On Thursday, July 22, from 6:30 - 9 p.m. in Palo Alto, I will be speaking to a group of women entrepreneurs at an event sponsored by Savor The Success. The title of my talk is The $2.1 trillion question: Is your brand mom-ready?

Some of the things I'm planning to discuss include:

* Why 73% of moms feel advertisers don’t understand them
* Persistent myths that lead brands away from moms
* 5 musts for connecting with mothers
* The ultimate 3-word question to gauge your company’s mom-friendliness
* How to spot brands that “get it” and those that don’t
* What’s next with this market

I'm hoping some of you will join us, even if you're not a woman and even if you don't consider yourself an entrepreneur. Anyone who is a mom marketer will take away something they didn't know. I promise. Feel free to forward event details to anyone you think could benefit.

More details and ticket sales can be found here.

Labels: event, mom marketing, trends

Please leave your thoughts and opinions in the comments section below, even if -- no, especially if -- you don't agree with what I've written.

A new company is launching here in the Bay Area called Task Rabbit. Their tagline is: Life is busy. We can help.

Here, some copy from their home page:

Stuff To Do?
Let a Runner do it for you.

Try us for Goodwill drop-offs, IKEA furniture assembly, airport rides, grocery runs, and tons more. You name it, we do it.

Oh, my. This is like catnip to busy moms like me. Yes, I've got stuff to do. Lists and lists of it.

Apparently, a perfect storm is brewing, with time-pressed folks like me at one end of the spectrum and record numbers of unemployed folks at the other. Services like Task Rabbit, DoMyStuff and TaskUs are becoming match-makers between these perfectly suited groups. Even Craigslist is getting in on the action; a search in the "Domestic Gigs" section yielded 100 pages of results here in the Bay Area.

Different companies are cornering specific markets, with some aiming their services to a senior's needs, and others offering concierge-style services to companies. So far I don't see anyone specific to the mom market...yet. This is prime white space. Imagine a service where everyone -- the errand off-loaders and the errand-doers -- are moms. Kind of a sisterhood of the traveling dry cleaning.

The founder of Task Rabbit, Leah Busque says she expected most of her runners would be students, but was surprised to find a range of folks -- moms included -- showing up for service.

“It’s really this slice of the community. We have stay-at-home moms who are at Target every day anyway, and we have retired college professors who like to get out and be active, and we have professionals who want to supplement their income on the weekends.”

Labels: errand service

Please leave your thoughts and opinions in the comments section below, even if -- no, especially if -- you don't agree with what I've written.

There are lots of reasons why a mom might leave your site before buying. Sure, some of them center around your offerings -- and I could write a book on that topic alone.

But sometimes her departure is less a concern and more of a consequence, due to:

- phone interruption
- boss interruption
- kid interruption
- doorbell interruption
- credit card not handy
- laptop battery running out
- urgent bathroom need

What's great about the Web today is that you don't have to take no for an answer. Second chances abound for smart web marketers.

Here are a few tools to use to your advantage:

- Pop-Up Ads: we created an "abandon" pop-up ad for one Maternal Instinct client, offering the consumer a free trial of the product they were last viewing. Almost 30% of the viewers accepted the trial, raising conversion significantly. The headline was straightforward: "Not ready to sign up yet? Take a free 30-day trial."

- Email Coupons: Sweetening the pot is a proven way to recapture customers, especially those who have abandoned a filled shopping cart. Because abandoned carts are often due to frustrations with the order process, a short message of concern about your service does wonders.

- Retargeting Banners: Now this is brilliant. Imagine a potential customer leaves your site. But you have cleverly dropped a simple piece of code onto your site that allows you to serve ads up to that prospect as she navigates elsewhere online. Seeing an ad for a product she's just been evaluating feels a bit like kismet: like you were meant to connect. I recently had the pleasure of attending an event where ReTargeter President Arjun Dev Arora spoke about this revolutionary technology and I was wowed.

- Pick up the Phone: Not every company can afford to do this (or has captured a prospect's phone number). But if you can, call. Just this week I received a call from a representative of a Web service I began to order but didn't complete. Just as described above, my failure to complete was completely circumstantial. That one phone call got me back on track and scored points with me about the company's service model.

Lastly, and this goes without saying, always give a consumer an opportunity to save what she's doing on your site to revisit later. Whether she's creating an online profile, ordering a product, setting up a registry -- have a persistent "Save for Later" button throughout the path.

Labels: coupons, lost sales, retargeting

Please leave your thoughts and opinions in the comments section below, even if -- no, especially if -- you don't agree with what I've written.

Ad Age has a white paper in the June 7 issue definitely worth getting your hands on. It's called The Reality of the Working Woman: Her Impact on the Female Target Beyond Consumption.

Phew. That's a mouthful. But get past the title because it's a brainful, too.

