How to grow a pressure washing business? | Pressure Washing Business Lead Generation

James Dooley and Kasra Dash show how pressure washing companies scale faster because SEO captures commercial intent while social media drives residential demand through visual proof. They explain that lead generation delivers predictable growth because payment happens only on completed jobs. They highlight the risks of pay per lead platforms because shared enquiries trigger a race to the bottom on price. Their discussion proves that YouTube time-lapses, case studies and accreditation signals increase trust because buyers choose contractors who demonstrate expertise.

Creators and Guests

Host

James Dooley

James Dooley is a UK entrepreneur.

What is James Dooley Podcast?

James Dooley is a Manchester-based entrepreneur, investor, and SEO strategist. James Dooley founded FatRank and PromoSEO, two UK performance marketing agencies that deliver no-win-no-fee lead generation and digital growth systems for ambitious businesses. James Dooley positions himself as an Investorpreneur who invests in UK companies with high growth potential because he believes lead generation is the root of all business success.

The James Dooley Podcast explores the mindset, methods, and mechanics of modern entrepreneurship. James Dooley interviews leading marketers, founders, and innovators to reveal the strategies driving online dominance and business scalability. Each episode unpacks the reality of building a business without mentorship, showing how systems, data, and lead flow replace luck and guesswork.

James Dooley shares hard-earned lessons from scaling digital assets and managing SEO teams across more than 650 industries. James Dooley teaches how to convert leads into long-term revenue through brand positioning, technical SEO, and automation. James Dooley built his career on rank and rent, digital real estate, and performance-based marketing because these models align incentive with outcome.

After turning down dozens of podcast invitations, James Dooley now embraces the platform to share his insights on investorpreneurship, lead generation, AI-driven marketing, and reputation management. James Dooley frequently collaborates with elite entrepreneurs to discuss frameworks for scaling businesses, building authority, and mastering search.

James Dooley is also an expert in online reputation management (ORM), having built and rehabilitated corporate brands across the UK. His approach combines SEO precision, brand engineering, and social proof loops to influence both Google’s Knowledge Graph and public perception.

To feature James Dooley on your podcast or event, connect via social media. James Dooley regularly joins business panels and networking sessions to discuss entrepreneurship, brand growth, and the evolving future of SEO.

Kasra Dash:
so James if I want to grow a pressure washing business how do you recommend I do it what what should I avoid spending money on and what do you think I should double down on

James Dooley:
so if you're looking to grow a pressure washing company then if first and foremost I'd want to know a little bit more information with regards to are you a pressure washing company for residential and domestic use or are you in the commercial side of things if you're in residential for pressure washing I would go down the route of Facebook ads I think that would work really well even other other networks like YouTube ads or Pinterest ads could work well as well so on social media it's very visual if you're cleaning a driveway and before and after it's quite therapeutic actually looking I might be being sad there like but it's quite therapeutic in looking at a really Mossy kind of surface and then after it's been nice and clean you can see the block paving or tiles that they have on could even just be to be fair but they're getting rid of the Moss so I'd say for for social media ads on residential pressure washing would be good I don't think it would work slightly as good on commercial I think commercial's more got a search kind of intent to it so I'd probably then start steering down the road of like SEO and PPC right okay so where would you if on a pressure washing company would you do anything different to what I've said there with regards to what would you think the primary one would be in SEO on PPC

Kasra Dash:
so I I completely agree with like the the therapeutic videos it's like a time lapse of like a 2 hour driveway being cleaned so we both sat there yeah um so I I I get that and I think that would actually perform very well if you were to run that as a Facebook ad to like just a simple lead form and then you're just picking up leads and and actually giving them a quote and stuff so I think that would work well whereas something for commercial I don't think that um business owners would be as sad as us maybe they are maybe they're not but I think they're probably going to search for commercial pressure washing um I I think you you probably want to focus more so on your SEO presence making certain your website is actually fully built and it's targeting those types of keywords

