Moms are on Facebook, liking brand pages, and receptive to your offers under certain circumstances. You had best watch your behavior with this tough but potentially lucrative online shopping crowd. How can you reach She Who Holds the Purse Strings?
Your Mom is probably on Facebook. Mine is – she actually writes content for business Pages, so she’s probably not your average Facebook mom. I’m also a mom and you’ll find me on Facebook more often than I’d like to admit. In fact, an estimated 23 million U.S. moms with children under 18 actively use Facebook – that’s over two-thirds of moms in the country (eMarketer).
Yet these same moms don’t seem to like their position on the receiving end of direct marketing on Facebook. Ninety-three percent of mom respondents to the Mom365/Direct Marketing Association’s recent survey said they seek out digital direct offers, yet more than a quarter agreed with the statement, “Enough already. I feel like I’m being sold something every time I get on the Internet.”
This is a market that, depending on your product or service, you want to tap into without alienating them or flat out pissing them off. Sixty-four percent of these moms had purchased direct within the last year, and 25 percent do so every month. More than half of these moms became more interested in online offers after having children. Why? Ninety-two percent said having a family is expensive; notably, 83 percent want to be rewarded for brand loyalty.
I’m going to make some huge generalizations here, but… most moms are pretty busy. Don’t waste our time. We want deals. We want to chat with friends, not with a brand. We want to save money. We don’t want to have to sift through a ton of useless information to save a penny. We’re a give-me-what-I-want-now-and-maybe-go-away-please kind of crowd.
We’re in your space – 72 percent of moms like a brand on Facebook. We’re buying online and 61 percent of the moms in this study have household incomes over $50,000. Eighty-three percent are opting in to product and manufacturer emails. Sixty-one percent participate in daily deals.
Moms go to Facebook to socialize and though we may whine about the onslaught of in-your-face marketing, we’re actually pretty receptive. Here’s what your average American mom wants from her Facebook run-in with you or the company you represent:
Interestingly, many of these moms accept that some loss of privacy is a fact of life on the Internet (35 percent) and almost two-thirds appreciate offers fine-tuned to them and their purchasing.
Yes, we actually do that. Moms on Facebook have little tolerance for things they don’t like. Again, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say this could bebecause Facebook has unwittingly created the one space where Mom gets to be master of her own domain, so to speak, and created a monster in the process.
So what really ticks off Mom?
These are the cardinal sins you don’t want to commit if you plan on earning her business or retaining her loyalty:
A minority of moms (14 percent) listed their top Facebook direct marketing pet peeve as offers based on recent purchases, as they felt this violated their privacy. While this seems a small segment, an opt-out from personalization or further offers could prevent the alienation of this group.
A few verbatim comments from moms on what really sticks in their craw:
While marketers understand that Pages cannot interact with personal profiles in that way, we could proactively resolve those types of fears by making that information visible on the Welcome tab.
The results of the study seem incongruous in areas and it might seem pretty hard to please a market that seems receptive but is actually quite picky about who may contact them, how, and how often. If you have tips for marketers targeting mommies, share them in the comments!