Mother’s Day is May 13th, and millions of kids, dads, and brands will try to bring just the right note to honor the moms in their lives – or audience. For dads and kids, appealing to moms’ sentimental side is a smart move. For brands, social sentiment is the key.
What Do Moms Want?
Marketing to moms isn’t limited to Mother’s Day – in fact, the holiday is more about marketing to the people who love their moms/grandmas/etc. But whether you want to sell to moms, or those buying gifts for moms, you’ve got to know what moms want.
To discern that you’ve got to understand how moms see themselves. Let’s use NetBase Pro to find out how to make sure it’s more than the thought that counts.
A quick search on the terms “mom” and “#mom” – with filters set to U.S. and English – gives us a good starting point via Attributes under Sentiment Drivers:
Clicking on various green – or positive – terms reveals the most popular posts for each term, leading us to hashtag gold on Instagram:
These are borne out in the Hashtags tab under Popular Items as well:
Instagram is clearly a popular channel for moms to share lifestyle tidbits, tagging most often with #MomsOfInstagram and #MomLife.
But looking at the rest of the Hashtag cloud we see a lot of info about how moms self-identify: #mompreneur, #momswithcameras, #mommyblogger, #momboss, #motherhoodrising, and #fitmom to list but a few.
To get to know moms better you need to look at each of these hashtags for further details about each mom identity. That’s where you’ll find inspiration for reaching the various moms your brand wishes to target.
This is how Britvic launched their Fruit Shoot brand in the U.S. – by identifying the segment of moms they wanted to engage, and focusing on what mattered to them in their campaign. And it worked.
Just remember to look at negative social sentiment as well – so you don’t inadvertently offer up things moms don’t want.
Look Beyond the Obvious
Social analytics is like an onion – the more you peel back the layers, you deeper you get into the juicy center of things. And that’s where you want to be – beyond what’s obvious.
For example, you might assume a search on moms would only relate to females… and you’d be wrong.
The term “dads” figures pretty prominently in the Terms under Popular Items – as well as in our hashtag word cloud above:
Smart brands recognize modern family dynamics mean dads are frequently the stay-at-home parent, or just as involved as moms.
Language limited to moms alone is a turn-off to stay-at-home, single, and gay dads – all of whom buy things like laundry detergent, groceries, etc. Household management is not all about mom anymore.
And What of Mother’s Day Itself?
Changing the search terms to “Mothers Day” and “#MothersDay” we see sentiment that’s positive at 96%. Brands must be careful to embrace that sentiment and not destroy it with unintentional missteps.
Popular Media reveals a lot of engagement and love for singer/speaker/activist Kierra Sheard, and her annual Mother’s Day dinner. Brands and businesses in the Charlotte, North Carolina area – where the dinner is happening – could look for ways to leverage Sheard as an influencer.
Also important, a clear picture of your competition. Note the Terms cloud below features both #handmade and @etsy fairly prominently. If you’re a retail brand, you’ve got more to worry about than just the shop across from you at the mall.
Mother’s Day may only come once a year, but moms shop and wield influence every single day. The holiday is a great window for learning what they like when they treat themselves, but the more you know about their daily lives, the easier it is to spot those kinds of trends.
Put your social sentiment tools to work so you’ll know how to talk to the moms in your audience no matter what the occasion.
Want to see NetBase Pro in action? Reach out and we’ll give you a customized demo!
RELATED ARTICLES
- 3 Reasons You Can’t Miss NetBase LIVE London!
- Arby’s Uses Social Media Monitoring To Satisfy A New Audience Segment
