Reaching Women through Social Media

Making Leaders Successful Every Day

April 7, 2009

Reaching Empowered Women Through Social Mediaby Emily Rileyfor Interactive Marketing Professionals

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For Interactive Marketing Professionals

ExEcuTIvE SuMMARyInteractive marketers, especially consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies have excellent opportunities to engage with their most influential consumers on social media and gain an edge against their competitors by inspiring genuine interaction with their target audiences. In this report, we look at best practices for reaching a key CPG segment: empowered women — females ages 25 to 54 who feel that the Internet helps them manage family life. In order to engage empowered women successfully and pull ahead of the crowd, CPG companies must design campaigns that enhance communication and aid in consumers’ decision-making and influence.

TAblE oF conTEnTSSuccessful Social Marketing Provides A Personal Touch To A CPG Campaign

Want To Make An Impact? Target Empowered Women

Incorporate communication, Sharing, And Family life When Targeting Empowered Women

REcoMMEndATIonS

Let Your Audience Tell You What It Wants, And Then Deliver It

Supplemental Material

noTES & RESouRcESForrester analyzed data from the JupiterResearch/nPd Group Individual user Survey (6/08).

Related Research Documents“Influentials And Initiators” november 24, 2008

“Social Media Measurement” october 16, 2008

“Engagement” March 31, 2008

April 7, 2009

Reaching Empowered Women Through Social MediaHow cPG brands can Engage A core Target Audienceby Emily Rileywith Rebecca Jennings, Michael Greene, and Emily bowen

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© 2009, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction ProhibitedApril 7, 2009

Reaching Empowered Women Through Social Media For Interactive Marketing Professionals

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SUCCESSFUL SoCIAL MARkETInG PRoVIDES A PERSonAL ToUCH To A CPG CAMPAIGn

New opportunities are emerging in social marketing and not just among Gen Y users.1 From customizable widgets to communities that encourage sharing, social marketing can add a feeling of personal interaction that takes a brand campaign from good to great.

Making your audience feel a personal connection to your brand takes homework. In order to truly stand out from your competitors and make lasting connections with your target audience, it pays to do some soul searching before launching your campaign:

· Who are you targeting? You don’t have to target Gen Y as many online users are now active social media users. However, you should pick a specific audience to talk to, or you will end up sounding too generic. Johnson & Johnson’s blog, JNJ BTW, is for all 120,000 members of the company to blog about random topics.2 Johnson & Johnson’s target audience is in the billions. To really connect, its blog strategy needs to be broken up and focused around key target groups.

· How does your target audience use social media? You will make a better connection by creating your campaign around your audience’s behaviors rather than just your company’s objectives.3 Not every group uses social media the same way, and older audiences differ from Gen Y. Use available data from panels, site partners, and analytics companies like Forrester to find out not only what specific social media applications your target audience uses but also what motivates them to do so. Some might care about music and entertainment while others want to reconnect with old friends.4

· How should you come across? You’ll have to do some work to make sure you sound genuine in your social marketing campaign. Social media is not about sounding cooler than you normally do. It’s about making your brand more personal than on other channels. To make a personal impact, a consumer needs a relatively consistent experience, particularly online. Thirty-six percent of consumers look for more information through a search engine after seeing an online ad, so they will experience your brand across channels. Look at the tone of your Web site and display campaigns; if you create a different voice for your social campaign, make sure it complements rather than detracts from your online presence. Nestlé/Nesquik made the mistake of targeting urban teens with a YouTube video while its Web site focuses on moms.

· What do you want to achieve? It’s not a good idea to create a social media campaign because your competitors are doing it or your agency thinks it’s a good idea. You need to determine what you are trying to achieve for your own company. You might decide it is a rebranding effort for a product such as the viral videos that Dove used so successfully or that you want to build buzz around a product the way Garnier is doing by sponsoring an American Idol, “Sing In The Shower,” Web contest.5

© 2009, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited April 7, 2009


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· Are you ready for a long engagement? Once you’ve made a connection with someone, for example, by having them download a widget, they are going to expect a higher level of interaction over a longer period of time than with a commercial or a banner ad. Use your site analytics tool, surveys, or user-generated content analysis tools such as Umbria to learn about their social interaction with your brand. Plan to improve their experience with fresh content over time to encourage continued engagement.

Want To Make An Impact? Target Empowered Women

Here’s an example of how specific characteristics of a target group — in this case, empowered women — can help you define your social marketing plan. Empowered women are women ages 25 to 54 who feel that the Internet helps them manage their family life (see Figure 1). Empowered women are highly influential as household decision-makers as well as among their peers. From entertainment to electronics, empowered women are much more likely to be asked by friends for product recommendations (see Figure 2). Empowered women tend to be more active online than the average adult across the board, but certain behaviors really stand out. You can integrate these behaviors into your marketing plan to increase the likelihood of success:

· Communication is a primary activity. More than half of empowered women use social networking sites, and communication activities take center stage. One-third of empowered women use social networking sites mainly for communication compared with 23% of all online adults.6 Nearly one-third (32%) of empowered women will actively go to friends’ pages on social networking sites to keep in touch, compared with only 21% of all online adults.7

· Sharing is a big motivator. Empowered women love to share their lives with friends. They love email but are also more likely than their peers to use widgets, and their favorite kinds allow them to share (see Figure 3).The Purina Animal Antics widget allows people to share pictures and videos of their pets creating an engaging experience that is relevant for longer than just the life of a campaign.8

