How to Get Commercial Cleaning Contracts: The Part Marketing Can Do

Commercial cleaning contracts are won by sales. You reach out to a property or facility manager, walk the building, price the work and send a written proposal. Government work runs through bids: federal agencies post theirs on SAM.gov, and cities post their own. That part is sales, and no website does it for you.

Marketing's part is what a manager finds when they search for a cleaner, or look up the name on your email. That's three things: your Google listing, a page about commercial work on your website, and reviews from the managers you already clean for. They're also the cheapest part to fix, because none of them needs a bid or a walkthrough.

The whole path to a commercial cleaning contract

This guide is for a company that already cleans homes or a few small offices and wants more buildings. The top guides for this search agree on the shape of the work, and the government's own pages fill in the rules. Here it is in five steps, so you can see where marketing fits.

1. Get set up. The licenses you need depend on your state, county and city, and the SBA says plainly that "Laws requiring insurance vary by state." Many contracts, public and private, also ask for a surety bond, a guarantee to the customer that the work will get done. Talk to an insurance agent before your first bid, not after.
2. Get found and checked out. Your Google listing, your website and your reviews. This is the marketing part, and the rest of this guide.
3. Find the work. Reach out to property managers, facility managers and office managers, ask the clients you have for referrals, and watch for public bids. Federal bids are on SAM.gov. Cities buy through their own purchasing offices: Tampa's, for one, posts its bids online and emails vendors who register.
4. Walk it and price it. A walkthrough is a visit to the building before you price it. Count the restrooms, check the floors, ask when you can get in. Then send a written proposal: what you'll clean, how often, and the price.
5. Keep it. When the contract comes up for renewal, the work your crew did every night is the pitch.

The path to a commercial contract, and the part marketing owns

Get set upLicense, insurance, a bond if askedMarketingGet foundListing, commercial page, reviewsReach out or bidManagers, referrals, SAM.gov, city portalsWalk and priceA walkthrough, then a written proposalThe contractThen the renewal

Here's the honest split. Steps 1, 3, 4 and 5 are sales and operations, and we don't do them for anyone. Step 2 is marketing. It can't win a contract on its own, but it's what a manager sees when they check you out.

Your Google listing: a category that says commercial

Pick the category Google uses for this work

Your category is the label Google files your Google listing under, and Google says the categories you pick "affect your local ranking on Google." You don't get to write one: you choose from Google's own list, and "You can't create your own category."

So we looked at the label Google shows under the companies that come up. On 5 October 2026 we searched Google Maps for "commercial cleaning" in Tampa, Atlanta, Dallas, Chicago and Phoenix and read the label under the first eight businesses each time. Google showed "Janitorial service" under 32 of the 40. Five showed "Cleaning service." Only one showed "House cleaning service."

The label Google showed for commercial cleaning companies

40 Businesses, Five US Cities

Janitorial service32 of 40

Cleaning service5 of 40

Three others3 of 40

If offices and buildings are most of your work, look for "Janitorial service" when you edit your category. If homes are most of it, keep your house cleaning category as the main one and add the commercial side as a second category. Google's own example is a grocery store that adds a bakery and a deli. Google's test for any category is whether it finishes the sentence "This business IS a," and it asks you to use as few as you can. One warning: Google says changing a category can mean verifying your business again, so make the change once, on purpose.

Services, hours and your name

Next, list the commercial work as services: office cleaning, floor care, restroom service, whatever your crews really do. Google suggests services for your type of business, and when yours isn't on its list, "You can also create and add custom services options."

Set your hours to when someone picks up the phone, not when the crews go in. The hours Google wants are your "regular customer-facing hours of operation," and a manager who calls at 2 p.m. needs a person, even if your crew doesn't start until 9 p.m. Your service area follows the same rules as any business that goes to the customer; the Google Maps ranking guide has them.

Leave your name alone. Plenty of the companies in our count have "Commercial Cleaning" in their names, and that's fine when it's the name on their trucks and invoices. Adding it to a listing when it isn't your real name breaks Google's rules, and Google says extra words in a name can get a profile suspended.

