How Digital PR Helped Grow My Family's Cleaning Business (Bust The Dust Case Study)

Starting a cleaning business is the easy bit.

Getting people to actually pick up the phone and book you? That's the hard part.

When my family set up Bust The Dust, a domestic and commercial cleaning company in Middlesbrough, there were already plenty of cleaners competing for the same customers. Most of them had been around for years.

So I built a website to start bringing in enquiries. Then I went to work on something most local businesses never even think about: digital PR.

Since then, the jobs have kept coming in and the business has grown into something we're all really proud of.

In this case study, I'll walk you through why a local cleaning company needed digital PR, how I got journalists interested and where the coverage landed. Then I'll show you what it's done for the website, and how you can get the same results for your own business.

Why Digital PR For A Local Cleaning Company?

A lot of small business owners think PR is only for big brands with big budgets.

It isn't.

National and regional newspapers publish cleaning and home tips almost every day. Readers love them, and journalists need a steady supply of fresh ones. Every one of those stories needs an expert to quote.

That's where Bust The Dust comes in.

Instead of sending out press releases about the business itself (which nobody outside the family would read), I focused on expert commentary. I pitch journalists useful cleaning tips, backed up by quotes from people who clean for a living every day, like Clare, our head cleaner.

Each story follows a simple formula. Take a real problem people deal with at home, find a cheap fix they probably haven't tried, and put a clear price on it (40p or £1 makes for a great headline). Then back it up with a quote from a named cleaning expert at Bust The Dust.

The reader gets a handy tip. The journalist gets a story with a credible expert. And Bust The Dust gets its name, and usually a link, in front of a national audience.

I'll be honest, not every pitch lands. Some weeks journalists just aren't biting. But when a story works, it tends to get picked up again and again across different papers.

Where The Coverage Landed

Here are a couple of the stories that did the best.

The 40p Bedding Stain Hack

Fake tan and makeup on white bedding is a nightmare to shift.

Clare's fix was an oxygen bleach soak that costs around 40p per use, with no harsh chemicals. It costs next to nothing and it actually works.

The story, "Remove fake tan and makeup bedding stains with 40p hack", was published by the Daily Record (DR 81). It was also picked up by the Express and the Liverpool Echo.

The £1 Secret To Streak-Free Windows

Windows are a pain to keep clean. You wipe them, the light hits them, and suddenly there are streaks everywhere.

Neil from Bust The Dust suggested ditching the expensive branded glass cleaners for a simple microfibre cloth. The Leicester Mercury ran it as "Cleaning expert says £1 item is the 'secret' to sparkling, streak free windows".

The Three-Ingredient Drain Hack

The Daily Record also ran a story on unblocking drains with bicarbonate of soda, vinegar and salt, under the headline "Unblock drains in 30 minutes with cleaning expert's three-ingredient hack". It's another example of a practical household problem becoming a useful cleaning story.

And Plenty More

Bust The Dust has also been featured across national and regional titles including:

• The Scotsman (scotsman.com)
• The Star (thestar.co.uk)
• Yorkshire Evening Post (yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk)
• The News, Portsmouth (portsmouth.co.uk)
• Wigan Today (wigantoday.net)
• News Letter (newsletter.co.uk)
• Lancashire Evening Post (lep.co.uk)
• Sunderland Echo (sunderlandecho.com)
• NationalWorld (nationalworld.com)

That's a lot of national and regional press for a family cleaning company from Teesside.

What It's Done For Bust The Dust

Coverage is nice. But what does it actually do for the business?

Quite a lot, as it turns out.

Links From Sites Google Trusts

Every piece of coverage means a brand mention, and often a link, from a major news site. You don't get a link from a DR 81 newspaper by asking nicely. You get it by giving them a story they want to run.

These are high-DR publications. In the Ahrefs data for this campaign, Portsmouth and the Lancashire Evening Post are both DR 73, News Letter is DR 72, Sunderland Echo is DR 71 and Wigan Today is DR 66. Those are the ratings in that snapshot, not live scores.

This was earned editorial coverage, not paid-for placements. I wasn't buying an advert or a sponsored article: the stories had to be useful enough for journalists to choose to publish them. That's the kind of placement you can't simply purchase through an advertising booking.

Top Of The Local Rankings

Those links and mentions have helped the Bust The Dust website rise to the top of local search results for the services that matter most.

A Recognised Cleaning Expert

Google doesn't just count links anymore. It looks at who's being talked about, and what they're being talked about for.

Every time a national paper calls Clare "a cleaning expert from Bust The Dust", that connection gets stronger. Over time, the brand has built a name for itself as a genuine authority on cleaning, both with Google and with the people reading the papers.

More Enquiries

And most importantly, the phone keeps ringing.

Could Digital PR Work For Your Business?

If it works for a family cleaning company in Middlesbrough, it can work for you.

You don't need a huge budget or a household name. You need someone in your business who knows the trade inside out, tips people actually want to read, and someone who knows which journalists to pitch (and how to pitch them).

That last part is where I come in.

I run expert commentary campaigns for businesses in trades, ecommerce, travel, health and motoring, landing them coverage and links in national and regional UK press.

That's how you get your name in the papers. That's how you climb the local rankings. And that's how you keep the enquiries coming in.

Want results like Bust The Dust? Get in touch and let's chat about what your expert could be saying in next week's papers.