CASE STUDY: Maid Brigade Consumer & Franchisor Brands

Maid Brigade had been in business for 21 years as a franchisor of residential cleaning service businesses. The last 4 years, same store sales and new franchise sales had flattened. Historically, direct marketing targeted at new residential cleaning customer prospects had consistently returned 2% to 3% response rates. Response rates had declined to below 1/10th of 1%, driving the average cost of acquisition of a new customer to $140. Also, historically, the customer turnover rate was above 95% a year which meant that it took the average franchisee a lengthy15 to 18 months to mature their operation to meet average revenue levels.  

• The average Maid Brigade franchisee was characterized as a schoolteacher who couldn’t take it any more and wanted to start their own business. New franchise sales averaged only 5 per year. 
• The average cash investment was $25k. 
• The average operation grossed $150K per year
• Two franchisees did somehow grow their territories into $1 million a year enterprises, and one who grew to over $3 million a year.

The goal was to improve  marketing results / efficiency and conversions, and drive new franchise sales.

The plan: 

1. Re-position as the best in the business, to differentiate and to reinforce value

2. Re-position the franchise opportunity to attract business-savvy franchise owners

Instead of selling great cleaning, the new strategy sells great customer service. Fresh consumer research revealed that the most lucrative and loyal customers see a clean house as table stakes for a cleaning service. They see great customer service as what you cannot get from hiring a "cleaning lady" and that it is worth paying a premium to get. Great customer service = good communications, reliability and problems remedied quickly. The client agreed that we could deliver on the new promise and we retooled with "BENEATH THE CLEAN YOU"LL FIND SPARKING CUSTOMER SERVICE".

A-B testing the creative variations and media targeting models showed that primarily targeting neighbors of existing clients, we improved DM performance from 0.5% response rates to 3.6%, increasing MB's new client acquisition by 17% - and we sustained it. Decreasing the average cost of acquisition of a new customer from $140 to under $100.

The consumer brand campaign performance and newly designed franchisor brand materials and messaging re-positioned  the franchise opportunity as a smarter, more lucrative business opportunity well suited for experienced corporate executives. A streamlined sales communication process, now targeting CEO’s, CFO’s and VP’s of Operations as franchise prospects with a new multi-territory packages yielded dramatic increased in new franchisee deals. And new franchise operations normalized revenues 40% faster.