Key takeaway stats:

- Working women average 4.9 days/week of work, prepare dinner 3.5 nights a week, vacation 2.5 weeks/year, watch an average of 2 hours and 12 minutes of TV/day (really?!), spend 2 hours a day on the Internet and 84 minutes on the phone.

- The stay-at-home mom is found in only one in five households today.

- Almost 65% of working women, across all three generations, said they would rather stay home with their families full-time if it were financially possible.

- Working women tackle 72 minutes of chores daily, compared to 54 minutes of working men.

- Since 1987, the number of women-owned businesses in the U.S. has doubled, while revenues have grown five-fold.

- Single women now make up 27% of all households in the U.S. due to later marriage, mid-life divorce, and outliving spouses in senior years.

Key takeaway quotes:

We haven't really changed the image of women since the '50s. Women are either portrayed as moms or sex kittens, and when you do see a professional woman, it's the cliche mom with a briefcase and baby. It's a lot more complex than that...I just don't think enough woen are taking the creative reins.

- Sandy Sabean, Chief Creative Officer at Womenkind

Demographics are no longer the key way to sell things anymore. My daughter, who is 14, wears the same clothes and makeup as I do. When I grew up, you wouldn't touch your mother's closet. Things were flat demographically. It's harder in some ways, but more interesting.

- Lesley Jane Seymour, Editor-in-Chief of More magazine

I would imagine that the female creative directors who are working their butts off and know what it means to be the breadwinner have a real opportunity to tell the real story of working women. All the other imagery of women we see is boring or dated or limiting. It just doesn't seem to be getting to the drawing table, even though with working women, there is so much material there.

- Mary Lou Quinlan, Founder of Just Ask a Woman

If you read nothing else, be sure to study page 26 of the white paper, where "Action Steps for Marketers" are called out. These nine musts are great marching orders for all of us:

- Think of your product as a service
- Aside from the immediate product benefit, offer more
- Give them permission to delegate
- Channel their humility into fearless financial decisions
- The workplace might be the best place to start a conversation
- Don't be afraid to be funny about a working woman's reality
- Don't just reflect their reality; make it better
- Create modern archetypes
- Don't distinguish women as 'working'

Labels: working women

Please leave your thoughts and opinions in the comments section below, even if -- no, especially if -- you don't agree with what I've written.

Last week, Old Navy sent out an email with the subject line: Mystery Offer: You Could Save Up To 50%!

Did I open it?

You betcha.

To discover my secret offer, I was instructed to enter my code during checkout to learn if I won a 15%, 20%, 40% or even 50% discount on my purchase.

Now I confess I didn't actually follow through, largely because the email lost priority in a weekend dominated by two Little League Memorial Weekend tournaments.

But I woulda if I coulda.

I know because every year I practically crawl out of my skin when the waiter hands me our 'Don't Open It' Thank You Card at California Pizza Kitchen. The card teases me with its proclamation that I have definitely won something, from a free appetizer to $50 or more off my meal. The little card further works its magic with these instructions: Whatever you do, do NOT open this or whatever you’ve won is null and void! A manager has to open this for you when you return.

I am transformed instantly from a mom paying the dinner bill to Charlie Bucket, possibly holding the last of Wonka's golden tickets in my hot little hands.

Now imagine how kids feel when they encounter the Hot Wheels mystery car, shown here. Unlike the fleet of other Hot Wheels cars hanging beside it -- fully viewable in plastic -- this vehicle is hidden inside black packaging. Can't you just feel the insatiable need to know turning into the need to have?

Apparently there's a psychological force at work here. Random rewards are more motivating to consumers than constant rewards. And withholding specific information -- instead of giving it all away -- is a powerful incentive, stimulating our brain's "information gap" zone.

Remember how many contestants on the Price is Right traded known prizes for the possible treasure behind Door Number 2? People will walk away from a brand new washer and dryer for the slim chance to win a car. That's how powerful this pull is.

So how can you use mystery to motivate mom consumers?

- Make her aware of something she doesn't know. Give her a quest to find out the answer. It might be a poll, a short video she watches, or the answer in exchange for her email address.

- Bait her with visuals. Images that suggest mystery are just as motivating (if not more) than text.

- Get her kids involved. Center your unknown around something playful or kid-centric, so she enlists the help of her in-house "lifelines."

- Relish the reveal. Move your prospect farther down the purchasing pipeline to get to the point of discovery. Dell does this with its mystery coupons. Once you've customized a laptop to determine what % savings your coupon entitles you to, you're far more likely to purchase.

- Make it viral. If it's a trivia question, let her challenge a friend with the same question. If it's a quiz, let her post her score on social networks.

What mystery offers have worked their magic on you?

Labels: coupons, mystery

Please leave your thoughts and opinions in the comments section below, even if -- no, especially if -- you don't agree with what I've written.