Becoming a Mom Changes Media Patterns Significantly
If there was ever a market segment that gets attention in big chunks (whether deserved or not) it’s the moms of the world. There are mommy bloggers who have held sway over brands and made brands bend to their will at times. The Motrin incident (sounds like social media’s answer to The Bourne Ultimatum doesn’t it?) was evidence of how this group can make a fuss and create change. This powerful market segment demands the attention of the online marketer in many areas because it is estimated that moms control 80% of household spending annually which represents a whopping $1.7 trillion (with a T).
eMarketer and BabyCenter is providing some insight into how this group works and the changes that occur in online behavior when a woman turns into a mom.
“Moms want to do business with retailers that are respectful and responsive to their needs and concerns,” said Jeffrey Grau, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the new report, “How Moms and Retailers Interact Online.”
About 85% of online moms said having a baby changed their purchasing habits, according to “21st Century Mom,” a 2009 study published by BabyCenter, an online community for expectant and new moms. The report also found widespread changes in media usage among moms—many of whom used both mom-centric and mainstream social media sites more than before.
Here how those habit are impacted by the addition of a little one.
The obvious change is the shift to mom-centric social media outlets but even more startling is the near disregard for traditional media. So if you are responsible for marketing a product to this particularly influential group of online buyers you better be on your guard. It doesn’t take much to set off a firestorm amongst this group if they feel that you, the marketer, has not been respectful or responsive to their needs.
Since these ladies are used to handing out discipline it might be good policy to pay attention and fly straight. Just ask Motrin.
What Do I Look At First? Analytics Beyond Revenue Tracking
Over the years, I’ve gone through many iterations of focus as a search marketer. In my first years in seo, traffic seemed to be the primary focus all of online marketing. Increasing the client’s online visits was the number one goal. That thinking evolved into a multi-pronged approach to looking at data – from lowering [...]
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Cup of Joe: I Am a Heartless B@st@rd on Twitter
If you are following me on Twitter or a friend on Facebook you might already be aware that I am a heartless b@st@rd. OK so maybe that’s a bit extreme but the truth is, I think a lot of what mainstream social media users take part in is a waste of time. For example I don’t thank people for retweets, I don’t participate in follow Friday, and I don’t join every Facebook fan page that comes along. Why don’t I do all of these things? Because quite honestly they do very little to help promote my ideas and the people I believe in. And more importantly they add more noise to a medium that is already saturated to the rim with useless content.
In the video above Wanda Sykes talks about why (at the time) she isn’t a member of Facebook. She asks the question “since when did we get so social?” I think that’s a very important question to consider. 5 or 6 years ago if you wanted to connect with a family member or an old friend you might call them or send them a letter. Doesn’t that seem like a more genuine connection than taking a few seconds to approve a friend request on Facebook?
As new media marketers we are expected to bring new ideas and techniques to the table. So much so that I think some times we forget to stop and ask ourselves “is this a good idea?” A lot of marketers will say well what harm can we be doing? It’s just Twitter! The worst possible scenario for any social media marketer is to take a strong brand and make it irrelevant and annoying. Here’s the way I look at it. If you don’t have a clear strategy on how to add value to your brand in social media, they stay out of it! Otherwise you run the risk of adding to the noise and coming a across as ingenuous.
Good Bye Winter, Hello Santa Clara. PPC Marketer’s Dream Agenda
I suppose the next best thing to dreaming about leaving the cold New Hampshire winter is to actually do it! Can’t think of a better way to toss off winter blahs than with a few days at SMX West.
Agenda Item #1 – Monday, Monday
I am planning to get in early on Sunday [...]
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It’s A Great Time To Be A Search Marketer…It’s About To Get Better
Recently, my agency has been putting a lot of time and resources into the ad exchange space. For those of you paid search folks with SEM blinders on, let me elaborate because the opportunity here for those with paid search experience is about to open up tremendously in the next few years.
Ad exchanges are [...]
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Are You Getting Enough out of Twitter & Facebook?
As marketing professionals, we usually have to justify ourselves to our bosses, our clients and everyone in between—especially in the less-tested, sometimes-hit-or-miss arena of social media. But now Ad Age wants accountability, too, as they ask “if you’re getting enough out of all the volunteer work you do for Biz & Ev and Mark,” or, more specifically, “Are we all just toiling mightily to make a bunch of rich nerds (Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and his employees and investors, Twitter’s Biz Stone and Evan Williams and their employees and investors) richer, while we impoverish ourselves?”
That’s both a literal and a figurative question, since using those social networks is exactly what makes their founders and investors money (well, sort of), and, as the argument goes, we’re essentially a volunteer labor force creating content for these sites—an interesting point. Meanwhile, using social networks (at all, as the argument here seems to go) means sacrificing time (true), actual interactions (possibly true but not always)—and our very souls and identities.
