Identify Your Target Audience and Focus on the Consumer

Identify Your Target Audience

This week, our team was tasked to analyze Procter & Gamble’s “Thank You, Mom” campaign in terms of its effectiveness in identifying and engaging with its target audience – mothers. Procter & Gamble (P&G) considers mothers to be one of their most important consumer bases, as they are traditionally the ones who are buying and using P&G’s household products on a daily basis. According to Marc Prichard, global chief marketing officer of P&G, the company is “in the business of helping moms,” and the “Thank You, Mom” campaign was a “global serenade” to mothers everywhere (Vega, 2012). In these ads, moms are touted as unsung heroes, helping their children grow and navigate the challenges of falling back down and getting up again – both literally and figuratively.

P&G's dedicated "Thank You, Mom" Facebook page garnered more than 500,000 likes during the campaign's peak. Today, the page has more than 800,000 likes. (Image)

By utilizing a variety of digital channels, from Youtube to Facebook to Twitter, P&G was able to effectively share its message with its target audience of mothers and those who love them the most. Hashtags like #ThankYouMom and #BecauseofMom were universally relatable and even encouraged people to reach out to their own mothers to say thanks (Mainwaring, 2014). According to a 2015 study, more than 75 percent of parents turn to social media for “parenting-related information” and “social support.” In this regard, P&G’s integration with social channels is a clear fit to reach their target audience, with nearly 81 percent of mothers using Facebook alone (Duggan, Lenhart, Lampe & Ellison, 2015, also for image below).

P&G’s campaign was a well-executed example of using social networks to target the right people through social media who are (or would become) the company’s advocates (Kerpen, 2015, p. 38).

Focus on the Consumer

How is success defined in the world of marketing and public relations? Scott (2015) discusses the disconnect that is often apparent between an organization’s goals and the marketing and PR measurements used to define success. From past experience working directly with clients at a public relations agency, this story is sometimes all too true. In today’s growing world of social marketing, we can no longer rely solely on measurements such as number of press hits or impressions to gauge success. Instead, we should focus more closely on the following metrics, as described by Pozin (2014): 

• Keeping competition out of the media
• Relationship building
• Brand building
• Reaching the right target audience
• Seeking and obtaining the right endorsements

A former client of mine launched a speaker series with the help of our agency, building every component of the event from the ground up. Our contacts asked for status reports on a regular basis that tallied the circulation numbers, impressions, and other ad measurements, and would present those hard numbers/statistics to investors as “proof” that the series was becoming a success. But what was far more important were the relationships that both our agency and the client were forming with the thought leaders that would help promote the series, and the support gained from various local organizations that helped shape the credibility of the events. Ultimately, the client focused less on developing a social presence and more on traditional metrics that, in my opinion, may have impacted the ability to most effectively reach their target audience and maximize success.


References:

Duggan, M., Lenhart, A., Lampe, C., & Ellison, N. (2015, July 16). Parents and social media. Retrieved from http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/07/16/parents-and-social-media/.

Kerpen, D. (2015). Likeable social media (2nd ed.). McGraw Hill Education.

Mainwaring, S. (2014, January 7). How P&G is leveraging the Winter Olympics to build its customer community. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/simonmainwaring/2014/01/07/how-pg-is-leveraging-the-winter-olympics-to-build-its-customer-community/#2e6bd0ae7637

Pozin, I. (2014, May 29). 5 measurements for PR ROI. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/ilyapozin/2014/05/29/5-measurements-for-pr-roi/#31d6a5d41ca2.

Scott, D. M. (2015). The new rules of marketing and PR (5th ed.). Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 

Vega, T. (2012, April 16). Mothers will get the glory in P&G’s campaign. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/17/business/media/mothers-get-the-glory-in-procter-gamble-campaign.html.