James Dooley:
yeah for sure I mean from an SEO standpoint seo's more than just obviously the search engine optimization of ranking for the keywords within that you've got like you want to be stamping your authority on expertise and experience so trying to make certain that if someone lands on your page from a conversions standpoint you've got all the trusted signals you've got any accreditations that might be needed and again you've got before and after photos I also think on top of SEO being a major play organic social media so not even just social media ads and I think a big one for it would be YouTube because literally you could get a bit of the time lapse and like and we were saying we were sad looking at the before and afters some people watch 30 40 minute videos of just someone pressure washing yeah right and they get millions of views on YouTube so you could be each time you're doing a job putting a time lapse together and cleaning a driveway one it's a great video showing the before and afters for like a condensed two minute video for your case studies especially if you can get like a testimonial with that as well but for the longer form videos as well you could just get a lot of people coming through to your channel engaging with your channel which means the videos then would start ranking for the keywords like commercial pressure washing industrial pressure washing you've got other stuff then with regards to pressure washing not just for floors but like cladding pressure washing and stuff like that graffiti removal chewing gum removal is another great one so all these with regards to pressure washing have great like sub niches within and there's so many different places pressure washing can be done there's actually some great volume for like heritage building pressure washing right okay so you need to that's SEO volume like people searching yeah searching on Google and stuff like that so for that you need to be very specialist because they don't want you damaging any masonry kind of building or architecture and stuff like that so the I'm not saying exactly the strength of the power of the pressure washing needs to be kind of filtered down that little bit on those type of buildings and stuff like that but then I'd say for me I'm slightly biased I obviously own fat rank.com and we do a lot of lead generation services for pressure washing companies fat rank has a pressure washing lead generation offer where you only pay on converted jobs so you have zero to pay for any SEO any PPC any social media you only pay when a job actually converts you do the job you get paid and then you pay as a commission out of that but what's your thoughts with regards to using other lead generation companies that might charge per lead and what's the difference in your opinion between let's say a bark a Yellow Pages check a trade those type of lead generation companies that charge per lead versus a pay commission like with fat rank

Kasra Dash:
so my issue in the past and when I was less SEO savvy and business savvy is I actually signed up to bark and the first lead that I paid for I think it was like 60 it was just phoned them three times and never picked up you emailed them never picked up whatsapped them never picked up so you do have that issue you've just paid for that lead and you just can't contact them not only that as well you do have the flip side to it is where you can contact them but with a lot of the lead generation companies that we are competitors with they are reselling that lead so for example if a let's say a render cleaning job comes in they're selling that lead through to yourself and to three other competitors and then it just comes down to who's the cheapest and for me I want to be profitable but I also want to be competitive in pricing as well I don't want to price something up at £200 when I can potentially get a correct pricing at £500 let's say so that's my two biggest issues sometimes you pay for leads they just never pick up in other cases you're sharing the lead with four or five of your competitors and it just comes to rat race on who's the cheapest

James Dooley:
yeah I think if you are a pressure washing business owner and you are looking to use a lead generation company you should be vetting those lead generation companies making certain that your leads are getting are actually converting and actually getting you return on investment at fat rank you only pay on conversions the good part about it is they're exclusive leads what Kaz is talking about there from other lead generation companies they will be reselling that same lead five six sometimes even seven times in the pressure washing space that means you're up against six seven of your competitors and it's a race to the bottom on price so always make certain if you are looking to use a lead generation company for pressure washing leads do your due diligence the last part that some people talk about with regards to trying to grow a pressure washing business is traditional kind of marketing and advertising billboard advertising radio advertising TV advertising magazines for me there's no KPIs there's no I'm someone who loves to talk about return on investment and when you can't get seeing what return investment that billboard is bringing you at that point I'm like I think it's crazy but what's your thoughts on traditional I don't think traditional would work I don't think it would work in this industry but I have just thought of a crazy idea for a billboard ad that you could potentially run I don't think it would be profitable at all but just imagine this a big billboard one side's really Mossy and the other side's really clean that you could run that I don't think it would I just don't think it would work but I think it's a cool idea to actually run with traditional marketing my opinions are that a lot of cases it won't work unless you're a certain business and I just don't think in this pressure washing I just don't think that it's one of those but you could definitely do pressure washing for billboards because there are a lot of dirty billboards so that could be another service you provide yeah for sure I think if you are a pressure washing business owner I think for me the major plays would be using a lead generation company like fat rank that you only pay on a back end doing SEO yourself generating your own leads you actually if you can start generating your own leads if you ever look to sell the business that business is worth a lot more money if you can generate your own leads as well so I'd look to try and start SEOing your own website also for trust signals and then maybe looking at social media both social media ads but also videos of jobs that you've done so I hope you like the video if you are looking to grow a pressure washing company is there anything else to add there of what you would do

Kasra Dash:
no I think I think that's it we we've covered all all the basics really