Search Results for: marketing to moms

4 Strategies for Marketing to Moms During Back-to-School Shopping

That sigh of relief you hear across the nation is the collective hallelujah as moms send their bundles of joy back to the classroom this fall. Preparing for back-to-school can be an exciting time of year for both parents and students, but it can also be a time of extreme stress, something to consider when marketing to moms who continue to be the primary back-to-school shoppers for kids in elementary and middle school.

According to the 2017 Deloitte Back-to-School Survey, back-to-school shopping impacts about 29 million U.S. households, representing $27 billion in sales. This year’s survey marks some key findings: More

Karen Neuburger: Marketing to Moms Awareness Program

Campaign Objectives

Coordinate and raise awareness for Karen Neuburger Books at Bedtime holiday campaign designed to promote children’s literacy and holiday-themed collection of Karen Neuburger pajamas by marketing to moms.

Implementation of Campaign

Created “cookies and milk” pajama party events with Nordstrom in multiple U.S. markets to promote holiday-themed collection of Karen Neuburger mouse-print pajamas inspired by illustrations from the book If You Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Numeroff. Nordstrom pajama parties were hosted by Laura Numeroff.
To spotlight the need for increased children’s literacy development in the U.S., a national family reading survey was conducted that revealed nearly 46% of U.S. parents were reading less to their children at bedtime than their own parents read to them. Survey results were featured in national publications, including USA Today.
Additional program elements included media outreach, conducting book readings by Laura Numeroff at local schools and hospitals, and an influencer outreach program.

Campaign Results

294 million media impressions to targeted consumers, including 18 broadcast segments in Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Seattle, Chicago, San Diego, San Francisco. Print and online coverage included USA Today, Hollywood Reporter, Chicago Parent, LA Times, San Diego Union-Tribune, Washington Times, Quick & Simple, Woman’s World, Redbook, First For Women, Ladies’ Home Journal. Coordinated national blog campaign resulting in an additional reach of 2.5 million moms.
Karen Neuburger mouse-print pajamas sold out in all Nordstrom stores where events were held.
Drove 19% increase in First Book donations over previous year.

Reach out to learn how we can elevate your brand.

Marketing to Moms with Karen Neuburger Pajamas

Marketing to Moms – You’ve Got This!

Marketing to Moms: There Is No Perfect Mother

While there is great joy, it’s really hard being a mom. More often than not, moms feel at the end of the day they could have done it just a little bit better.

A mom’s daily experience almost always clashes with the cultural ideal of motherhood. The reality is — there is no perfect mom. So why do marketers insist on perpetuating the stereotype? Motherhood is like riding an emotional roller coaster. And emotions drive behaviors. Marketers need to understand those behaviors and help moms achieve her version of success, streamline her life and find a path toward healthy living for herself and her family.

Find out what happens when thirty moms who’ve never met have an honest conversation and inspire other women in this video created by Jessica Alba’s Honest Co.

Marketing to Moms: How Millennial Moms Are Changing the Rules

Brands and Millennial Moms

Millennial Moms Demand More of Marketers

Marketers have long recognized the importance of talking to millennials. But as millennials become moms themselves, companies are being forced to find more effective ways to reach this group of tech-savvy moms.

Kraft Canada’s new peanut butter campaign is an example of how marketers are beginning to focus on telling the emotional story rather than the product story. The ad shows a mother giving a teddy bear to her baby; as the baby grows, she takes her bear with her everywhere. Eventually, the child becomes a mother and her baby begins life with a teddy bear as well. Very few shots of the product or the brand are shown.

According to Leisha Roche, senior director of marketing for grocery brands at Kraft Canada, “The companies that will win in the future are those that find a way to humanize their brands.” “You can’t just push your brand any more.”

Millennial Moms Live in a Digital World of Their Own Making

Unlike the generations of moms before them, this new group of millennial moms grew up with the Internet their entire lives, and are consuming media almost exclusively in their digital world. Brands need to understand that their messages must be able to compete where people are posting interesting, relevant, human content all the time.

Millennial Moms Look for Emotional Connections in Advertising

And though moms of all ages resent boring advertising, or advertising that doesn’t speak to them, millennial moms are showing themselves to be much more vocal in their opinions, and better at using online platforms to share those opinions. Today’s moms want to see ads that reflect the reality of their everyday lives – with all of the good, bad and ugly. Not the outdated stereotypes that are infuriating to so many.

As marketers continue to trust that moms can make the connection between an emotional message and their brand without being beaten over the head with it, they’ll begin to cement those important relationships with this group of moms that will build for years to come.

