How To Activate Your Mother's Day Campaign

This week at Scrunch we wanted to give a huge shout out to all of the wonderful Moms out there - whether it is the Moms (and Mums) we work with on influencer campaigns, the Moms in our team at Scrunch HQ and each of our own Moms.

Mother's Day is no doubt a special day for families and everyone wants to pull out all of the stops for the special women in their life. So for brands and businesses, Mother's Day is an exciting opportunity to take advantage of the holiday and make sure your brand,

business, product or service is top of mind when it comes to finding something special for Mom to celebrate and show thanks. It's a tremendous opportunity for brands to increase sales and brand awareness, but it is also a time for big competition.

As a brand

how are you going to leverage the Mother's Day holiday spirit and stand out amongst all of the other brands striving to create an unforgettable Mother's Day experience? How can you add an additional element to your influencer marketing campaigns to really ramp up sales and exposure around this calendar event?

This article will give you effective and thoughtful ideas on how to activate your 2018 Mother's Day campaign so that your brand will shine in the lead up to May 13th. Each of these ideas can be amplified with an influencer marketing campaign to ensure that your target audience know more about your brand and business when it comes to spoiling Mom this Mother's Day,

Genuine Emotion

If you only remember one thing from this article, remember when planning your Mother's Day campaign, to keep it genuinely emotional. Customers will not participate in what you are offering this Mother's Day if they feel what you are doing is devoid of authenticity or a hard sales message. If the customer's love and appreciation for the Mother they are celebrating is real, then they will want nothing short of meaningful and real experiences and will invest in brands that are authentically celebrating Mothers, not those who are merely in it for the sales.

Create a Mother's Day Package

In 2017, Americans spent 5 billion dollars on jewelry and 1.6 billion dollars on spa and pampering services for Mother's Day. Creating a Mother's Day package is the perfect opportunity for jewelry and spa-service brands, as well as any other brands that appeal to Moms, to ignite their Mother's Day campaigns by creating a "package" for consumers to purchase and gift to their Mom. This style of campaign lends itself nicely to brands in the beauty, fashion, food, and lifestyle industry, and it is a great way to generate sales at this time of year.

Packages also work well when consumers believe they are getting great value, so whether it is a package that includes some free products, or an experience with additional perks thrown in.

Another spin on this strategy is to create a package that is something that the Mother and daughter can enjoy together or share, such as a high tea for two, or Mom and daughter spa treatment package.

Target new Moms

I don't know what it feels like to be a Mom, so I asked my Mom, and she said, “being a first-time Mom was a combination of being overwhelmed by exquisite joy and absolute terror!” For this reason and many more, it is important for brands to show some extra love to the first-time Moms, and target products and services to this demographic.

An excellent way for you to do this is by offering new Mothers exclusive discounts/deals, online discount codes, or even products exclusively targeted for the new Mommies. You can target the new Moms themselves by offering them discounts to celebrate their first Mother's Day, or you can target people (husbands, besties, colleagues and family members) who have a new Mom in their life and encourage them to treat those who are celebrating their first Mother's Day.

Michael Hill, a jewelry brand, went above and beyond for first-time Moms and launched a new jewelry collection strictly targeted for new Moms. Amongst many other pieces, it features a Mother and child heart pendant and ring. It is this kind of consideration and sentiment that will make your brand stand out this Mother's Day. As a brand, it shows that you genuinely care about this holiday and how important it is to consumers.

Creating Mother's Day inspired products is just a good idea in general

Pandora is one of many brands who know how to create Mother's Day inspired products. Every year Pandora releases new charms for the holiday, and I am sure this year is no different! By creating Mother's Day inspired products, you are letting your audience know you really value this holiday and know that Moms deserve something special, not just something from the current range. It is also an opportunity to introduce new products and create hype around a particular product or range of products.

Encourage people to shop for all of their Mommy friends

This tip is an easy one! Many of us have plenty of Mommies in our lives that are not our Mothers. On Mother's Day all Moms should be celebrated, so encouraging your customers to treat their Mommy friends is a great way to spread the Mom love and increase your sales at the same time.

Personalization for Moms

A favorite Mother's Day special is the personalization, engraving or monogramming of products - it's a huge trend right now in fashion and a range of other industries. You can personalize everything from your phone case to your notebook and even a jacket.

Personalization options is a great way to make some of your standard products more Mother's Day appropriate, or just a little bit special. Moms are used to receiving jewelry for all different occasions, but a necklace with an engraved pendant or the letters of each child's name, now that's special.

Burberry is famous for their monogramming service, and last year they inspired people to take advantage of their service for Mother's Day with "To Mum with love," prompting people to monogram specific gifts that they believed would be perfect for Mother's Day. A bottle of "My Burberry" with my Mom's initials monogrammed sounds like the perfect gift! If you are a brand that provides these types of services, you can use it as the centerpiece for your Mother's Day marketing campaign and have influencers promote this point of difference to their audience. It's a great way to stand out from the crowd!

Drive a community message rather than a sales approach

If you have a large social media following, you should use it to your advantage this Mother' Day! Social media is an effective channel for you as a brand to connect with your customers. In 2015, Macy's launched "Macy's loves moms," and encouraged their followers and customers to post memories of their Moms using the hashtag, #Macyslovesmoms. Rather than focusing on selling Mother's Days gifts, Macy's concentrated on organically engaging with their customers, and even spent time personally responding to people's photos.

This campaign brought Mothers and their children together during the holiday as people reminisced about their favorite moments with their Mommies. Macy's even provided people with an incentive to post - for every post with the campaign hashtag, Macy donated three dollars to improving women's lives. Here, Macy's is not only being a sensational role model for other brands but also boosted brand loyalty and sentiment towards the brand, as well as general awareness by connecting the brand name to the movement they were promoting. This is something that you can replicate with your own campaign hashtag.

This type of campaign can be supported by an influencer activation to encourage more people to join the conversation and use the hashtag in the lead up to, and during, Mother's Day.

Create meaningful content to inspire Moms

In the digital age, content really is king. Content marketing generates three times as many leads than traditional marketing strategies and costs a fraction of the price. It should be a no-brainer!

As a brand, you can start by highlighting the Moms who work for your company. Snap a few Instagram stories or write a blog post, interviewing the Moms in your space. This is authentic and raw; two things that Mom's love. I don't know about you, but my Mom is a no BS kind of lady, but she enjoys reading about real, inspirational women. You can also enlist Mommy bloggers to produce content to highlight your campaign, or get them to share your content with their community.

Lastly, make it easy for customers to order on time

Finally, make it really easy for customers to purchase your products and/or services for Mother's Day, and set expectations with them for when the product will arrive, and when the deadline is to order for a guaranteed Mother's Day delivery. You could incorporate a countdown timer on your website like UGG Australia to let people know when they need to order by - this strategy creates a sense of urgency. You could also offer free shipping, or free express shipping on Mother's Day orders, to ensure last-minute shoppers can get their gift on time. If you make it easy for people to shop with you this Mother's Day, more people will!

These are our top tips for brands to activate their marketing campaigns this Mother's Day! When you implement a campaign, don't forget you need to amplify it, which is when influencer marketing comes in to play. Create your campaign, and then get influencers to spread the word to make sure everyone knows about your Mother's Day offering.

Finally, a big Happy Mother's Day to all of the Moms we work with - our team, our clients, influencers and beyond!