Being top of mind with your customers means your business is the first one they think of when they need or want the kind of service(s) you provide. So, of all your priorities that do not directly involve wheels on pavement, keeping your service top of mind for your customers is high on the list. NAPSA, in its wisdom, sponsored a round-table session at the Sweeper Summit a few months ago, to share proven methods for staying top of mind with your customers.
The 2025 Sweeper Summit (November), in Las Vegas, featured the NAPSA Best Practices series of sessions, including the very popular round-table discussion on the topic of "Staying Top of Mind for Your Customers. The session was hosted by Jim Blackerby Jr., Owner, Louisville Pavement Sweep, Louisville, Kentucky. Jim’s company provides construction sweeping, street sweeping, and related services throughout the greater central Kentucky and southern Indiana region. Blackerby has also developed an integrated sweeping business operations management software platform, which is leased by other successful US powersweeping businesses.
How to Stay Top of Mind for Your Customers
Staying top of mind with customers involves consistent engagement utilizing various communications channels, including email, SMS texting, social media pages, and information and education content marketing, among others. The goal is to develop brand familiarity and trust. Essential strategies for staying top of mind include abundant options, even on a limited budget. Common alternatives are (unintrusive) outreach and follow-up contacts, retargeting ads for remaining visible (without excessive exposure), and others discussed below. For example:
Learn your customers’ pain points and preferences.
Prioritize efforts to understand your customers’ needs and how to provide the best solutions. Learn about your competitors, what they offer, what they don’t, how their pricing works, their quality and customer service reputation. Use your in-depth competitive market analysis to locate deficiencies in service to your market that your business uniquely can resolve. Identify and make your Unique Selling Proposition the clearly articulated centerpiece of all your marketing materials.
Work for relationships.
Focus on developing trust vs. constantly selling. Be a service-centric company. That’s the most powerful way to build an enduring local brand recognized for reliability. This approach helps build customer loyalty. That’s a brand-building strategy that promotes growth of a long-term customer base that will yield repeat sales and high-value referral business for years to come.
It further cultivates strong word-of-mouth marketing benefits that effectively diminish risk from competition over time, as customers naturally prove to prefer sticking with brands they know and trust to deliver value.
Use timely follow-up.
Exceeding service quality expectations is a given requisite for long-term high rates of customer satisfaction. It’s the base competitive benchmark. You need to add value to boost your brand. One modern essential for gaining that edge is leasing an inexpensive virtual (cloud-based) CRM system. These platforms manage schedules to trigger notifications, prompt content development and customer communications, track sales frequency in individual accounts, access all historic customer interactions company-wide for instant access by any rep in any department, and perform many other sales and service tasks.
These sophisticated, easy-to-use systems track the entry points (CEPs) along the customer lifecycle, from nurturing leads to alerting you at ideal times for soft outreach to long-time customers.
Utilize multiple marketing channels.
Staying top-of-mind is not an automatic achievement, even for the best service providers. That level of regard must be cultivated. To expand your reach and increase your odds of staying top of mind for customers and prospects, consider using a range of outreach tools, such as email, SMS texting, phone calling, social media, special events, and even direct mailing. Spanning across the various branding outlets helps your service business maintain visibility.
Take other special opportunities to engage customers and prospects. For one key example, use social media to interact routinely by responding to their questions and comments and sharing helpful content. Even a few minutes a week can build an exceptional amount of value for the small amount of time spent.
Other options include co-sponsoring local events, sending personalized communications, sending gifts, and/or offering other gestures to express appreciation or reward loyalty.
Use personalized messaging.
It is, predictably, more impactful to connect with people using personalized messages than mass communication. People are naturally more responsive to being personally recognized and appreciated. You can add tremendous value to your internal marketing email blasts, promotional announcements, personalized SMS texts, emails, etc., by approaching people with whom you already have a business relationship from a perspective that addresses their particular needs and interests. Consider that in contrast to cluttering their inbox with yet another generalized marketing message.
Use retargeting ad strategies.
Retargeting campaigns help prevent prospects from forgetting about you by reminding people who have seen your marketing and possibly have indicated some interest in your service. For example, you may send out additional ads to people who have previously visited your website but have not yet used your service. Seeing your brand again makes it less likely that they will disregard your company when they decide to contract with a service like yours.