The 10 Commandments for Marketing to Moms

Holly Pavilka recently reminded us that the power of today’s social media connected moms is never going to go away. In fact, it will continue to grow. Yet despite the spending power of this important demographic, most brands are still not getting it right when it comes to connecting with her. Girlpower Marketing tips its hat to Holly’s 10 Commandments for Marketing to Moms:

The 10 Commandments of Marketing to Moms

1. Work with moms to get it right. You’re never going to get it right unless you talk to and ideate with moms. You need to solicit their ideas. The beauty of social media is that it’s easy to find them and to connect with them. Research and studies will give you clues, but not the rich real conversation moms will bring.

2. Keep it real. Real is real, inspirational stories. Relatable content. Relevant content. Useful content. Not manufactured, retouched or artificial.

3. Answer her when she’s reaching out. Engage with moms. A study by Acuity Group showed 73% of customer tweets go unanswered. What a missed opportunity. RedBull, a brand more associated with Millennials and daredevils, is terrific at listening and responding. My daughter was mugged for her latte and it blew up Twitter for a few minutes with 100+ tweets but not a word from Starbucks. Two other brands, on the other hand, responded with $5 gift cards because they wanted my daughter to know there were still good people in the world. If you take a look at the brands moms love, they typically are ones who are listening and responding.

4. Follow the moms that follow you back. When it comes to connecting to moms, brands need to follow the moms back. Stop thinking you are a celebrity and get real with your advocates. It’s the first step in the relationship, particularly if you want to grow an audience of moms.

5. Always layer in authentic conversation around your traditional campaigns. The days where brands can just rely on traditional advertising messages are gone. Today, a blog post or tweet a mom writes mentioning your brand is an ad. Organic, authentic real stories and conversation need to be layered in along with your traditional media. These are the messages she trusts.

6. Never market to them as a niche. There’s no one-size-fits-all mom. There are Millennial moms, Boomer moms, second-life moms, Latina moms … moms of every imaginable kind. Don’t stereotype and lump us into a singular “mom” bucket or you’ll miss the mark every time.

7. Remember she’s intelligent. Many stay-at-home moms are educated and have chosen family over career in many cases. With the economy being what it is, many moms are the primary breadwinners in their families. We like to talk about more than diapers, potty training or children. We have interests beyond gardening, cooking and reading books. Look at the types of blogs that are out there–everything from politics, business, women’s health issues and more.

8. Keep it beautifully simple. Moms are busy, and crave simplicity. Make it complicated, and you’ll lose them every time. One of the reasons Pinterest is popular with women is that, along with its simple design and curation of relevant content, it’s also pleasing to the eye.

9. Balance emotional messaging with pragmatic information. She still wants to be inspired, but she’s also pragmatic. She does her homework before making a purchase. It’s part of the job of being a mom – making informed choices.

10. Remember it’s about story-selling. Place the information within reach, and let her make a decision. Marketing to moms is about telling stories, not selling. Tell how it fits in her life, layer in people’s stories, give the back story on the product – she likes details, showcase testimonials and reviews. Sprinkle in lifestyle photos of the product in use, not just beautifully lit photos of the product. All of these tell her the story she wants to hear.

Marketing to Moms: Is Abercrombie CEO Brash or Brilliant?

Is Abercrombie CEO Marketing to Moms?

Abercrombie & Fitch CEO: “Only Cool Kids Can Shop Here”

Abercrombie & Fitch CEO Mike Jeffries is in the middle of a social media firestorm with his comments that he doesn’t want plus-sized people shopping there. Jeffries is quoted as having said the following in an earlier interview:

“In every school there are the cool and popular kids, and then there are the not-so-cool kids. Candidly, we go after the cool kids. We go after the attractive all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot of friends. A lot of people don’t belong [in our clothes], and they can’t belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely.”

Moms Respond to CEO Jeffries and his Remarks

“As far as Jeffries is concerned,” wrote reporter Benoit Denizet-Lewis in Salon, “America’s unattractive, overweight or otherwise undesirable teens can shop elsewhere.” His comments have many moms up in arms, including Andrea Neusner who wrote the letter below:

Dear Mr. Jeffries:

Thank you for clarifying the reason you do not carry sizes larger than a 10 at Abercrombie. Your customer is an “attractive, all-American kid with a great attitude and lots of friends.” I am a mom of 3 daughters, ages 17, 13, and 10. They are all thin, attractive, all-American kids with great attitudes and lots of friends. They shop at Abercrombie. I believe they are your target audience.

Please find the enclosed clothing, purchased at our local Abercrombie/Abercrombie and Fitch stores. My thin, popular, cool kids will not need them anymore.

Not only will I not let my kids shop at Abercrombie again, I will not let them wear what they already have in their closets. Normally I donate our unwanted clothes, but in this case, I wouldn’t want any unsuspecting thin, cool person to send the message that being exclusionary is OK.

