In the fiercely competitive landscape of Home Care, heightened by the post-pandemic focus on germ-killing products, strategic marketing is paramount. How can you elevate your messaging for home care and cleaning products to stand out in this environment?

This blog delves into the marketing strategies of two prominent home care brands, Lysol and Swiffer. By leveraging the insights gained from generative AI-powered online review analytics, we aim to understand their current efforts and explore opportunities for enhancement.

This blog dissects the nuances of consumer behavior, scrutinizes key product attributes, and uncovers the potential of generative AI in revolutionizing marketing campaigns.

A snapshot of the home care landscape

Before we look at our product examples, let’s survey consumer behavior with Revuze’s category-level data.

Many topics emerged from verified buyers’ feedback, ranging from “Performance” to “Customer Service,” and have been assigned sentiment by Revuze’s generative AI engine. The graph quickly gives a sense of what home care consumers care about.

Get even more granular by understanding the topics that are driving five-star as well as one and two-star ratings. In the chart below, we can identify “Smell” as the most important driver of five-star reviews, with a 15% lift.

Drivers of one and two-star ratings include: “Price/Value for Money,” “Instructions,” “Leakage,” “Shipping,” and “Packaging.” If your own brand or product has a positive sentiment around these topics, they can be integrated into your marketing messaging.

As you dive into the category-level data, try to understand what topics verified buyers are talking about and think about how you can optimize your marketing campaigns.

Lysol

The Lysol brand is well-known for its disinfectant wipes and spray and surged in popularity during the pandemic. Overall it continues to enjoy high consumer sentiment, 75% for organic reviews and 90% for incentivized ones. 

In this Lysol ad, the main tagline is: “Cleans the messes you see, kills the germs you don’t.” The marketing  messaging emphasizes the product’s performance in  cleaning and killing germs. However, is that the value proposition that consumers really care about?

When we delve into the online review analytics from the past 24 months, the leading topics discussed about Lysol products are: “Smell”, “Overall Satisfaction”, “Performance”, “Price/Value for Money”, and “Cleanliness”. Considering the promotion, Lysol’s commercial doesn’t touch on the topic attribute that consumers care about, “Smell”, which has the highest share of discussion. Consider the impact of the commercial if it spoke to what consumers care about.

We can further dive into the “Smell” topic to identify consumers’ terminology. The term cloud below aggregates all the “smell” mentions from verified buyers’ reviews. We see terms like “smells amazing”, “smell fresh”, “smell clean”, “nice”. Many of these words can be incorporated into Lysol’s overall marketing messaging to better be aligned with consumers.

To pinpoint what consumers associate with the Lysol brand, use the generative AI-powered SWOT analysis. The strengths quadrant outlines the positive qualities that consumers associate with your brand. Definitely lean into these topics for marketing messaging. Now shift to the opportunities quadrant to learn what qualities consumers associate with your brand but you may not be capitalizing on. Attributes that stand out include, “Performance”, “Efficiency”, “Stains” and “Cleanliness”. Maximize the topics to enhance your marketing messaging and speak directly to your consumers. 

Swiffer

Another notable home care brand is Swiffer, known for its lightweight alternative mop, which boasts easy cleanup and disposable mop wipes. Their consumer sentiment stands at 53% and 92% for organic and incentivized reviews, respectively.

The messaging in this Swiffer commercial differs significantly from Lysol’s, focusing on its being heavy-duty and offering value for money with the tagline: “Totally worth it or your money back.” Similar to the Lysol ad, it neglects to address the key topic with the highest consumer sentiment: “Ease of Use” and “Efficiency.”

The term cloud reveals prominent terms that Swiffer customers emphasize in their reviews. Phrases such as “Easy”, “Convenient”, “Simple”, and “Effective” represent highly appreciated product qualities. Incorporating these into any marketing campaign can elevate the product messaging.

Utilizing the generative AI-powered SWOT analysis simplifies the identification of Swiffer’s strengths and opportunities, which can enhance marketing messaging. In the Strengths quadrant, “Ease of Use” and “Efficiency” resurface, along with “Pet Appropriate”, “Surfaces”, and “Cleanliness”. The Opportunities quadrant showcases “Stains” and “Price/Value for Money”. While the ad conveys the latter attribute, it prompts consideration of whether the campaign would have been stronger by incorporating the other terms and topics.

Conclusion

As you craft your brand’s marketing campaigns and messaging, consider the different ways you can leverage online review analytics. As always, this is post-purchase data straight from the mouths of verified buyers. Leverage their own words to market your brand and product. In our analysis, we showed how two mainstream cleaning brands, Lysol and Swiffer, were not incorporating some of the key product attributes that consumers were associating with their brand. Marketing professionals can deftly upgrade their messaging with campaigns that consumers talk about. Learn more about how generative AI-powered online review analytics can support your marketing needs by clicking here.

Florence Broder