Digital Marketing Strategies for your Laundromat

You probably have a fair amount of laundromat customers that know about you and visit your store because of your location — they live nearby or saw your sign while driving by one day. But to grow your store and increase both new and returning customers, you should be engaging in some form of digital marketing. Below are a few digital marketing strategies, listed in order of importance, that you can use to drive traffic to your store.

Own your location on online maps

You should claim your store location(s) on both Google Maps and Apple Maps so that when potential customers search “laundromats near me” your store is one of the first to show up. By claiming your location, you can create a business page and include things like hours and a link to your website. This is the simplest step to optimizing your digital presence.

Have a modern website

The keyword here is “modern.” It doesn’t have to be a complex website — in fact, it can be just a simple page or two. But a site that seems at least semi-recently updated and is easy to use will go a long way, both in terms of search value with Google and for the public perception of your business.

Your site doesn’t have to be anything custom or expensive as long as it includes location(s), hours and a list of services. Then, when you are ready to transition into using your website to help with more advanced digital marketing, you can turn it into a lead capture for coupons and special promotions. A website that collects the emails or phone numbers of existing and potential customers becomes really valuable because you can then reach out to those users via email or text and draw them back to your store.

Consider search ads

Once you have a website, you can run search and other pay-per-click (PPC) ads to drive traffic to your site and ultimately your store. Search ads are the first few results that show up on the page when you use a search engine. You can use them strategically to show up on the page when someone searches keywords like “laundromat near me” or “full-service laundry,” among others. And the great thing about these ads is that you set your own bid and only pay when someone clicks on your ad, meaning you could receive thousands of brand impressions for free. There are also a lot of ad extensions available that can make your PPC campaigns even more effective.

Invest in email and/or text message marketing

Email and text message marketing are game-changers for retaining customers. Once you have someone’s email or phone number, you can send them targeted messages — like coupons, promotions, and store info — to keep them coming back to your store. You can get really creative with your campaigns while keeping your store top of mind. For example, you could send a customer a coupon for their birthday or let them know about a special promotion you are running that week.

Use social media wisely

Social media is another great way to stay in touch with existing customers. Invite customers at your store to like or follow your pages, and then use your social channels to post store updates, promotions and other campaigns, and special events you might host. The exact channels you use will depend on your target audiences, but we recommend exploring Facebook and TikTok.

Let us do it for you

Because we know laundromat owners are busy and may not have the time to invest fully in and manage digital marketing on their own, we offer the CCI Marketing Service where our experts handle the marketing for your laundromat locations, whether you have one store or twenty. With this service, our team handles your website, social media, campaigns and more.

We have decades of experience in running successful laundry stores and know what it takes to use digital marketing tools to increase store performance. If you are interested in learning more, click here to watch a Q&A session.