Not the Mom You Knew

Today’s Mom is nothing like the mother you grew up with. The 21st century Mom has gone digital in a big way. How she communicates and who she trusts have fundamentally changed. As a marketer, reaching, ahem, connecting with her is going to require a new set of tools. Gone are the days of the relying exclusively on 30 second TV spots, the long copy direct mail piece, or the full page newspaper ad.

Everybody Wants Her

Digital Moms are one of the most coveted target markets on the planet. Just Google “Moms online” and you’ll get over 6.6 million results. A recent comScore study estimates that there were 5.1 million Canadian mothers online in April 2008, up 7% from April 2007. New online communities and websites for Moms are springing up every day. This powerful group has strength in numbers as well as purchasing power.

Many attempts have been made to use social media tools to engage mothers, with limited success. The key to success lies in the approach. Here are a few tips to help you attract and engage Moms online.

Do Your Homework

Before you think about connecting with Mom 2.0 you need to do some homework. Find out what Moms are saying and doing. The better you understand your audience and how they’re using the web, the more effective your use of social media tools will be with these Moms.

You probably know that mothers are big online shoppers and that they research everything from health information to home appliance purchases online. But did you know that according to Nielsen Research, women watch more online video than men?

Moms are also flocking to social media tools like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, blogs and even social bookmarking sites. However, you’ll find their online usage patterns vary depending on stage of motherhood (newbie to mother of teen), their geographic location, and their interests.

Consider these stats from Mom Central’s, Mom Blogger Survey:

• 94% of Moms rely on recommendations from other Moms when it comes to purchasing decisions.
• 60% are active on Facebook
• 37% use YouTube
• 25% have their own blog
• 20% use Twitter
• 14% use Flickr

According to eMarketer 78% of Mom bloggers review products and 56% review services.

Ready, Shoot, Aim

You might be thinking, okay we need to set-up a Twitter account, create a Facebook page and start advertising pronto. Well, not so fast. Studies and experience show that Mom’s want to hear from other Mom’s and they expect to have a voice in how brands communicate with them.

Case-in-point is this blog post from Kathy (a blogger).

Tide is advertising on Facebook and they want me to become a "fan" of Tide on Facebook. When I posted in my status, "It will be a cold day in hell before I become a FAN of laundry detergent" my status garnered several "Me too!" from my other "Facebook Mom" friends.

Late last year Motrin involuntarily become a poster child for how digital Moms can leverage the power of social media when their negative response to a Motrin ad campaign resulted in Motrin pulling the ads and making a public apology.

It’s all about building trust before trying to market to these Moms. Start by monitoring the conversation to find out what is being said about your brand, company and category and who is saying it. You can do this by setting up Google alerts, and Twitter search RSS feeds. Get to know the Moms who are blogging and tweeting about your products and then find ways to participate in the conversation. Read, comment and become part of the community. Provide value and show that you are genuinely interested in the community.

Engage

As more Moms engage with social media it is important to realize that their receptivity to traditional media is changing. Marketers have an opportunity to utilize web 2.0 tools like social networks, text messaging and Twitter to facilitate conversations among Moms and influence decision making.

Savvy online marketers can maximize their impact with Moms by engaging in the right way:

• Seek first to add value to their social media experience
• Encourage them to participate in ways that they appreciate and enjoy – ways that are relevant to them
• Tap Moms to help shape and spread brand messages among their network with authentic Mom-to-Mom interactions

Before you know it, you will be communicating in new and exciting ways with Mom 2.0.

Resources

• BlogHer: largest online community for women who blog with over 18,000 female bloggers on the site.
• Cafe Mom: a social network for mothers. Users spend an average of 8 hours per week on the site.
• Moms.alltop.com: the largest collection of Mom blogs on the web.
• Twitter Moms: a community 11,500 web-savvy, “influential” Moms on Twitter
• Digital Mom: an in-depth report from RazorFish

¹ Fortune Magazine http://is.gd/mKDh
² Today Show – Digital Mom’s http://tv.popcrunch.com/consumer-queen-sparkplugging-razorfish-today-show-digital-Mom-march-10-video/