How Molly Maid is using Social Media to Further Differentiate their Brand
In 2024 Molly Maid UK will celebrate their 40th anniversary in business, a remarkable achievement for the company that has become the United Kingdom’s most recognised and successful cleaning franchise.
Beyond their talented Franchisees and award-winning operating systems and procedures, it’s their marketing savvy which has propelled the Molly Maid brand into the upper echelons of brands in the country, with awareness levels that are double that of their nearest competitor. Marketing Manager Kanika Srivastava joined Molly Maid in August 2021, taking charge of the company’s branding strategy, including their social media channels which had just launched. Fast forward to today and even the quickest of looks at their Instagram channel or Facebook page, and you can immediately see that the Molly Maid approach to social media is quite different than any other company in the domestic cleaning market. “We focus on telling stories about our brand and what we stand for as opposed to information that may be interesting but has very little to do with why a customer should have Molly Maid clean their home, or why a potential employee would want to work with us.”
Kanika shares some of her philosophies about social media, the Molly Maid approach and what makes it different, as well as an exciting campaign in 2024.
How do you develop content for social media?
Social media is an integral part of our marketing mix so we spend a lot of time planning out the stories that we want to tell throughout the year. We develop an annual social media calendar along with our business plan, which helps us to work systematically on the posts on a monthly basis but more importantly, links the posts together to tell a compelling story about our brand. This is the real power in social media – it’s a medium that allows you to tell a story that captures the attention of your audience.
What is your favourite Molly Maid social media post and why?
We’ve done over eight hundred posts in the past two years so picking just one is really difficult. But the ones that are the closest to my heart have to do with our Community Heros program, which recognises the contributions that our Franchisees and their teams make to their communities, such as sponsorship of children’s activities and local sports teams (which we also contribute to financially as well) and how our staff go truly above and beyond for our customers. For us it’s beyond just the transaction itself of cleaning a home. I love telling these stories.
How important is video to the stories you are trying to tell?
People today have shorter attention spans and video helps to more quickly tell your story and capture emotion, but it’s about making sure the video supports the actual story you want to tell. If the video doesn’t support the story then don’t use it – regardless of how funny you may think it is. I see a lot of social media posts with video which I think is there just for the sake of having a funny snippet of video. We also develop the video content ourselves and seldom copy or link other videos from TikTok or YouTube. In 2023 for example we took two full days to shoot video with some of our Support Office team and Franchisees and then edited this down to short messages. We did the same at our 40th anniversary meeting held the beginning of January with all of our Franchisees.
What advice would you give to a company who is just thinking about starting their social media channels.
Firstly, clearly understand the story that you want to tell, to the audience you are trying to reach. In today’s highly competitive staffing environment for instance the story we are telling to potential staff members is much different than the one we are telling to potential customers. Have a little bit of fun with the messages and images to bring out your brand personality but really think about the copy. Finally, be prepared to take some risks with the messages and stories. Our leadership team bought into our strategy right from the outset and this has given me the freedom to develop innovative content.
Is there a campaign that you are most excited about in 2024?
This year we celebrate our 40th anniversary in business which is a huge milestone for any company. Throughout the year we are going to be sharing 40 incredible stories about Molly Maid that we think have contributed to us becoming the UK’s number one home cleaning franchise. There will be stories about our founders, our business model and how it has developed and changed, and of course stories about our great Franchisees and cleaning teams.
For more information about Molly Maid in the UK, you can contact Kanika at ksrivastava@mollymaid.co.uk, or better still, take a look at the Molly Maid UK Instagram or Facebook channel to see Kanika’s advice in action.
Here are links to both;
https://www.instagram.com/mollymaidinuk/ | https://www.facebook.com/MOLLYMAIDinUK