Sigmund Freud famously asked, "What does a woman want?" For women with school-age kids, the answer is simple: more time. What with holding down a job, maintaining a home, keeping the family fed and clothed, and still managing to eke out a few minutes of downtime, America's soccer moms are world champions of multi-tasking.
Obviously, nothing can give these busy, goal-oriented women a 28-hour day -- but the internet is helping them pack more into the 24 hours they have. More than 15.5 million women aged 25 to 44 with children use the internet at home -- and based on the demographic's favorite websites as ranked by comScore Media Metrix, they use it for just about everything.
Net-savvy moms shop online at mid-range retailers like Target, Sears and JC Penney as well as discounters like Overstock.com and CoolSavings.com -- then keep a close eye on the UPS site to see when their packages will arrive. They buy toys from Mattel and Walt Disney. They pay their bills at CapitalOne.com, get tax information at IRS.gov and save trips to the video store by renting from Netflix. When the kids aren't feeling well, they look up symptoms on WebMD before deciding whether to call the pediatrician. And when they have five minutes to spare, they check in with other moms on iVillage and womensforum.com for a convenient shot of support and community. Best of all, they can do these things when they have time -- which usually isn't during normal business hours.
"The time pressure on mothers is extreme, and from a marketing standpoint, you have to understand you're not going to get half an hour with them," explains Debra Aho Williamson, senior analyst at eMarketer and author of a new report, "Women Online in the U.S." "You have to be relevant, be useful, be cognizant that you have to fill a need or provide something important they can't get elsewhere. Otherwise, they may not be interested."
They key to grabbing their attention is to focus on solving their problems, says Peter Naylor, senior VP of advertising for iVillage, the 30th most popular online destination and the number one women-oriented website. The site's top five advertising categories: consumer packaged goods, from cosmetics to cereal; condition-specific pharmaceuticals; movies and TV shows; automotive and fundraisers.
When Naylor talks to advertisers, he reminds them that most of the site's visitors are "moms on a mission" who have a pressing question -- how to handle a misbehaving child, what to serve for dinner tonight -- and want a fast answer. A product or brand message is more subtle and less heavy-handed when it's presented in a relevant context. "We eliminated pop-up windows because a woman on a mission doesn't want to be interrupted," he points out. "But if you're trying to find out whether you're allergic to something in your home [and] Claritin is there with a sponsored quiz to help you figure it out, it aligns with the reason she's on the site."
Other ways to score with the soccer mom set:
DO reach them where they're gathering information and making decisions. Women with children aren't just visiting "female lifestyle" and parenting sites. They're planning vacations, comparison-shopping, looking up movie times, following the stock market -- and as a result, they make up a larger portion of your audience than you may realize.
DO provide them with a shopping experience at least as good as anything they can find in a store. After all, one of the reasons they're shopping online is to avoid one more trip in the car. One example Williamson likes: home improvement store Loew's put together a section of its website with information about how to set up an outdoor space, where to find equipment, how to assemble lawn furniture and other useful data. "It was so much more useful than a bunch of photos of lounge chairs and garden tools, a great example of taking the way women shop offline and recreating it online," she says.
DO realize that up to 40 percent of online gamers are women -- and consider creating a brand-related game that gets your audience to interact with your product. For example, Carat Interactive created an ad for Kodak on the MSN Olympics site that allowed women to "take a picture" of a muscular gymnast and use it in demonstrations of various Kodak EasyShare Gallery features.
DO explore the possibilities of opt-in mailing lists; a November 2004 study by Lucid Marketing and BSM Media found non-spam email was the best way to reach moms online. It influenced the buying decisions of 71 percent of the survey subjects, and 88 percent "sometimes" or "often" made purchases based on email they received.
DO leverage women's comfort with connection. Women with kids flock to message boards where they can find like-minded moms to compare notes and get advice. It's a natural environment for word-of-mouth viral campaigns that enhance their sense of influence and expertise.
Most of all, DO remember that there's more to your target consumers than their role as mom. "It's not enough just to say, 'Oh, you're super-hectic and you've got a couple of kids' [or put] a baby on an ad," says Steve Peace, director of communications planning for Carat Interactive. "Simplification and stereotyping turns them off completely."
Fawn Fitter is a freelance writer. Read her full bio.
