How to Thrive as a Cleaner in Portugal's Competitive Market

How to Start a Cleaning Business in Portugal

Starting a cleaning business offers a lot of potential–both financially and as a fulfilling career–for cleaners and business entrepreneurs. By knowing how to start a cleaning business the right way you’ll be best positioned to achieve success.

There’s a lot of demand for cleaning businesses both in the domestic home-cleaning industry as well as the commercial/industrial sector and fortunately it doesn’t take a huge capital investment to start a cleaning company. 

Starting a Cleaning Business - Choose Your Industry

When it comes to cleaning businesses, one of the first decisions you are going to need to make is what sort of cleaning industry you want to operate in.

Domestic Cleaning 

Domestic cleaning, also called residential or consumer cleaning, refers mostly to housekeeping and other services for homes, houses and people’s personal properties. There’s plenty of scope for service variety as well, from laundry and dry cleaning to landscaping and gardening.

Commercial Cleaning

Whether its janitorial service to specialist high-rise window cleaning, business of all sorts, size and locations need to have their premises cleaned. In general, commercial cleaning businesses operate a much wider range of services due to the wide variety of different companies across all industries.

How To Start Your Business

Choose Your Business Structure

While you can always change your business structure down the line, it’s always easiest and less stressful to choose the right structure from the outset.

There are a few options available:

Self-employed - perfect if you’re self-employed and running the business independently.

Partnership - good for two or more people running the business.

Company - a more complicated and independent commercial entity. Another alternative for starting a cleaning business is to consider buying an existing

Franchise-There are many pros (and cons) to purchasing a cleaning business that’s already set up and running, depending on what your plan, ability and interests are.

Registrations, Licenses, Insurance and Tax

All businesses, cleaning companies included, need to register their business name (unless of course you plan on trading under your own name), apply for a trading license (unless you’re only providing domestic/residential cleaning services), and set up a bank account (unless, once again you are trading under your own name). You will also need to make sure you have the right licenses and insurance policies to operate legally and compliantly as a cleaning company.

Identify Target Market 

While you should already have identified whether you want to be a commercial or domestic cleaning company, you should identify the exact target market that you’re planning on focusing on. For commercial cleaners you might choose a particular industry to service, and for residential cleaners you might choose a particular area to home in one.

Business Plan

There are many different aspects to a business plan and while there are plenty of templates out there, the basics of a comprehensive plan should include:

• Summary of your business and your business goals

• Outline of the company structure

• Breakdown of your services

• Analysis of the target market

• Budget breakdown and financial projections

• Marketing strategy for increasing business

• Operational strategy, structure and implementation

• List of inventory, equipment and other resources needed

• Strategy for expansion and growth

Invest in Equipment 

Cleaning companies are quite dependent on their cleaning equipment, tools and materials. Even certain domestic cleaners who don’t provide their own cleaning materials often favour specific machinery or tools. Starting a business can require a certain outlay of investment and capital. While you don’t have to buy anything and everything related to cleaning, you will need to at least invest in the essential cleaning equipment. If you don’t have access to a workable work vehicle or commercial van, you will also need to source both the vehicle and explore financing options.

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Create and Execute a Marketing Strategy

Once you decide how niche or general your offerings are going to be, and what kind of cleaning you're going to do, you can start to develop a marketing plan. First identify your target clients. You'll want to advertise your services in places where your clients congregate or go to find the services they need.

AllFeito- The most effective and easiest way for you to connect with more potential leads and clients is through Portugal’s largest online platform for Pros, including cleaners. It’s simple to sign up, quick to get started and hassle-free to connect and quote for services.

Pamphlets- A pamphlet drop–or business cards/magnets–might be an old school tactic but it still works. It helps to create awareness of your new company and promote your services. It also gives you a good opportunity to set yourself out from other competitors in the space.

Social Media- Social media accounts are very important in today’s modern age. More and more, potential clients are turning to social media to both find cleaning companies and find referrals and recommendations. We recommend focusing on Facebook at the very least.

Website- A comprehensive website that includes all the information a potential client could need, and one that’s ideally search engine optimized so more people conducting online searches will find it, will help entice more internet surfers to engage with you and your services.

Referral System- In the cleaning industry, few things can compare with word of mouth. Having an effective referral system which incentives people to pass on your details with a positive review–such as a referee discount–will help improve your reputation and get more leads.

In Conclusion Starting a cleaning business can set you up for high earning potential in the future without having to risk a large investment from the outset. There’s plenty of scope for growth and expansion as well. You can operate as a sole trader running and operating the business by yourself, or you can team up with someone in a partnership. Alternatively, structuring your business as a company is also an option.