The most important thing to remember is that brand growth today starts with consumer conversation. Find ways to engage in dialogue with consumers and create opportunities for consumers to talk with each other. Moms, in particular, like to share, and they trust what they hear from their friends, family members and peers, so use that to your advantage. Here are a few tips to help you reach this valuable audience using word-of-mouth marketing:

1. Give them something to talk about. Encourage word-of-mouth components within your brand briefs and marketing objectives. Leverage partnerships with sites with deep audience affinity, and gain strategic insights to hone in on what's going to resonate with the audience. According to a recent Booz Allen Hamilton study, consumer insights topped the list of the most important capabilities to marketers by 2010. But don't just gather them, use them.
2. Encourage participation. Give consumers access to simple tools and applications like video and photo uploading to encourage collaboration and contribution. Make it easy for them to show their creativity and become part of the mosaic. Marketing today is becoming more about co-creating experiences with consumers than pushing messages. Arm your consumers with ways to pass along what they've heard. Think send-to-friend, IM and email.
3. Enable sharing. It's imperative to make sure your technology is in sync with the digital ecosystem, so sharing activities are not only possible, but better yet, enabled by you! Encourage virality by allowing users to post to YouTube, Facebook and other social sites. Create sharing tools so people can easily send executions through Outlook or AIM. Also, don't forget to negotiate sharing rights into your contracts up front so there aren't any last minute surprises.
4. Observe, listen and learn. Pay attention to and rely on the wisdom of crowds. Create a feedback loop and troll blogs to see how your brand, product and message resonate -- which leads us to tip No. 5…
5. Iterate. Iterate. Iterate. Make your campaign and creative flexible. Use your feedback loop to refine creative to better serve the needs of your audience.

At the end of the day, regardless of what audience you're trying to reach, the insights generated from your research are arguably the most valuable form of media today. These findings not only help shape your media and marketing plans, but they can also be extremely effective when developing creative execution, and even product decisions.

Tina Sharkey is chairman and global president of BabyCenter, the largest online resource for expectant and new parents around the world.