For cleaning professionals who primarily work in the residential space, operations during the COVID-19 crisis can be challenging. Business is interrupted, customers are scared to have staff come into their homes, some companies have temporarily opted out of offering services to keep their teams safe, and others may even be under obligation to close due to the laws of their area. However, within every challenge lies an opportunity. What if you could actually grow your brand during this time?
This period can be used to build an online community and provide your customers with resources to make the most of their time at home. Do you connect with your clients online, outside of email marketing? Are you socially savvy with a growing fan base? Does your company create content around your brand? If not, there is no time like the present to start!
Virtual communication is the “new normal.” Luckily, this is happening at a time when we have many outlets to virtually connect to customers. Email marketing is an effective way to communicate with your clients, but it is not the only way. Since the start of the crisis, Facebook reports that usage across their apps (Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp) has increased by 70%! This is a great opportunity to grow your brand into a community using the power of social media.
There are many brands that can attribute success to investing time and resources into a social media strategy. I outline how you can create an organic social media strategy in a previous blog you can find here, as well as how home services can build a social media advertising strategy. However, no social media strategy can be successful without engaging content. In other words, you need to give people a reason to follow and engage with your brand. Here are some creative ideas to offer content around your cleaning business’s brand.
Inform, Educate, and Entertain
To build a community, you need to create a consistent amount of valuable content each week. A golden rule to live by when creating content is to either inform, educate, or entertain. If you can do all three, great!
Start with something you do every day! Provide your audience with cleaning hacks that work even on the toughest of jobs. This type of content can serve a few purposes. It demonstrates your skills when it comes to tackling those tricky tasks, it teaches the audience something they may not have known before, and it is fun to watch; who doesn’t love a good before and after (have you seen those power washing videos? They’re addicting!)? What is the best way to bring back to life old, dirty wood floors? How can you make a carpet look brand new (or newish) after years of stains or abuse from your pets? Include tips for certain surfaces, such as marble or granite. Create a dos and don’ts post for Pergo floors. Demonstrate how to get grime that has gotten out of control off an old tub. These are just a few examples; there are endless possibilities when it comes to cleaning advice you can dish out to your community on a consistent basis. Stick to what you do best and your content will always be authentic!
Declutter Your Home, Declutter Your Mind
This time of year is historically known for one thing in the business of cleaning: spring cleaning! Presently, there is a collective feeling of anxiety in the world as we watch the COVID-19 pandemic unfold. Cleaning is proven to reduce stress. In fact, clutter has been linked with negative emotions, whereas a clean space has been linked to happiness, calmness, and well-being. Many studies prove that in addition to cleaning and decluttering, creating an overall positive environment enhances mood. We see this in works such as The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo (now a Netflix hit), ancient Feng Sui techniques, and many other published books on the art of cleaning.
This gives your company an advantage because you have the skills and expertise to create valuable content to help your clients in this area. Many homeowners who are staying safe at home are likely starting these spring cleaning projects. Whether it be finally tackling that black hole called the basement, braving the reorganization of a playroom, decluttering the kitchen, finally organizing the closets, or any other projects that have been on the back burner; people are inclined to make changes during this unexpected downtime.
Take this topic and run with it by creating a series where you highlight a different aspect of spring cleaning in each post. Use fun DIY organization techniques, decluttering methods, or even things they can do every day to stay on top of the mess. There are many ways you can do this, such as a tip of the day, a blog post per week, or even creating video clips that you can share across your networks. How often you post is up to you and depends on your resources, but remember to stay consistent and timely (while people are at home in self-quarantine during the spring).
Be a Product Resource
There is a large percentage of people on the internet who are “product junkies,” meaning they absolutely love to test out new products. The number of people who opt for all-natural products or home remedies has been growing, as well. In fact, there is an entire influencer culture dedicated to high-end and natural cleaning products. Companies such as Seventh Generation and The Grove Collaborative use social media influencers to reach their target market and are very successful at it. Some of the all-natural product hunters are probably right in your local community. Be a resource to them; you may even already have a list of go-to all-natural products that you use in your client’s homes.
Create engaging social videos or posts by testing a few different products on a dirty countertop or a bathroom vanity and reveal the winners. Alternately, use a Facebook poll in either a group or on one of your pages to see what products your audience likes best and then compare them. Who knows, maybe your business can be the next influencer!
Another way to approach product knowledge in your content is to show your industry expertise and provide value during a critical time by addressing COVID-19 head-on. Over the past few weeks, there has been a lot of panic around how to clean. What are the best chemicals to use? Are there specific techniques? Can people who use all-natural cleaning products continue to do so? Do we need antibacterial soap if COVID-19 is a virus and not a bacteria? There is a lot of information going around on this topic, and many of the claims can be debunked or reinforced. Use the research you have done on the virus and spread the word to your community so they feel confident that they can keep their homes clean and free of any harmful germs in your absence.
These are just a few ways you can connect with your community, but there are countless options when it comes to creating content around your brand and cleaning. Draw inspiration from the books I mentioned above or other YouTube channels and creators. Creating engaging content enables you to be there for your customers when you cannot physically be thereby providing them with a trustworthy resource for all of their cleaning needs. Plus, you can entertain them, and we can all use some positivity in our lives right now!
