Marketing to mums: How to win over the gatekeepers
The concept of mums as the gatekeeper to the household is pretty well established. Research by BabyCentre shows that 80 per cent of all shopping decisions are held by mothers and 29 per cent of these mums are in a better financial position than they were last year. So how can brands and retailers market products to different family members, while keeping an all-important focus on the needs and wants of the gatekeeper?
Simon Miles
While every mum’s desire to provide for their family hasn’t changed, the way in which mums are now doing so has shifted dramatically. Mums are spending more time than ever on social media and smart brands are leveraging the power of these social conversations to drive brand preference both online and in-store. For instance, according to Comscore 44 per cent of mums have made a purchase after a friend liked or posted about a brand on social media.
One thing we’ve trialled at Coca-Cola Enterprises is social shopper marketing with Capri-Sun. The back to school period is a key trading time for Capri-Sun so we used social influencers and their significant followers to create shopper media that educates, informs and ultimately impacts consumer decisions at the point of purchase.
The key to making this kind of activity work is to be laser focused on matching brand and shopper occasions. Basically, the best chance of success is to be authentic and relevant. For us we used Capri-Sun Fruit Crush as a perfect lunchbox drink option, generating 2,140 pieces of content, 1.6 million blog page views, an 89 per cent share of voice and 10 million campaign impressions. However, it’s not an ‘always on’ tool we see being used on multiple campaigns.
Many brands and retailers have seen success over the last 12 months in marketing carefully to ‘at home moments’ ie staying in with the family, rather than going out. But as financial optimism grows, there may be opportunities to start marketing products around days out. Marketing to specific life moments is an effective way of reaching mums, particularly if retailers can even inspire new ideas for things to do or outings.
For example, the World Cup gave brands the perfect platform to use digital activity to replicate the excitement created in-store to drive traffic to retailer websites.
Brands and retailers will need to work much harder to capture the attention of the gatekeeper as their digital worlds continue to expand. The blend between in-store and online will become more and more important so brands and retailers need to ensure they have future-proof plans in place.
Simon Miles is digital director at Coca-Cola Enterprises