Reader question: we are short a cleaner going into the holidays. Should we pause our ads?
A cleaner quit before the holiday rush and the ads keep bringing calls you cannot fill. When to pause, when to keep running, and what to tell new callers.
"One of our cleaners gave notice two weeks ago. We are a three-team company and now we are down to two. The ads are still bringing in four or five new requests a week and we cannot take them all. Do I pause the ads until we hire, or keep them going?"
This is one of the most common problems in the business, and it hits hardest right now. Holiday cleaning requests climb from late October through December, and that is also when cleaners leave for seasonal retail jobs or family travel. So the question is not unusual. The answer depends on which kind of lead you are buying.
The short answer
Do not switch everything off. Cut the spend that brings one-time requests, keep the spend that brings recurring clients, and change what you say to new callers. Then put a slice of that ad money toward hiring.
Here is why.
Pausing completely has a real cost
Google Ads and Facebook campaigns both take time to settle. If you pause for six weeks and turn them back on in December, the first week or two often costs more per lead while the campaign finds its footing again. You also lose the steady trickle of recurring clients that keeps your schedule full in February, which is the month most cleaning companies wish they had more of.
Your Google profile is different. It keeps working whether you run ads or not, and it costs nothing. Do not neglect it during a staffing gap. The Google Business Profile guide covers what to keep updated.
Sort your leads before you cut anything
Look at the last month of requests and put each one in one of two piles:
- One-time and deep cleans. Holiday deep cleans, move-outs, a single clean before guests arrive.
- Recurring. Weekly, biweekly, or every four weeks.
A one-time clean is a full day of work for one payment. A biweekly client is roughly 26 visits a year. When you are short on hands, the recurring client is the one worth fitting in, even if it means starting them in two or three weeks.
If your ads target "deep cleaning" or "move out cleaning" keywords, those are the ones to pause or cut back. Keep the campaigns or ad sets that bring "biweekly cleaning service" and "house cleaning near me" requests. The Google Ads guide shows how to split campaigns this way if yours are all lumped together.
Change what you say to new callers
The worst outcome is not a lead you turned down. It is a lead you said yes to and then cancelled on. That is where one-star reviews come from.
So be honest up front. When a new request comes in, try this:
Thanks for reaching out. We are booking new recurring clients starting the week of November 17. I can hold that spot for you now. For one-time holiday cleans we are full this year, but I can put you on our list if something opens up.
Most people respect a clear start date. Many will wait two or three weeks for a company that answered fast and told them the truth. And the waitlist line keeps the door open for cancellations.
Put the same message in your text-back for missed calls so nobody gets a different story.
Use the ad money to hire
If you cut your one-time spend, move part of that budget into finding a cleaner. A local job post on Facebook, a boosted post to your own followers, or a paid listing on a job board often costs less than a week of service ads.
Your marketing actually helps here. Applicants look you up the same way customers do. A profile with steady reviews, recent photos of your team, and a website that looks like a real company attracts better applicants than a bare listing. If you do not have a careers line on your website, add one now. The website essentials guide covers what the site should show.
Protect your current clients first
Before you take any new client, look at your existing schedule. If a team is now covering more homes than it can do well, quality slips, and quality is what your reviews are built on. Cleaning companies rate well as a group, with a mean rating of 4.8 across 45,428 listings in our data. One rough month can pull yours below that.
Ask yourself one question for each new booking: can we do this clean as well as we did it last month? If not, give it a later start date.
What it costs to get this wrong
A hypothetical. Say you keep running full ads, book eight new one-time cleans at $250 each, and cancel three because you ran out of hands. You keep $1,250 in revenue, lose three potential recurring clients, and likely pick up at least one angry review. Compare that to booking four recurring clients with honest start dates. At $150 a visit every two weeks, those four are worth more than $15,000 over a year if they stay. Plug your own numbers into the calculator to see what each lost lead is worth.
The bottom line
Trim the one-time spend, keep the recurring spend, tell callers the truth about start dates, and push part of the budget toward hiring. When the new cleaner is trained, turn the one-time campaigns back on.
If you would like a hand sorting your campaigns and setting up the honest-start-date replies, there is a free 14-day trial of any service, no card, text or call (801) 666-2415.
Steven has spent the last several years running growth campaigns for local service businesses, house cleaning companies among them, and builds the benchmark datasets on this site from public Google listings. About the editor