Last Updated on September 4, 2026
The Whito framework runs Start, Build, Scale, in that order, and a round business punishes stage-skipping harder than most: advertising an unreliable round just spreads the unreliability. Here is the framework with window cleaning numbers in it.
Start: checkable, priced, payable
A Google Business Profile in your real trading name. A one page site: prices for the three house types, first-clean rule, areas with days, company number, insurance, phone. Direct debit ready to offer, at published rates that costs 1% plus 20p capped at £4 per collection, so a £15 clean costs about 35p to collect. In Scotland, the licence number on the page. That is Start, complete, for under a day’s graft.
Build: density, retention, add-ons
Build is the street-by-street phase. Cards either side of every job. A review after every first clean, naming the street. A page per area you cover with the day you are there. The night-before text. Add-on prices published, gutters, fascias, conservatory roofs, and offered to the round twice a year, because selling a £100 gutter clean to an existing customer costs nothing.
Track two numbers monthly: new regulars and cancellations. A round adding eight and losing six is treading water expensively, and no amount of Scale fixes that.
Scale: buy growth only when retention holds
Scale for a window cleaner is rarely advertising. It is buying a round, published guidance values them at three to five times monthly turnover, taking on a second van, or adding commercial contracts. Each is a capital decision that only works on top of Build-stage retention. If you do advertise, keep it local and measurable: a leaflet drop into the two streets that would densify your Tuesday, not a £300 a month social retainer. Ask every new enquiry where they found you, and drop any channel you cannot attribute after a quarter.
Common questions
How should a new window cleaner start marketing?
Be checkable, priced and payable first: a Google Business Profile in your real name, one page with round prices and proof, and direct debit collection. Free visibility comes before any paid channel.
How does a window cleaning round grow fastest?
Density. Cards through neighbouring doors on every job, published prices the neighbour can say yes to, reviews naming the street, and low churn from direct debit and a night-before text. Ten customers on one street beat thirty scattered.
When should a window cleaner buy advertising or a round?
Only once monthly cancellations are consistently below new sign-ups. Rounds are valued at three to five times monthly turnover, so buying growth makes sense when you can show the retention that protects the asset.
Before you spend any of this, check what the machines can read
Before moving stages, see what engines can read on your site today. Seventeen checks, free, no email needed.
The structural checks behind this research run on any website in about twenty seconds. Enter yours and read the full result on the page. Free, and we do not ask for your email.
Run the free Visibility Check