She’s connected, empowered, confident and tech savvy.
I had the pleasure of serving on an expert panel with four very impressive marketers at M2Moms®, the Marketing to Moms Conference in New York City last week. Moderated by Jen Shap, agency business development lead for Google, each of us pinpointed an element of building trust with millennial moms that is resonating positively in our daily work.
Hansa Bhargava, M.D. is the senior medical director at WebMD. She is a practicing pediatrician, so I asked why she makes time for the WebMD gig. Hansa replied that she sees the WebMD platform as a bigger opportunity to reach more moms and make a bigger difference. How is she doing that? Her role is to ensure the accuracy and credibility of pediatric content. WebMD is the number one site for millennial moms, and since approximately 80% of moms search the internet for information related to child healthcare, it’s critical that sites like WebMD deliver credible content to build trust.
Hillary Murdock, group planning director for Chicago-based digital agency VML, talked about trust as it relates to brands and their relationship with consumers. Hillary conveyed the importance of brands being a “magnet, not a mirror.” She shared that building consumer trust is all about utilizing data to bring authenticity to your strategy versus trying to “mirror” other brands or guessing at what millennial moms want to see and hear. Great advice, Hillary.
Grady Edelstein is the head of brand partnerships for a cool new app called Tinybeans. The app is an online baby journal that grows with your family, keeps all your memories in one place and allows the sharing and printing of photos. Since 60% of millennial moms share photos or video online daily (source: babycenterbrandlabs.com,) and are looking for ways to simplify and organize their lives, Tinybeans is building trust by providing a secure platform that protects the privacy of their families and saves them valuable time. And when the young mother trusts, she has an inner circle of about 24 other moms (source: KRC Research) with whom she shares information. Millennial moms value life management assistance.
All eyes were on Melissa Cheng, the new executive director of media for Toys ‘R Us. Cheng focused on the magic of play and how Toys ‘R Us must merge the in-store experience with a heightened digital experience. Since millennial moms wield $1.3 trillion in buying power and spend an average of 4.3 hours online per day (source: babycenter.com), Toys ‘R Us will build trust by creating magnetic digital experiences that capture her where she is — on her device.
And then there was me. In our agency, there is a trust shift brewing, and influencer marketing is “the new black.” In fact, 2016 was declared “The Year of the Influencer” by many media outlets (simply Google it). Why are social media influencers all the rage with millennial moms? First off, they’re trusted 7 times more than celebrities with authenticity cited as the main reason (source: digitaldailynews.com). Influencer campaigns can deliver a high level of audience reach, user engagement and website traffic for a fraction of the cost of traditional online campaigns.
Millennial Mom. She’s complex. She’s a boss. She spends significantly more time with her children than previous generations.
If your company or organization needs help attracting millennial moms, drop me a line at [email protected]