Advanced Branding Tips
There are a couple of areas of marketing and branding in which small to medium businesses are especially vulnerable to starting out strong and then drifting away from their own format. That mistake undermines the branding image you’re working hard to build. So, unless you’re undertaking a full-scope rebranding initiative, just adhere to these two fundamentals:
1. Use consistent imagery and brand voice.
Reinforce the same core message with the same persona and general point of view (POV) across all platforms. This generates strong familiarity and eliminates any risk of confusion about what your brand is all about. Consistency of design elements is key to that level of brand recognition.
The best branding programs repeat familiar elements in creative new ways. This approach helps build familiarity, which lends to trust. So, make your color scheme, logos, tone of voice, POV, and overall image design consistent across all your traditional and digital outlets, including paper mail, email, websites, and social platforms.
2. Maintain Consistent Visibility
Frequently offer your target audience something to remind them of your value to them. Even on a small budget, you can publish high-quality educational, informational, and/or entertaining content that is of high interest to readers. Share your insightful content through your website, blog, social media, emails, newsletters, etc. Host workshops, webinars, or other learning events to share your expertise.
Maintain a regular schedule for publishing your company’s newsletter, social media update, blog content, etc., to help people keep you top of mind and come to view you as the go-to local authority on your industry.
NAPSA Top of Mind Session Takeaway
Jim Blackerby shared with NAS the highlights from the NAPSA Best Practices session, Staying Top of Mind. "We had about six rotations of ten people each attending the roundtables during the session, so we got a pretty good range of opinions. The overarching message across all the groups who met at the Sweeper Summit was — be accessible.
The point was that staying in front of your customers is understood to be far more effective for professionals who actually answer the phone when their customers and prospects need them. You can do all kinds of excellent things, but if you don’t answer the phone and help people when they need you, everything you have to offer all goes out the window. Here are some more specific recommendations from attendees to help you stay top of mind:
- One company owner said that his team sends out emails every quarter, to make sure no complaint was left unaddressed. It turned into a friendship-building thing. That one contact every few months just asking how things were going built up a sense of friendship personally, instead of just a strictly business relationship.
- Another business owner said his group sends out a survey once a year asking basic questions like, “How satisfied were you with the sweeping? With our accessibility? Are there any trades you’re having a hard filling? Like striping, powerwashing, electrical repairs? The survey gave the customer and the vendor an opening to address needs based on that feedback about main services and to discuss new services.
- One operator said his field services staff take pictures of issues on properties while they’re sweeping. They send emails with the pictures. That helps the property owners/managers by making them aware of lights not working, etc., a broken sign, etc. They see your logo in the email, so even if you don’t do that kind of work, the customers know you’re looking out for them and keep you in mind when they need some work done that you do provide.
- Another company owner, serving at construction sites, said that at the end of a job, he gives the job superintendent or foreman a gift basket, or a cheese basket, etc. and he asks him to keep his service in mind for the next job.
There were a lot of good ideas offered at the round-table discussions about things powersweeping businesses can do to help stay top of mind with their target audience. But, the main thing stressed was: No matter what else you do for your customers, be accessible when they try to reach you.”
Best Practices – Staying Top of Mind for Customers
Maintaining a program for staying top of mind with your customers is a basic for long-term profitability in the fiercely competitive modern US powersweeping market. It enables your business to avoid excessive attrition and thrive long-term by building a robust customer base. That is the preferred marketing model, vs. continuously depending on the much more difficult and costly method of generating revenues through new customer acquisition.
However, retaining current customers entails more than just meeting or even exceeding customers’ expectations. It requires some dedicated brand building to establish your reputation as a local industry expert who provides solutions, insights, and services at a level that inspires trust, and loyalty. So, take some of the basic actions discussed above to help cultivate trust and reliance on your business. It’s a smart, systematic way to expand your revenue base and nurture long-term relationships.
For information about NAPSA Best Practices expert-led roundtable sessions at the 2026 annual Sweeper Summit you can call (419) 464-0133, email info@sweepersummit.com, or visit sweepersummit.com. Or, to contact NAPSA, you can call (888) 757-0130, email info@powersweeping.org, or visit powersweeping.org.
For information about Louisville Pavement Sweep, Louisville KY, you can call (859) 533-1415, email jim@sweeplouisville.com, or visit sweeplouisville.com.