10 Ways to Engage Moms

Most product ads that merely show the product and its obvious features is not what gets moms engaged.  Those type of ads are still important to keep a brand top of mind and in mom’s consideration set but if you really want to engage moms you need to provide coupons, offers and ideas on how she can use your product in new ways to save her time and money.  Here are ten ideas that we use to help our clients:

• Give Mom what she wants. Provide special offers and discounts to mom and encourage her to share your coupons and ideas with her friends.  Also create ways for her to contribute like uploading photos, product reviews, comments, etc.

• Be a resource. Provide useful information that saves her time and money.  This can be simple advice, how-to-vides, news, recipes, etc.  Most of this information is good to add to your email-marketing program or Facebook.

• Build your own community. Branded communities like Pampers' MommyCast can become the central spot for your mommy audience to congregate, ask questions of each other and/or experts, share information, and participate in informal research. You can incorporate your community with Facebook making it easy for mom to sign-up.
  
  
• Marry your branded social media with your ads. There have been a number of brands like Volvo and Juicy Juice that have pulled their live tweets into display ads.
  
  
• Cause worthy messaging. According to 2010 Cone Cause Evolution research, 95 percent of American moms believe cause marketing is acceptable, 92 percent want to buy a product that supports a cause, and 93 percent are likely to switch brands because of the brand's support of a cause. These are some pretty potent stats! For example, Coke's "Give it Back" campaign promotes recycling with concrete correlations that resonate with moms.
  
  
• Cater to the mobile side of mom. Don't overlook mobile devices - moms rarely find themselves without their phone these days. Mobile makes mom's life easier, and advertisers have a huge opportunity to literally put their brand in mom's pocket. Moms like branded apps that are truly useful and help save them time. Toys"R"Us has built a mobile app for iPhone and BlackBerry that sends deal alerts.  Mobile marketing through the forms of mobile ads, mobile search, SMS text messaging is very affective on moms.
  
  
• Put Mom in the driver's seat. Create a messaging strategy but give moms a lot of options on how to communicate with your brand. Make it easy for moms to connect with your brand on their own terms, whether it's through Twitter, Facebook, e-mail, text alerts, mobile, or directly on your website. Use advertising to promote these options.
  
  
• Keep moms entertained. Multimedia rules mom's world. She loves videos, digital games, and mobile apps that engage, assist, entertain, and inform her. Generate the kind of ad creative that has a better chance of getting mom's attention and shared than a plan old sales pitch. For example, Blendtec's "Will It Blend?" YouTube campaign (just as easily converted into an infomercial) showcased the company's blender power in a very attention-getting way.
  
  
• Make it personal. The Aberdeen Group found that a move from segmentation-based marketing to one-to-one personalization can improve conversion rates by 22 percent and customer retention rates by 60 percent. Take advantage of this when developing social media and ad campaigns like MomsRising.org did with a campaign to boost its membership. It created a tool that lets users personalize a video using Mom's name. You could also try personalizing to Mom's needs and lifestyle, like Swiffer's "Cleaning Personality" campaign.
  
  
• Make sure Mom knows what she’s getting. It’s important that mom understands what she's going to get out of the relationship with your brand.  We call it the “Value Exchange.”  Before mom is going to “like” you, give you her email or cell phone number she has to have enough value in exchange for that personal connection.  Membership has to have its privileges.  Don’t give all moms the same value.  The ones that give you a more personal/direct connection should get more in return.

The bottom line: moms are social media power users - they are savvy, shrewd, and not likely to be as easily fooled by advertising gimmicks. Use social media and advertising together well, however, and you'll be pleased at the extended mileage you can get from your efforts.