A report was released this week in the United States by Nielsen and BabyCenter entitled 2012 American Media Mom, which has basically found that mothers are now multi-tasking, technological geniuses. Well, as a multi-tasking technological Mum, that's my take on it anyway! In all seriousness, this doesn't surprise me - the number of enquiries I get nowadays from Mums wanting a website has increased quite substantially since I first started doing this in 2006.
So what? Well, information like this is also worth considering when marketing your own business. For instance, the report says mothers spend an average of 66 hours per month online - 66 hours! And that compared to the general population, mothers are 38% more likely to own an Internet TV device, 28% more likely to use a tablet and 38% more likely to own a smartphone. At the same time, a greater percentage of mothers say that they now spend less time with live TV and radio than they did three years ago.
What does all this mean? Well, if your target market is the Mother-hood, it means a few things:
- Mothers are 58% more likely to shop via a mobile phone than the general population. So if you don't have a mobile-enabled website, you may be missing out on connecting with your audience.
- 40% of mothers go online while watching TV, and 75% try to skip through the ads. So if you've been advertising on traditional TV or radio, this alone may not be the most effective way to reach your market going forward.
- Mothers are 45% more likely than the general population to use social media. So if your business is not on Facebook and Twitter yet, you should definitely consider it.
- Mothers spend 63% more time streaming online video than the general population. So it may be worth considering YouTube as a part of your marketing plan, depending on your business type.
Very interesting report! Definitely worth a read. There's also a bunch of other statistics about how Mums are using their mobile phones for a whole range of things like price comparisons. So if you're not already considering Mums as a sizeable target market in the first place, then you should be. And if you are, then hopefully this report and my analysis will help you to clarify your own direction a bit. :-)
