glow marketing

Reaching the cool kids…parents

August 6th, 2008

My Kids Dress Better Than Me Facebook Group

I recently started a new group on Facebook called “My Kids Dress Better Than Me“. It’s an experiment in social network marketing to create a group of like-minded funky parents looking for cool things for their kids. In just over 1 week, the group already has 60+ members (mostly from Canada), plus over 160 members have been invited to join that I didn’t invite (the members did!!). Join the group now! It’s work related…promote your product and invite your hip parent friends to join and share their finds online.

It’s been growing daily, with new members inviting friends, and then they invite friends….I also posted a social ad targeting only married Canadian females within a certain age range that had the key words “Mom” or “kids” in their profile. This narrowed the audience significantly but allowed me to focus on Facebook users that MIGHT be Moms across Canada. At this point you cannot reach Moms on Facebook  with ads but you can make educated guesses to narrow your parameters. 

After several projects using Facebook social ads, I can tell you that it is a bit tricky to create the right ad and sustain results over a period of time, but it’s highly cost effective. Industry experts may complain that the click rates are low, but given how small the ads are, it’s to be expected. You wouldn’t expect to place a tiny ad in a newspaper and expect the same response as a full page ad, so why expect the same click-throughs from Facebook social ads? 

I started this group for many reasons, some top secret at this point but I can tell you this:  

#1. So many smaller start-ups and artists are trying to market their products but have no money. This is one way I hope to help them showcase their work. Anyone can join this group and promote their product or company to funky parents, for free. I may not always be able to donate marketing expertise, so this is my little way of providing a venue.

#2. In my line of work, I come across so many exciting new products and talented artists/designers. I want to share these finds and this is one way to do it. 

#3. There are limited places to target the “cool kids parents”, creating a social network brings them together in one place, and I can now access them with messages and postings. Some of my clients may have products to test, or contests they want to promote, and this will eventually be big enough to support that.

#4. It’s authentic and broad in scope. Real people recommending great products and services. It’s believable because it’s user generated content and not a group dedicated to only one company. A broad group like this is easier for people to join without being suspicious that someone is just trying to sell them something. Since only the admin can send group messages, the members will not get bombarded with weekly messages asking them to come to an event or take part in some multilevel marketing scheme. There are no strings!

Stayed tuned on this exciting social network marketing experiment. If you have a product or service that is perfect for hip parents, please contact me to discuss how to leverage this group, or your own.

Entry Filed under: Glow: The Making Of, Idea Sharing, Marketing to Moms, Online Marketing