A few loose ends, and some follow-up thoughts, on our latest Potty Posting.
First things first: we admit that we conflated women and moms because of space limitations in the posting. (After all, we couldn’t fit in all our “little Billy” jokes if we had to spend valuable real estate qualifying every single statement.) We’ll be the first to call ourselves out on this, and to warn marketers to avoid that mistake, especially since the two groups have very distinct online habits. A couple of attention grabbing points from a recent study:
- Mothers are more likely to use product samples offered online (47% versus 38%) and use online coupons (40% versus 34%) than women without children
- Women with children are more likely to use Facebook, MySpace and Twitter than average adults (60.3% vs 50.2%, 42.4% vs. 34.4%, and 16.5% vs. 15.0%, respectively).
Does this seem counterintuitive, since moms presumably have less time than women without kids? Only if you’re assuming that women go online just to screw around. Sure, they do sometimes, but moms are also seeking answers to a much wider range of questions, ranging from parenting issues to children’s health to financial tips for families.
Those moms provide plenty of answers, too. Earlier this year, Roper found that 88% of new moms recommended a product or service to family members (+9 points from the total public). Why this matters to marketers: sometimes, you can connect with moms simply by providing a forum to hold these discussions. That’s the idea behind Mom’s Homeroom (created by MSN and Kellogg’s Frosted Mini-Wheats), which offers advice on parenting issues from schooling to nutrition, with educational experts and moms contributing their insights and experiences. Brands are figuring out how to tap the expertise of the “mommy blogger” crowd, too. Crayola commissioned a popular mommy blogger to lead a weekly blog panel on back-to-school topics, while Johnson & Johnson reorganized their BabyCenter.com site to place influential mommy bloggers alongside their official editorial content.
