You are not selling a clean. You are selling a round.

Judge the lead against the customer, not the first clean.

This is where most window cleaners talk themselves out of advertising. They look at what one clean is worth, look at what a click costs, and decide the numbers do not work.

But you are not buying one clean. A customer who stays on the round for a couple of years is worth many multiples of that first visit, and they cost you nothing to win again. Once you compare the lead cost against the whole relationship rather than the first job, this becomes one of the better trades to advertise in rather than one of the worst.

It also changes what we optimise for. We are not chasing the cheapest possible enquiry. We are chasing enquiries from people who look like they will stay: householders in the right postcodes wanting a regular clean, rather than one-off pre-party or end-of-tenancy jobs that never come back.

A customer two streets away is worth more than three across town.

Nothing decides a window cleaner's hourly rate more than how tightly the round is packed. Ten houses on one estate is a comfortable morning. Ten houses spread across a town is a day of driving with a bucket in the back.

So we build the campaign around density rather than volume. Bids are weighted towards the postcodes where you already work and the areas whose housing suits your pricing, and pulled back everywhere else — even where clicks are cheaper. A cheap lead in the wrong place makes your week worse, not better.

As the round fills we move the weighting. You tell us which day is light and which estate you want more of, and the budget follows it. That is not something you can do with a leaflet drop or by waiting for word of mouth.

The word "windows" is a trap.

This trade has the single most expensive keyword confusion in exterior cleaning. "Windows" belongs to the double glazing industry, where a customer is worth thousands and companies bid accordingly. Drift into their searches and you will spend a week's budget in an afternoon.

People are choosing somebody to come back forever.

A homeowner picking a window cleaner is not making a one-off purchase. They are deciding who turns up at their house every month, walks down the side, and knows when they are out. That is a trust decision, and it is not won on price.

What actually wins it is reliability signals: that you text the night before, that you do frames and sills, that there is no contract and no fuss if they want to stop, that you turn up when you say. Those are the lines we put in the ads, because they answer the doubt somebody has after being let down by the last one who vanished.

And because the relationship is long, speed of reply matters enormously. Most window cleaners lose work simply by not answering. Enquiries land in your portal the moment they come in, so you can ring back the same hour.

How we build your campaign.

What else works for window cleaners.

Search is where we would start. These three matter more in this trade than most, because you are asking people to let you come back every month.

If you do more than windows.

Gutters, fascias and conservatory roofs are the natural add-ons, and each advertises differently.