouTube channels to the Maid Summit conference to podcasts—always focused on helping maid service owners succeed rather than just selling software.”
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SEO
· 4 mentions · 4 sources“if they try to come in and compete with Zenmade on SEO, it's like, you know, I like, I take all the articles or sorry, I took all the videos from the maid summit, give them to like, you know, quality writers and then have them turned into like really, really high quality articles. So like, you kn...”
highShow 3 more quotes
“Free resources👓 The 47 Keywords Every Maid Service Must Know”
medium“Partway through, Roman built a website to increase visibility. This was a turning point for the business because his website became a lead-generating machine where clients booked and paid for cleaning directly on the site. His new website started receiving 1,000+ views each month with a good conv...”
medium“then we began to see people coming to us, hearing about it from folks, searching on Google and all of that stuff.”
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Pay Per Click Advertising
· 3 mentions · 3 sources“Advertising We've had success with paid advertising over the years, making several classic channels work well for ZenMaid including Google, Facebook, Instagram, and Capterra, though Capterra hasn't performed as strongly since the recent Google updates.”
highShow 2 more quotes
“ZenMaid has always relied heavily on paid advertising (Google, Capterra, LinkedIn, Facebook) for a constant flow of leads...”
high“you did obviously a lot of direct outreach first and alongside, you know, paid traffic”
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Online Community
· 3 mentions · 3 sources“Join our maid community today - it's free 8000+ maid owners joined already! Stop building your cleaning business alone. Get help, join live Q&As, celebrate wins. Join our free community for maid owners on Facebook”
mediumShow 2 more quotes
“Become part of a community of 8000+ cheering maid service owners just like you. Start your FREE ZenMaid trial today and discover the freedom and clarity that ZenMaid can bring to your maid service!”
medium“Provides a supportive community of cleaning service owners.”
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Outbound
· 2 mentions · 2 sources“To validate our software idea, we took a straightforward but grinding approach: cold emails and cold calls to maid services. I started by finding cleaning companies on Yelp, reaching out to learn about their current scheduling systems and pain points.... My validation routine was intense: I sent ...”
highShow 1 more quote
“My Co-Founder spent about six months coding while I jumped on the phones and was doing cold calls and cold emailing to maid services like all over the, the US. ... and the cold email and cold calling actually took us from zero to 100 customers.”
high -
Offline advertising
· 2 mentions · 2 sources“I made a flyer, put it up at the local community center, and… nothing happened. Not a single call.”
highShow 1 more quote
“Kate posted flyers for her house cleaning services and landed a few jobs.”
high -
Word of mouth
· 2 mentions · 2 sources“my goal is to essentially create things, um, create things that will get folks talking about Zenmaid or about something that Zenmaid has done without necessarily feeling like they're endorsing Zenmaid, right?... if you can get people talking about your company, even if it's not your exact service...”
highShow 1 more quote
“then we began to see people coming to us, hearing about it from folks, searching on Google and all of that stuff.”
high -
Email marketing
· 2 mentions · 2 sources“From there we built an extensive email marketing funnel that’s almost all quality content. Our goal is to never be forgotten by our leads because when they’re ready for our software, they’ll let us know. Essentially any maid service owner that signs up for our email list will receive high quality...”
highShow 1 more quote
“I think like our email marketing, for example, we're always working on the copy there and improving the messaging because those are going out live”
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Direct sales
· 2 mentions · 2 sources“because I was focused on sales and was doing all cold email and cold calling, it was just much easier for me to get my foot in the door with maid service owners when I could call them and be like, hey, like I ran my own maid service for 14 months.”
highShow 1 more quote
“Love the “grind to validation” story—cold calls, cold emails, and a whole lot of hustle. That’s the kind of indie hacking spirit that actually gets results!”
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Advertising on social media
· 2 mentions · 2 sources“So what's interesting is that we also do paid advertising, right? And we're also paying to kind of drive people directly to the software, but then we spend a bunch of time creating essentially media assets.”
highShow 1 more quote
“📈 4 Ads to Increase Your Cleanings TODAY”
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Podcasting
· 2 mentions · 2 sources“Podcast Our newest initiative is the Filthy Rich Cleaners podcast, currently at about ten episodes. Having launched it with our established, trusted audience base, we're seeing impressive numbers and believe it will become a significant growth driver.”
highShow 1 more quote
“He’s also created an incredible content marketing ecosystem around ZenMaid—from YouTube channels to the Maid Summit conference to podcasts—always focused on helping maid service owners succeed rather than just selling software.”
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Offline Campainging
· 1 mention“I also did cold calling. When I was starting the business, I would cold email everyone, and then everyone that I cold emailed, I would also call. At some morning when I had time or on Saturdays, I would take Adderall and just call all day. I would pretty much do that as well.”
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Referral Program
· 1 mention“On a similar note I’ve gone out of my way to help up and coming consultants, some of which became quite big years after and now refer us business left and right.”
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Email List Growth
· 1 mention“And I guess you’re, you run like email campaigns, et cetera, et cetera, now as well.”
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Speaking at conferences
· 1 mention“And all of this has led to speaking engagements for myself and partnerships with almost every big name consultant in the industry.”
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Webinars
· 1 mention“The Maid Summit We've run The Maid Summit annually since 2018/2019. It's the world's first and largest virtual summit for Maid Service owners. It's an excellent platform for featuring our industry partners and introducing them to our audience — something both sides greatly value.”
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Side project marketing
· 1 mention“🛠 5 Free Tools We Used to Grow Fast Friendly Spotless”
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Product Page
· 1 mention“By embedding our instant booking form on your site, clients can submit cleaning requests, reducing manual emailing and freeing you to focus on business growth.”
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Conferences
· 1 mention“Now we contribute to the industry with events like the Maid Summit, communities of #zenmaiders like the ZenMaid Mastermind on Facebook, and amazing free content like you'll find on this very page.”
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Demo in-store
· 1 mention“then of course, like every person that visited that website, we would retarget on Facebook and go through and like eventually like closes business. So that was pretty, pretty massive.”
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Paid social ads
· 1 mention“And then the other thing that I had forgotten until like maybe five minutes before the call or something is that we actually ran paid ads for ZenMade since day one, but at a very, very small amount. So literally, because we wanted to have just a very consistent amount of traffic ... we used paid ...”
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Event marketing
· 1 mention“Next big marketing idea is the the Maid Summit, you guys can check out maidsummit.com if you want to see that. That's your pretty standard like virtual conference. ... The Maid Summit was massive. We got 50 plus industry influencers to do like talks for this thing that all happened in one week. S...”
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Google Ads
· 1 mention“we were making $7,000 a month. We might’ve been spending like $2K or something on like Google Ads. So we had had Google Ads running from the very beginning, that like from day one, we had about $100 a month in Google Ads. So that’s like, one click a day, right? So very, very small amount, but I’d...”
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Video content
· 1 mention“He’s also created an incredible content marketing ecosystem around ZenMaid—from YouTube channels to the Maid Summit conference to podcasts—always focused on helping maid service owners succeed rather than just selling software.”
medium
How 2,705 businesses grow
Of businesses with mapped growth channels, the share using each —
Zenmaid’s highlighted.
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Referral/Word-of-mouth68% ◀
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Social media60% ◀
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Search/SEO57% ◀
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Email48% ◀
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Community34% ◀
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Content/Inbound32% ◀
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Partnerships31% ◀
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Paid ads24% ◀
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Events24% ◀
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Press/PR17%
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Outbound/Sales16% ◀
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Marketplaces/App stores9%
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Product expansion2%
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Influencer partnerships2%
