Marketing to Mommies

I’ll start off by saying that this post is prompted by my personal experience. I’m currently 6 months pregnant, and, as a result, have had a whole slew of new advertisements, flyers, coupons, come my way. It’s almost unbelievable the amount competition for my dollar.

But perhaps you didn’t know that marketing to mommies is a big deal and a big business. The new parent dollar is a coveted one, and with good reason: research has shown the last months before a baby is born, brand loyalty is less, well, loyal. Parents may choose a different laundry detergent, toothpaste, dish soap, etc. to better meet the needs of their new lifestyle. This period of time, consumers are much more flexible about their spending than they are at any other point in time.

But even before the big announcement is made, many retailers already know when you or your loved one is expecting. A Forbes journalist famously reported a story about a man who, after his teenage daughter was inundated with marketing material from big box retailer Target, stormed into his local store and demanded that it stop. There was no way in the world his daughter, who was still in high school, was pregnant and furthermore, it was offensive that the company should be sending such material to a young woman.

It turned out that one of them was wrong, and it wasn’t Target.

But how did Target know that the girl was pregnant when her father didn’t even know?

The answer is data mining. Target (and undoubtedly countless other retailers) collect data on its shoppers. There are evidently algorithms that can predict pregnancy based on a shopper’s unique purchasing history — even if none of those products are specifically maternity or baby-related.

And if Target can get you during this brand loyalty vulnerable time, well, the benefits for them are two -fold. Target knows that if it can get you to make baby or maternity purchases while you’re pregnant or when you have a newborn, you’re more likely to buy other things there too out of the sake of convenience.

While dads are part of this equation too, moms are considered the more valuable prize. According to one study, the mother-figure in a household makes up to 85 percent of purchasing decisions for the family so marketers seek ways to speak directly to them.

According to information released by Instagram earlier this week, one out of every four women over the age of 18 on the social media platform is a mother. The company also found that half of all of the mothers who use Instagram follow businesses.

This data ought to give any marketing student pause.

That’s a free (or relatively inexpensive) way to talk directly to moms, who control the vast majority of spending in the household. So, if you lack the fancy statisticians and algorhythmic juju, but still want to talk to moms…Instagram is probably a good medium.

And if you’re wondering about our Target dad (now, presumably, a grandfather), he did apologize to the company.