Marketing "clean"

While food and fashion is easy to market on platforms like Instagram and Pinterest, other product categories might be a little bit more challenging or might require a bit more imagination to succeed. try managing a household cleaning detergent's Instagram page for a minute..... how tough would that be? what image would you use? Top of mind, most people would be thinking...soap suds.

But how much of soap suds can you milk? In short, unless the public have OCD tendencies, it's really hard to wow and entice with sparkling clean pics all the time.

How does a cleaning brand capture the attention of its audience?

Two cleaning brands stand out in their marketing ability and campaigns.

The social media team at Mrs Meyers Clean Day has done a phenomenal job in pulling together a look. Owned by SC Johnson, the Mrs Meyers marketing team must have realized that there is only so much they can post about when it comes to cleaning.

Photo Credit: Mrs Meyers

Instead, they have created an Instagram page which is fresh and lifestyle-oriented. They understand who's buying their products and they decided to focus their attention on the home, kitchen and garden, suggesting all kinds of cute ideas. Think recipes, table settings, craftwork and organized pantries. Their instagram feed looks like a Martha Stwewart magazine. Their latest campaign #justkeepmaking celebrates the homemade / maker movement and encourages followers to share their pictures of stuff they have made. To experience the product first-hand, creative use of Popups in different locations resulted in engagement and shares on social media.

Photo Credit: On Board Experiential Marketing

In order to highlight the quality and safety in ingredients, Seventh Generation decided to talk about the 'dirty' ingredients in other brands by exposing the lack of transparency in the household detergent sector.  They did an integrated marketing campaign titled #comeclean. Focusing on the fact that the US law does not require ingredient disclosure on cleaning product labels. They engaged Maya Rudolph, an SNL comedian and mother of four to be their spokesperson in ads and highlighted a lot of worst practices in the cleaning industry that Seventh Generation is not doing (like artificial blue goo and chemicals in disinfectants). In doing so, they positioned themselves as the thought leaders for the cleaning industry.

Photo Credit: Seventh Generation

Key Take-aways:

• When marketing your product think about who your target audience is. Mrs Meyers spoke to the home maker and Seventh Generation spoke to parents
• Let your customers experience your brand, not just see it in pictures. Mrs Meyers developed pop up stands and inspired the audience with plant ingredients (from their soaps). Both brands encouraged their followers to take part and engage with their campaigns

Like this content? Follow me!  I am a work-at-home mom and also a Digital Marketing Nano Degree student at Udacity. I am learning about digital marketing and writing about successful social media marketing concepts. Please follow my blog for more up-to-date stories about marketing and how you can apply these concepts to your marketing communications.