Are The Home Cleaning Topics in Women’s Websites Really That Viral?
When we feel stressed and overwhelmed with errands at the end of the working day, we usually decide to give ourselves a little break by browsing through our favourite websites. Facebook, Twitter, BuzzFeed and Martha Stewart are some of women’s favourite time-killers, immersing them in a world of funny gifs, informative articles and inspirational high-quality images of beautifully arranged interiors, decorations, and DIY projects.
I also like to scroll down these sites but a few years ago I was very confused. I wondered why such a large part of their content is about cleaning. Or, better to say, green cleaning. I mean, are women that uninformed and bad in cleaning their homes? I don’t think so.
Turned out, it’s all about the money.
Let me explain why.
You will agree with me that nowadays people spend much of their free time online. Internet gives us such a wide variety of еntertainment, think online games, funny stuff, the option to chat with our fellows, shopping, etc. Businesses quickly noticed that, and aligned their marketing strategies with the situation. Marketers observed that, even when someone walks out in the streets, he is more likely to see a given advertisement in his facebook feed, rather than on a billboard or poster. It has gone so far that we walk with our heads bowed over the smartphones, barely seeing what is happening around us.
Businesses in the service sector quickly adapted and implemented marketing strategies mainly oriented towards social media advertising. With Facebook’s Custom Audiences, and Google’s PPC advertising opportunities, showing our products and services to the right people became as easy as pie. We all know that the competition between companies in the service field is pretty aggressive. It is not a real product with comparable features. These companies rely on positive reviews and recommendations, targeted advertisement and reaching to larger audiences. All of these are achieved through a strong online presence.
A very popular practice is offering a free service/product as a gift, in exchange of a sponsored post/review in a relevant website or personal blog. For example, imagine that you run a company which offers cleaning services, like this one. You find a blog full of posts about homemaking, organizing and decorating ideas. You also know that your target audience are working women with busy schedules, brave women and elderly people. What type of people would visit this blog? The same ones. So you want them to see how great your service is. For this purpose you pay the owner of the blog a decent amount of money, or offer him a free deep cleaning of his entire property, in exchange of a laudatory review of the cleaning service, posted on his blog.
Because of the harsh competition, all cleaning companies are racing to populate their brands and services in women’s websites. They hire freelancers which write articles on cleaning topics and post them in every website they can, with a link to their employer’s website. And that is the reason you see so much stuff and so many people talking about cleaning…
Got wisdom to pour?