1. What are some marketing strategies that appeal to mums during back to school season?

• In store experiences that facilitate brand engagement and education. For back to school products, this can include a colour and create station, personalise your own stationary, make and take demos using product in campaign push. Similarly, for food/lunch box essentials, demos are effective and inspires the user with real life solutions to her everyday problems.

• Exceptional customer service, both online and in-store.
  • This comes down to educated, motivated in store sales representatives as well as:
  • Online customer service representatives that treat the customer personally, rather than generic responses and make the transaction and conversation easy
• Purchase reassurance as Mums want to ensure they are making the right purchasing decision, i.e. lowest price guarantee, price match, money back, delivery before school starts.
• If the product is for their child, marketing that appeals to both the parent and the child is ideal. We live in a very visual world and children are picking up aesthetics, style, design and branding at a very young age, so the product has to work well as well as look good.
• Value-add offers around this time are effective. i.e. purchase all your back-to-school essentials from us and receive a voucher for your home office needs. Similarly, upgrades/2-for-1 offers encourage add-on sales. Free downloadable guides, recipe ideas, tools and gifts to increase the value of the purchase. Given back to school is a time when spending is high and funds are low (given budgets are recovering from Christmas onslaught) mums are looking for added value to justify the spending spree.
• Facilitate mum to mum product recommendations and activate timely online reviews as an important marketing-to-mum strategy. Mums value the opinion of other mums and what they have to say about a brand. Another mum’s stamp of approval has more weight than the messages the brand is promoting directly.

2. How does the planned nature of a back to school shop affect the marketing of products in that category?

When it comes to back to school spending, Roy Morgan research reveals mums still lead the charge and make the majority of these purchases. As there are a multitude of back to school products all being promoted at the same time, brands need to finesse their strategy and leverage marketing to mum back to school opportunities to properly cut through the clutter and be able to engage and motivate her to invest in the brand.

Back to school shopping is essential and planned for, yet there are different types of customers who are buying. i.e. there’s the budget conscious shopper – they shop around for best price and plan/stock up on their purchases in advance. There’s last minute, or less proactive buyers – who will end up stocking up in the 1 destination that delivers 1 stop solutions, most likely 48 hours before school starts. Plus, there are mums who go the extra mile and look out for personalised, creative, different options that are not stock-standard, commercial lines, among other types of buyers.

It can be quite an overwhelming experience for mums during this promotional period, with so many options and messages constantly directed at her. Mums can either take control of the situation and pick and choose what messages she responds to, or more commonly, revert to what they know is a sure thing, which could be based on her experience from previous years, or what other mums in her circles are doing.

Therefore, brands will get better results if they customise their campaigns to suit the nature of the different type of buyers. Often brands concentrate solely on what they are offering, as opposed to demonstrating how they understand the buyer and the problems she is looking to solve. Pick your buyer, understand what her needs/problems are, and communicate messages that solve problems for her. Not all mums are the same and brands should avoid trying to be all things to all people, if that is not entirely accurate.

3. How can retailers more effectively market to mums?

• Train staff who are at the frontline of the sale. Are they motivated, knowledgeable, polite and proactive? You can sell the best product and leading brands, but it’s your sales staff that can turn 1 product purchase into 2.
• Beautiful display. Set up a lifestyle zone that shows what a desk looks like with all the back-to-school essentials on display. This is an ideal opportunity to upsell and cross-sell and demonstrate how the product works for real life. As part of the display, have promotions and product savings clearly on display. Make the sales process super easy and inspiring at the same time.
• Data capturing at the point of sale. If you have her mobile number or email address, email her immediately an incentive to come back to your store and purchase something else within the next month. Don’t wait for her birthday a year later or once she has accrued a certain amount of points. There are too many competitors and not enough time. Continue your relationship with her while the momentum is there.

4. What are the key concerns for shoppers in the back to school shopping window?

• Reassurance they are not overpaying.
• Pressure to buy out of necessity.
• Time it will take to fulfill requirements, i.e. how many stores do they need to go to purchase her products, will it be delivered on time?

5. What are some future trends in marketing to mums?

Online reviews and mum-to-mum recommendations both online and offline will continue to become more significant, as we see the rise of the Micro-influencers. Traditional bloggers will still continue to influence sales with their dedicated blog-sites recommending products tried and tested, but the spotlight will increase on Micro-influencers who are the everyday mums with a growing and robust online social media circle made up of her immediate friends.

These women are the first to share reviews, recommendations and latest product finds to her personal group of fans on insta and facebook who trust, respect and value her opinions, given their immediate connection to her. These are the social mums to watch.

Want to make your Back to School campaign an absolute success? Here’s a range of on-trend marketing to mum services available here. Easy ways to tap into our connections, word-of-mouth platforms and solid experience to cement and amplify your position as a market leader.

Ask us how we can introduce you to the most influential mums of Australia. That’s what we do.