Local Services Ads have no janitorial category

One of the top guides for this search says Local Services Ads will put you at the top for commercial cleaning searches. Those are Google's pay-per-lead ads with the Google Verified badge. Check Google's own list first. On 6 October 2026 its US list had house cleaning, carpet cleaning and window cleaning, and no separate janitorial category. Google's house cleaning category does say its pros "perform standard or deep cleans on offices or homes," so an office cleaner may qualify there. Check your eligibility before you count on them. For most commercial work, your free listing and your website are where to start.

A commercial page on your website

Your house cleaning pages are written for a homeowner. A manager comparing cleaners for a building is asking different questions, and Google needs the right words too. In Google's own description of how it ranks pages, the most basic sign that a page is relevant is that it contains "the same keywords as your search query." If "commercial cleaning," "office cleaning" or "janitorial" appear nowhere on your website, your website never tells Google you do that work.

Give it one page, written for the person who signs the contract:

1. The buildings you clean, named plainly: offices, medical offices, gyms, churches. Only the ones you really do.
2. How often: nightly, a few times a week, or around their hours.
3. Where: the towns you cover, the way a manager would say them.
4. What happens first: a walkthrough, and a way to book one by phone or a short form.
5. Proof you're set up: insurance you can show on request, and a bond if you carry one.
6. Photos of your own crews and your own work, never stock photos.
7. Reviews from commercial clients, once you have them.

Start with one page, not a copy for every town. Google's own examples of doorway abuse include "pages targeted at specific regions or cities that funnel users to one page." Our guide to location pages and doorway pages shows when a town has earned a page of its own. If you already give each kind of house clean its own page, our keyword guide explains why the commercial page sits beside them, not inside them. And here's what we do for cleaning companies.

Reviews from the managers you already clean for

A manager about to hand your crew the keys to a building wants to know other managers trust you. Reviews show it, and Google counts them too: it lists "how many reviews you have" among the things that make a business well known.

Ask the managers you already clean for. Send each one the same review link you send every client, because Google doesn't allow asking only the ones you think are happy. Don't offer anything for a review. One of the top guides for this search suggests a discount on the next clean, but Google's rules ban any reward for a review, discounts and free services included. And don't tell them what to write: Google lets you ask for a review, not steer what it says. A manager who writes, in their own words, that your crew shows up every night says more than anything you could script.

Good times to ask: after the first month, once they've seen enough nights to judge, or when the contract renews. Our guide to getting more Google reviews has the wording for a text and an email.

For government work, SAM.gov is your listing

Federal buyers search for cleaners too, in their own database. To bid on federal work you register your business on SAM.gov, and the SBA calls SAM "a database that government agencies search to find contractors." It also tells you to describe your business in "accurate, descriptive terms" so contracting officials can find you. That's the same job as your Google listing, for a different buyer.

Four things to know. Registration is free: the General Services Administration says "Registration in SAM.gov is always free," so an email asking you to pay to register isn't from the government. You renew every 365 days. And the industry code for this work is 561720, Janitorial Services, and the Census Bureau lists office cleaning under it. APEX Accelerators, linked from SAM.gov, help with the registration for free.

Go in with your eyes open. On government contracts, the SBA itself says "Some businesses spend between $80,000 and $130,000 to earn their first contract." For a local cleaning company, we'd start with the private buildings nearby and add government bids once you have references.

The order to work in

If you want commercial work, here's the order we'd go in, cheapest first:

1. Check your category. Add the commercial side if it's a real part of your work.
2. Add your commercial services, and set your hours to when someone answers.
3. Build one commercial page, with a way to book a walkthrough.
4. Ask your current commercial clients for a review, the same way you ask everyone.
5. Then start the outreach and the bids.

Before you chase a building, check the crews. More leads only help if you can handle more work, and a contract that needs a crew five nights a week needs that crew before you sign.

None of this replaces the walkthrough or the proposal. It means that when a manager looks you up, they see a cleaning company that clearly does buildings like theirs.