They mean this to be a discussion on a personal level, since a central thrust of the argument is that these social networks have sacrificed so much of our privacy that we’re allowing them to steal (don’t we call that “giving” in English?) “the sole ownership of our own thoughts, emotions, personal expressions, etc.” from us (yes, if I post “I’m sad” on a social network, that means that they also own my emotion…. right….).
Of course, if you’re using Twitter and Facebook as a marketer, you’re there looking for business ROI from publicity—being public. Ad Age (you know, “Advertising” Age? About . . . could it be . . . advertising?) does acknowledge that social networks might work for these purposes, if they’re worth the sacrifice:
If you’re a brand marketer, chances are good that you’re extracting real value from investing time and energy in social media (and you’re happy to have consumers volunteering their time to be your “brand ambassadors” or whatever you want to call them); good for you. (And if you’re a consumer who gets off on connecting with big brands — or just wants to interface with customer service in a forum, like Twitter, where certain marketers seem to be hyper-responsive — well, good for you too.) In general, if you’re soft-selling something — like content or an idea — that can benefit from free publicity, Facebook and Twitter are your friends. Even if, well, they’re the two-faced sort who think nothing of riffling through your handbag or backpack when you get up to go the bathroom — you know, glad-handing “friends” (those are air quotes) who are obviously using you for something, only it’s not always entirely clear what.
Um . . . I hate to bring this up, but aren’t we as marketers just using our social networks as those same kind of “friends” (and possibly even the friends and fans we acquire on those social networks)—we’re just using them as the means to an end?
I do agree, of course, that on a personal level, excessive use of social media can rob us of time and valuable interaction with the people we care about most. It’s good to examine our relationship with the Internet and social media on a personal level and decide whether it’s really worth the time and effort we put into it, or if we might put that time to better use. While that’s the brief summary of the argument at the conclusion of the article, the main thrust is that using social networks is such a great sacrifice of ourselves (even without a time investment) that it’s not worth it.
What do you think? Do you demand ROI from personal social network use? Or are you glad that most people don’t 
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PPC Academy: New Column From Search Engine Land
Our newest Search Engine Land column, PPC Academy, launches today. PPC Academy is a comprehensive, one-year search advertising course from beginning to end. Starting with the basics, PPC Academy progressively explores all of the varied facets of paid search, and the tactics needed to succeed and become an advanced paid search marketer. PPC Academy [...]
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Why You Should Attend SMX West 2010: A Personal Preview, From Danny Sullivan
In less than two months, Search Engine Land’s SMX West search marketing conference will happen from March 2-4 in California. Anyone who is even remotely connected to gaining visitors, customers and driving sales should be attending. Experienced search marketer? Newbie? Web developer? Designer? Involved in public relations? Traditional marketer? There’s good stuff for all these [...]
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The CMO Club Lets You In On Their Social Media Thinking
It is often pointed out that the disconnect from those in the social media trenches to those in the C-level corner offices is significant and often damaging to the marketing efforts of many companies. While it can be fun to generalize and then make those at the top of the marketing food chain the culprits in the “Great Social Media Under-utilization Caper” it is starting to become much less accurate.
One way to see that CMO’s are taking a real interest in social media and user generated media as part of their overall marketing efforts is to see the results of a recent study done by the CMO Club. That’s right. CMO’s hang out in a club while you slave away at your community building efforts. It’s all cigars and mahogany furniture around the fireplace for the CMO set. Just kidding. In fact, The CMO Club and Bazaarvoice surveyed 133 active CMO’s to get their real world take on social media. Here’s how the respondents were broken out
Of these, 42% focus on business-to-consumer marketing, 41% focus on business-to-business marketing, and 17% market to both consumers and businesses.
Leading participating industries include software/hardware (17%), finance/insurance (9%), travel/hospitality (9%), media/publishing (9%), consumer goods (8%), and retail (7.5%), among others. Annual revenues ranged from $6 to $50 million (25%), $51 to $999 million (42%), and over $1 billion (23%).
So what did they find? This chart is pretty telling as they attack the three letters that keep most CMO’s up at night: ROI.
ROI is certainly the Holy Grail of the C-suite with regard to every facet of marketing. What makes it difficult for social media is that there are not real clearly defined measurements or metrics that create a line to what is termed social commerce.
Whether you are a C-level marketer or a day-to-day social media practitioner what are your thoughts on measurement in the social media space? What do you use for tools? Where are you having success and where are you having trouble?
Feel free to download a white paper synopsis of some of the findings of the survey. Maybe the more that C-level marketers and the ‘rank and file’ of marketing work together there can be more advancement in this emerging field. Is that a reality at your work or is that just a fantasy?
Supporting A Global Brand Campaign With Paid Search, Part 3
If you’ve been around me you’ve probably heard me say this, but it bears repeating: As soon as you, the marketer, pay for a search click, someone will want to know what you got for it.
This means that you will need effective ways to both optimize and report out results on your campaign. [...]
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