Sincerely,

Andrea Neusner

At the opposite end of the spectrum is the Dove Real Beauty Sketches online commercials, in which Dove commissioned a police sketch artist to draw women as they see themselves, and then as others describe them. The women see themselves as less attractive, while others see them far more kindly. The commercials have gone viral with 52 million hits to date. Its mantra: “You are more beautiful than you think!”

It looks like a self-esteem smack-down: Abercrombie vs. Dove. Mean, bully culture (A&F) vs. a self-esteem promoting, compassionate, we-can-make-the-world-a-better-place sensibility (Dove).

Retailers like H&M, Forever 21 and American Eagle do a pretty good job of exciting fashion customers of all ages and sizes. And they’ve been consistently stealing market share from the floundering Abercrombie & Fitch.

And while his version of marketing genius seems to be stoking the anxiety of youngsters who want to be considered cool by their peers, it’s an anxiety that CEO Jeffries, now in his late 60s, doesn’t seem to have outgrown himself. As Salon put it:

“Jeffries wants desperately to look like his target customer (the casually flawless college kid), and in that pursuit he has aggressively transformed himself from a classically handsome man into a cartoonish physical specimen: dyed hair, perfectly white teeth, golden tan, bulging biceps, wrinkle-free face, and big, Angelina Jolie lips.”

Is Jeffries Actually Marketing to Moms?

Here’s the thing: Jeffries is a businessman, and he can certainly market to whomever he wants. But who does he think is paying for all those A&F jeans and tops? That’s right. Moms. And though targeted marketing is done by many brands, the real issue here is that his remarks are just plain mean, and moms see that. Call me crazy, but it seems that alienating the people who buy his merchandise might not be the smartest thing.

What do you think: Should marketers feel free to market their brands as they see fit? In the end, it’s up to the consumer to decide, even if the concept is outdated.

Truths About Marketing to Moms

Marketing to Moms: A List of Truths

Recently Holly Pavlika shared her predictions for how marketers will attempt to engage moms. We’ve noted a few of them below:

Television, social media, and motherhood will recognize that they need each other. It’s already happening with blogger integration. Television is the second screen to her, and it will be interesting to see how apps like Zeebox, which integrates television shows and social media, will fare.
Technology and smartphones will become more and more a part of her life. Brands need to get ahead of the curve with mobile.
Brands will continue to try to reach moms through “pinked” and specially designed products. And they will fail miserably. Painting a product pink and adding glitter to something hardly raises its ability to effectively meet the buyer’s needs. To win her over, focus on features, benefits, providing value, and superlative customer service.
More and more advertising will feature moms. Until we want to scream. Advertising and marketing to moms is so blatant right now, it’s almost laughable. Brands will continue to think putting a mom in the picture will attract moms to listen their pitch. The emphasis should not be on “hey, mom,” messaging, but rather on recognizing whether or not moms really need the product in their lives.
We’ll see more growth in the Latina mom market. Brands need to get ready for her – she’s highly social, has huge spending power, and isn’t afraid to use her voice.

The Networked Mom will continue to adapt and use technology and social media to share ideas and connect with others. She loves the ability to share her passions and use her voice, and she will continue to be a primary focus of the media and marketers in 2013.

Photo courtesy of Episencial

Marketing to Moms: Shout Out to Hallmark

Hallmark Markets to Moms

The other day I was in a Hallmark store buying Halloween cards, and it struck me that this brand is a great example of one that really understands and supports a mom’s need for community.

Moms, or all women for that matter, are part of multiple communities, from family and the workplace, to children’s and social groups, to online groups. In order to develop a meaningful relationship with these women, it’s important that brands show support for these communities. One way to do that is to identify a touch point that has emotional relevance to Mom (and her peers) and present it in a way that also provides a sense of validation on her part.

A recent study indicates that 90 percent of women agree that greeting cards can lift their spirits and lighten a heavy burden.

Hallmark acknowledges that not all moms are living the perfect lives so often depicted in the media, and has made it easier to find cards that offer words of encouragement or support with its Encouragement Cards line. This line of cards, addressing a variety of life situations including job loss, cancer treatment, stress, self-improvement, divorce, and caregiving, helps moms support other moms in their communities through challenging life events.

In addition, Hallmark introduced the Kids Encouragement line, providing moms with another platform for showing love, support and pride in their children.

Hallmark’s ongoing innovation shows a keen understanding of how to create an emotional bond with its primary customers, and how even the simple effort of sending a card can create a lasting impression and emotional bond between sender and receiver.

So, since I “care enough to send the very best,” I’m giving a shout out to Hallmark.

