How to Start Marketing Your Grout Cleaning Services

The first thing that you will want to do when you start a tile cleaning business is create a website, and a couple of YouTube videos on the professional services that you offer. Also remember to put your business on Google maps. It works best if you try to keep things focused locally. If you live in Oregon for instance, the title of your YouTube video and your website should contain the words of the major cities that are close to where you live. Also make sure that it contains a good description of what you do. Make sure to include some ‘before and after’ footage just to make your site more credible.

Don’t worry about having the most professional videos right away. You can always upgrade your videos once you start getting customers. The next thing that you need to do for your grout cleaning business is to start advertising locally. You can try placing an ad or two in the newspaper, and make sure that you offer free estimates, as this will encourage more people to call.


My favorite method for attracting customers is to actually go door to door, and either talk to them, or leave a flyer describing the services that you offer. Leaving door flyers is a lot cheaper than sending someone mail. Not only that, it has a higher chance of being read. The other advantage of using door flyers is that it allows you to pick the neighborhoods where you want to work. Usually the middle-class or the upper-middle-class offers you a great opportunity to find customers, without having to spend a ton of money on advertising. Try to stay away from rental neighborhoods, or multimillion dollar homes (because these people are always either working or on vacation). Make sure that you sell people on the fact that you are a professional cleaning company, and that you can save them from having to do the work themselves. In marketing, it is usually a better idea to sell the benefits of the service you are providing, rather than selling the service all by itself.

What Type of Equipment Do You Need in Order to Be Successful

Eventually you’ll want a truck that can mount a hot water pressurized steamer. In addition, you also want a hard floor cleaner. The way that these work is that they pressurize and clean the grout and tile surfaces, and also suck away the water at the same time. This leaves you with a floor that has been steamed and looks really good.

If you’re just starting out, you don’t want to pay $10,000- $20,000 more for equipment and the truck. It is a much better idea for you to buy your equipment used. That way, if your business doesn’t worked out, you can at lease get the money back that you paid for your equipment. Another idea is to start small. Maybe you can buy a portable steaming unit for $200 or $300 and use that. Using a steamer is probably one of the easiest ways to learn how to clean grout. The only disadvantage of doing it that way is that your customers might figure out a way to do the work themselves, and it will still take you longer when you’re using a smaller machine.

How Much Should You Charge per Job?

Never charge by the hour, always charge by the job. It is generally easier for you to make more money this way. You will be able to make more money per job when you have the right equipment. It is worth it to invest in a professional grout steam cleaning machine that would allow you to do the job four or five times faster than trying to clean it by hand. Not only will a professional grout cleaning machine do a better job, but it will make you more money per hour than trying to clean the tile grout lines by hand. To buy a professional grout steaming machine, you are going to be paying about $2,000-$5,000. Still, it is a good investment that you can quickly make back just by the money that you save by having better equipment.

What Other Services Can You Upsell Your Customers to, to Make Even More Money

Believe it or not, most of your customers appreciate it when you offer them an additional service that they know they need to have done. This is why it is a great idea to not only clean the grout, but seal the grout as well. Sometimes you can charge just as much to seal grout as you can to clean it. This will mean that you can make twice as much money per visit when you seal the grout. The materials for grout sealing are relatively inexpensive. Typically a $30-$40 gallon of grout sealant is enough to do just about any job. Your real expenses are going to be the cost of hiring and training your employee to do a good job at it. You should still be able to make money sealing people’s grout. A job that would take your employee two hours to do, you can typically charge up to $300 for.

When you own a tile and grout cleaning business, you don’t have to just stick to cleaning tile. A lot of people who steam clean tile also clean carpets. It just so happened that the same equipment that you can use to steam clean tile and floors, you can use for deep cleaning carpets. By upselling through cleaning carpets in the house, you can turn a $300 job into a $600 job.

Another service that you can offer is complete deep clean for a bathroom, or maybe clean out jet tubs and bathroom spas. This will be another opportunity for you to upsell and make more money off of your customers.

Additional Readings:

You may also be interested to learn about different types of cleaning equipment that you can use when starting a tile cleaning business. Here are some articles that may be helpful to you:

*Tile and Grout Cleaner Tool Review

*Grout Steam Cleaners, Professional Steam Cleaners for Floors, Bathrooms and Tile

The Organic Approach to Grout Cleaning- the organic approach to cleaning grout and tile is a little bit different. What you want to do is you want to use a paste of borax and lemon juice. Use it in the same way that you use the paste of baking soda and bleach. Make sure that you let it dry before scrubbing it off. Not only will this do a pretty decent job with most stains, but it will also smell good when you are done clean.

An Oven Cleaner Works in Extreme Circumstance- in the most extreme circumstances, this type of cleaner will work for cleaning tile grout. You can use oven cleaner to clean your tile and grout off. The key to using this oven cleaner is that you do not want it to sit on your grout for more than a few seconds before you rinse it off with water. Most of oven cleaners are extremely strong so you should handle them with care. Make sure that you wear gloves, and that you ventilate your shower properly. This method is very effective in removing some of the toughest stains.

If you want to get rid of caulking stains, you can roll up a paper towel soaked with vinegar, and allow it to sit on top of the caulking. You should let it sit there for 3 to 4 hours. After that, the caulking should be a lot cleaner. You can also re-caulk your bathroom. Even if you have to take out the old caulking and put down the new caulking it doesn’t take that long to do.

Here is another tip that is pretty invaluable to helping you clean shower tile grout. If you want to loosen up all of that grime that is on your tiles, the easiest way to do this is to turn on a steamy shower for a few minutes and the steamy shower will help to loosen up the grout in walls. Follow-up by using one of the grout cleaning methods listed above, or just do simple maintenance cleaning by spraying your grout with vinegar and wiping it down with a brush.

Sources- Hailey’s Cleaning Hints. Published by the new American Library in 2000 published by the new American Library in 2000 your tile grout.

If you want a good quality grout and tile cleaner, you’re going to need to have two things in it. It’ll either have to have an oxidizing agent that helps to get rid of tough grout stains by oxidizing them, or it’s going to have to be a grout and tile cleaner that contains bleach. If it contains bleach, it will not only get rid of the stains, but will also bleach the surface of the tile and grout. If the grout is supposed to be white, it helps out a ton, but if it is supposed to be a colored grout, you’re better off not using a cleaner that contains bleach. Rather, you would be better off if you used a cleaner that contains an oxidizing agent. Oxidizing agents aren’t typically as strong as cleaners that contain bleach, but they still do a great job on your tile and grout.