Marketing to Moms with Tots

Marketing to parents is a wide-open field, but you’ve got to have something that will both catch the eye of the parents as well as the tots. Make it something that will look good in pictures as well as in words and you could have a big seller. But one thing is certain: if you create products for children that make parents happy, you should do well in the marketplace.

Popular Products Sell For More than One Reason

Whether it’s Tickle Me Elmo or the Cabbage Patch dolls of years gone by, if you had a child in the age-range that wanted the toy of the season, and you didn’t manage to get one before they were sold out, then as a parent, you felt like a failure. That’s the guilt card that many companies use very effectively. The pressure to get the right product before it peaks in popularity is enormous for many parents, causing them to buy more than one product that is projected to be “the” toy.

If you were the parent that didn’t get the gift one year, the pressure only increases with the years that follow. Who wants to be that guy more than once?! So, that parent may spend months before the holidays watching the lists of toys that could be the top one, checking up on surveys or focus groups too.

PR To Moms – Big Business

Even though it’s big business, nearly 3/4^th of moms claim advertisers don’t have a clue about what moms need and want when they are looking for products. That’s according to Jamie Dunham’s Brand Wise consulting company.  Marketing to moms is worth at least $2 trillion annually according to the Marketing to Moms Coalition – and that’s just U.S. brands. That’s why special interest mom blogs and parenting groups are becoming part of the strategy when marketing to moms and their children.

For those wanting to market to moms with tots, they need to recognize their target market is Millennials with children, and that group is big on emotional advertising and finding products that factor in well-being. Add in the social media fluency aspects of that generation and companies that want to have a long run in the marketplace will look at providing good, safe products that promote fun as well as education.

Technology Helps

Dunham points out that making websites mobile friendly is imperative. “As more people get smartphones, we’re carrying computers around in our pocketbooks. It allows us to shop 24-7, to have the ability to stand in a store and gather information about that store and other stores.”

Making an Emotional Connection

Tom’s Shoes makes a connection by appealing to their consumers’ social conscience. Other companies do something similar. There’s a small wooden toy company that started out on Etsy, mainly making wooden teethers and rattles. They eventually became the top toy seller on the site and over the eight or so years since they started have continued to add many toys, large and small, to their inventory. With every toy they sell, they plant a sapling. They’ve named their company Little Sapling Toys … referring not just to the wood, but to their viewpoint of helping little ones grow strong over time. The company has grown slowly, and this November just had a grand opening for their first brick and mortar shop.

Little Sapling ships to customers all around the world, but they’ve grown because they provide a good product at a reasonable price. Their toys are educational, fun, and well, you know those custom blocks people often use in their baby pics with the name of the child or their age? You can get those from them too.

Marketing to moms with tots is all about knowing what those moms think is important for their children, and the world around them. Figure that out and you might find your company growing well beyond what you first imagined.