Mother's Day Marketing

May 07, 2011 On "Mother's Day Eve", which is what it should be called since Mother's Day is the fourth largest spending holiday*, I am wrapping up several retail based Mother's Day marketing campaigns. And once again, the marketing strategy was based on understanding the target consumers. I am likely to be accused of stereotyping but the marketing results I am about to report support this statement: Mother's Day is about men in a panic to book Mother's Day events for their wives. (Or grown children looking to shower Mom with gifts but that is another case study.) The panicked male audience lend itself incredibly well to online marketing and targeted small budgets. Case Study: As Blue Sky Marketing, I work with a fine dining restaurant client that is offering a Mother's Day brunch this year for the first time. The marketing plan focused on last minute reservers; i.e. people who realized in the week immediately prior to Mother's Day that they had to book something and do it NOW. Although we had done some in-person marketing with collateral hand-outs, we entered the 10-day period prior to Mother's Day with a light reservation count which did not surprise me. We launched our PPC campaign on Google on the Friday one week prior to Mother's Day. We laser-focused our keywords on very specific search terms with very specific ads. Result: We had a huge spike in online reservations. We followed that success up with a scheduled "Last Call" e-mail to make your reservations now. Result: By Wednesday of this week, the Mother's Day Brunch had moved to SOLD OUT status with over 250 guests expected. Total Ad Spend: $173.85 (that is less than $1 per guest expected tomorrow) How would you feel about a sell-out crowd with that level of investment? Focus, understand your target, and speak to them clearly ... marketing truisms that are more important than ever in the digital marketing era. * Share of holiday spending: 6.5 percent , 2010 spending: $14.88 billion, Change from 2009: +4.1 percent