Tips on Marketing to Moms

Tips for Marketing to Moms

How to Be Successful at Marketing to Moms

75 million U.S. moms make or influence 85 percent of all household purchase decisions, representing $2.1 trillion in annual spending power. In today’s economic climate, many brands are counting on American moms to help them survive, but getting them to unleash their purse power can be a struggle if those marketers don’t understand how best to connect with moms. Following are a few tips to help attract and engage moms online:

Participate directly with moms. Brands trying to win over moms must participate directly with them, and develop a credible voice: one that is engaging, personal, authentic and participatory.
Research where she is online. Yes, moms like to shop and read blogs, but they also research health information, conduct online banking, watch videos and play games. Because patterns vary by life stage and interests, marketers need to understand their audience and how they are using the Internet.
Help her connect with your other customers. Moms gravitate toward brands that help them converse and connect with other moms. Brands can accomplish this through their websites, blogs and other social media sites where moms are connecting.
Don’t talk AT moms. Many brands create social media campaigns aimed at engaging moms, but fail because they end up talking “at” moms with self-serving advertising speak. Create added value for moms by providing them with information that is useful and interesting. Then provide tools that allow moms to interact not only with the brand, but each other. Listen to their feedback and make changes accordingly.
Respect her. Moms want brands to listen to them and respond to what they’re saying by showing respect and understanding their needs.
Make her laugh. Moms love to laugh. Women’s humor grows out of identifying with another person in a funny situation, and recognizing their similarities. Help them find those similarities in humorous situations.
Concentrate on customer service. Word-of-mouth is the biggest factor in purchasing decisions for online moms. They look for recommendations from people they trust, and stay away from businesses if other moms relay bad experiences. Brands should make sure that word-of-mouth doesn’t work against them by making a commitment to impeccable customer service. Always go a bit further than needed, and include some form of “thank you.”
Remember that moms are not JUST moms. Moms are not one-dimensional — they have other interests, and don’t want to read just about mom-related topics. Moms also travel, race dirt bikes and collect fine wine as well.

How Marketing to Moms Is Like Marketing to Boomers

Marketing to Boomers

In preparing for this year’s M2Moms –The Marketing to Moms Conference, I’ve touched based with a number of the speakers to find out what’s on their minds. I’ve been struck by how much of today’s best practices for marketing to the current batch of Millennial moms can be directly applied to marketing to their Boomer mothers.

Moms are Brand-Disloyal: So are Boomers

Stacy DeBroff founded Mom Central, a consulting firm and online resource for moms and mommy bloggers. Her recent research has shown her that “Moms have become untethered in their brand loyalties, partly as a result of the Recession and partly as a result of the social media culture. Moms are willing to leave brands.

I’ve written before about the willingness of Boomers to leave brands as well. Old stereotypes assumed that brand loyalty, once gained, was never lost as consumers grew older. If that stereotype was true in the past, it isn’t any longer, for Moms or for Boomers. As women find new ways to connect with each other, they also find new brands that meet their ever-changing needs. Or, as DeBroff says, “We’re entering the age of relationship marketing and it’s fascinating but for many brands a real struggle.” The brands that win this struggle are the ones that deliver useful resources online and serve the social platforms where women connect.

Mommy Bloggers: They’re not all 30

Emily Bader from the Zocalo group is bullish on Mommy bloggers; she says that there will be 4.4 million of them by 2014. And if Bader is bullish on Mommy bloggers, I’m even more bullish on Boomer bloggers.

What does the growth of mommy bloggers have to do with Boomers? First, many of these millions of women will keep blogging as they age. So get ready for a giant wave of Boomer bloggers who keep influencing other women after they turn 50. Second, Boomer bloggers deliver the same benefits for marketers as younger Moms. They generate meaningful conversations and they share actionable recommendations around issues meaningful to other women like them. That’s what brands need, whether the blogs reaches women aged 25 or 55.

Bader says there’s no limit to the number of meaningful Mommy blogs as long as each one generates meaningful conversations. That leaves a lot of room for Boomers to launch blogs, and marketers to leverage them for results.

Marketing to Millennial Moms through their Boomer Mothers

Miriam Arond runs Hearst’s Good Housekeeping Research Institute and has been studying female consumers/readers for many years. And she sees that Boomer moms have entirely different relationships with their child-bearing daughters than they had with their own mothers.

This shift has created a new playing field for marketers. “Don’t assume there’s a generation gap” between midlife women and their grown daughters, Arond says. “Moms and their 20-somethings are listening to the same music, shopping together, talking together. What the mom thinks about a product or store really does matter to her daughter.”

The average CPG brand describes its target consumer as a “Mom.” But reaching that young mom is different than it used to be. And increasingly, it looks a lot like marketing to her own midlife mother.

Original post by Stephen Reily for MediaPost

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