Marketing to Parents

Easily reach a target audience of parents
By Shannon Tani With the right product, marketing to parents can be a breeze. Parents represent a very large demographic and many have similar spending patterns. If you have a product that is suitable for parents or kids, it's best to target your advertising to parents.
 

When creating a marketing campaign to parents, be sure to think about:

1. Who your real target audience is. Parents purchase things for both themselves and for their children. If you have a children's product that you are advertising to parents, make sure you stress what your product can do for their children. Most parents tend to purchase educational products.

2. The value of your reputation. Word of mouth advertising works particularly well when you target an advertising campaign to parents. Parents listen to other parents, which influences their decision. Negative word of mouth can be harmful.

3. The importance of cost. Many parents consider cost to be a main factor in their decision making process. If possible, create a product that is low cost or has a significant amount of value compared to the cost of the product.

Find resources for your advertising campaign to parents

Thinking about the types of problems that your product solves will help you to determine where you should advertise. Take advantage of online resources, hard print resources, and other solutions when marketing to parents.
Try: Reach thousands of parents when you place your ad on the popular website Parenting.com. If you're interested in mail order to reach your parental audience, investigate resources from the National Mail Order Association. Join the organization or buy one of the many marketing publications there.

Get specific when marketing to parents

Being able to market to a target audience of parents, by gender or ethnicity, will benefit your next marketing campaign to parents.
Try: Target women by race with The 85% Niche. Download a report with three years of research results about Dads to gain insight when marketing at MindBranch.

Hire a consultant to help you with advertising to parents

If you don't have much experience with advertising and marketing, it may be best to leave things up to the professionals. An advertising consultant can help make your product a success.
Try: Check out Lucid Marketing, which has worked with such clients as AOL and eHarmony. Marketing to Moms provide a myriad of marketing resources and services.

• Giving out free samples is an excellent way of marketing to parents. It allows them to try your product and if they like it, they will be willing to spend money on it.