It’s easy to get focused on speaking directly to your target audience and forget the relationships that can impact their buying choices. If you’re trying to reach married men, you market to married men. If you’re trying to reach teens, you market to teens.
But there’s someone else you might want to talk to, too: wives and moms.
Even if they aren’t your target audience, these women can influence your audience to buy—or not buy—your product or services, and if you win these household influencers over, they may even make the purchase on behalf of your intended audience.
Whoever you’re trying to reach, here are some reasons to consider marketing to the women in their lives.
Consider how buying decisions are made
Every married couple has their own rules dictating how they spend money . Maybe they have to consult each other for a purchase over $30, or maybe it’s $100. It’s important to remember that each home has its own ecosystem that decides how purchases are made.
Will buying your product or service mean they’d have to postpone another major purchase? Or that they’ll be gone for days at a time (like for a conference)? It’s critical to think about how an investment in your product might impact a home’s delicate ecosystem. This will tell you who you may need to win over.
When you should reach wives
As we’ve said, higher priced products or services often require a sign off from both people in a marriage. If your marketing only speaks to married men, it places the load on them to communicate with their wives why it’s important to spend this money. And chances are that they’re not going to market your product to their wives as well as you could.
But sometimes marketing to a spouse is the key to selling products with a lower price point. Most men can purchase deodorant without their wife’s input, but when Old Spice hit on the “the man your man could smell like” promotion, they made wives and girlfriends the influencers of a product intended entirely for men—and it worked.
When you should reach moms
Kids probably have the least autonomy of just about any target audience. Depending on the age you’re trying to reach, they may not have any money of their own or any ability to make big choices without parental oversight.
In other words, their moms need to be fully on board. While it might be easy to demonstrate the value of your product or service to kids, they’re not ultimately the ones you need to convince. (Of course, kids can be very persistent and put a lot of pressure on moms, but your audience still ultimately has to persuade their mom to approve the purchase.)
Whether your target audience is married men or children, marketing directly to household influencers is a great way to warm up moms and wives for these important conversations and turn them into an ally, rather than a potential adversary.
(Oh, and don’t forget about grandmas.)
They can introduce your brand to your audience
When you market to influencers, you’re not just trying to support members of your target audience who already know about you. You’re potentially introducing your brand to untapped members of that audience.
As wives and moms discover the value of your product or service, they might become your product’s strongest advocates. They might encourage your target audience by sharing a free resource, pointing them to a drip campaign (like an email course), convincing them to purchase, or even buying your product outright.
Sometimes marketing requires more than one approach
Maybe you’ve been struggling to find success with your target audience. That could be an indicator that your messaging needs some work. But it might also be a sign that there’s a household influencer behind the scenes who needs to be brought on board.
When wives or moms have a stake in the decision, it’s important to consider how you can win them over—so your target audience doesn’t have to.
That doesn’t mean you should abandon your efforts to reach your target audience! But it might be time for you to create some content (maybe even a nurture campaign) that’s geared towards the women in your space.