· Research and purchase are always important. Empowered women care about value and like knowing as much as they can before they buy. A whopping 81% of empowered women say that it’s important for them to find the best deal they can on things they buy compared with 63% of US online adults ages 18 and up. With the economy putting pressure on family budgets, finding a good deal will be more important than ever.9 They don’t think twice about using the Web to help them find deals. Forty-four percent have used a search engine to look for more information about a product after seeing an online advertisement.10



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Figure 1 Empowered Women versus Everyone Else

Source: Forrester Research, Inc.53601

US online adultsEmpowered women*

None of the above

Added a new online applicationor widget to my home portal or

social networking site

Posted comments on amainstream media Web site

or portal

Created or updated a blog

Read comments others had posted on a mainstreammedia Web site or portal

Read a blog

Created or updated a personalpage on MySpace, Facebook, or

another social network

Visited social networkingsites like MySpace,

Facebook, etc.42%

33%

35%26%

35%24%

28%21%

15%9%

11%10%

8%5%

20%32%

“Thinking about your use of the Internet over the last year, which of the following activities did youconduct online monthly or more frequently?”

(Select all that apply)

Source: JupiterResearch/NPD Group Individual User Survey (6/08)*Empowered women are defined as women ages 25 to 54 who say the Internet helps them managetheir family life.

Base: US online adults



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Figure 2 Empowered Women Are Influential over Their Peers


US online adultsEmpowered women†

Friends seek my opinion on thelatest styles in clothes

Friends seek my recommendations about financial matters

Friends seek my recommendationsabout consumer electronics/

technology

Friends seek my opinion onentertainment (movies, music,

TV shows, etc.)

38%

22%

29%21%

24%16%

20%11%

Source: JupiterResearch/NPD Group Individual User Survey (6/08)*Describes my attitude is defined on a scale from 1 [does not describe my attitude at all] to 5 [completely describes my attitude].

†Empowered women are defined as women ages 25 to 54 who say the Internet helps them manage their family life.


Please indicate to what extent each statement describes your attitudes.* (Select one for each)



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Figure 3 Empowered Women Are Active Social networkers


0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70%

US online adultsEmpowered women*

None of the above

Event invitationprogram

Mapping program

Online payments orfinancial services

Daily horoscope

Custom poll or survey

Video clip or player

Countdowns to an event

News or weatherinformation

Game

Some other kind ofprogram or application

Playlist maker, musicplayer, or song

Photo slideshow

Source: JupiterResearch/NPD Group Individual User Survey (6/08)*Empowered women are defined as women ages 25 to 54 who say the Internet helps them managetheir family life.

“Which of the following programs or features have you added to your MySpace or Facebook page (or other social network), personalized home page, or computer desktop?”


Incorporate Communication, Sharing, And Family Life When Targeting Empowered Women

Creating a strategy that enhances the social behaviors of your target audience while endearing them to your brand is the most important element of a successful social campaign. For empowered women, successful social strategies combine communication and sharing with their savvy shopping attitude.

· Capture what defines your target group and capitalize on it. Kraft Foods has a widget that is a perfect fit for empowered women. Each afternoon, the widget offers an affordable dinner idea complete with a shopping list. Not only does it help them manage their family life more easily, but it appeals to their research behavior as well. In addition to the tens of thousands of Web downloads, it is also one of the top iPhone applications (see Figure 4).



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· Associate your brand (genuinely) with a relevant topic that your target cares about. For CPG companies often the hardest part of creating a social marketing campaign is coming up with a compelling reason to engage with a customer. However, many brands — from Dove to SunChips — have connected with something their target audience cares about. SunChips have associated their brand with green causes and charity, including their Facebook campaign with actor Leonardo DiCaprio to save devastated farming towns (see Figure 5). The key to success is to mean it and stick with it across channels. This is particularly important when targeting empowered women — 27% have posted critical comments about brands or products online.

· Provide a platform for people to do what they love. Empowered women love sharing about their families. Cheerios created a Web site for people to do just that, with places to post photos, memories, and tips about family life and health.11 In order to limit their exposure to risky user-generated content, the sharing feature is heavily moderated. Submissions are reviewed before they are added to the page. For a more adventurous marketer, the sharing feature could have been improved with integration into social networking sites where so much sharing is already taking place (see Figure 6).

Figure 4 Kraft offers A Widget To Help Empowered Women Manage Family life




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Figure 5 Sunchips Makes A commitment To Going Green




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Figure 6 cheerios Provides A Platform For Sharing And communication


R E c o M M E n d A T I o n S

LET YoUR AUDIEnCE TELL YoU WHAT IT WAnTS, AnD THEn DELIVER IT

The key to crushing your competitors in the social media space is to make a genuine connection to your target audience. The last thing it needs — or will be interested in — is a time waster. Put your audience’s needs before your own, and you’ll create a lasting connection. In order to do this, you will have to:

· Do your homework. The information you need about your target audience’s social media behavior is already available online, either via buzz monitoring, posts on your own blog, and community comments or through surveys. Throw away preconceived notions of social behavior and let your audience tell you. In the case of empowered women, they are driven by managing their family life and sharing with others. let these activities be the showcase of a campaign aimed at them.

· Be prepared. Social media that really connects takes time and patience. you can’t create a widget or a microsite that goes nowhere or is totally disconnected from your other marketing efforts. Align search and display messages accordingly. Make sure your team is



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ready to respond to posts on and off your site, if necessary by devolving responsibility from PR or media teams. If your campaign gets engagement over a long period of time, plan to make enhancements to encourage consumers to return. cPG sites for brands like Home Made Simple and Pampers have done this well by creating rich content sites that have their own staff to support them. both sites added new features such as communities and sharing tools as demand for them increased.

· Interest and empower your audience. Social marketing isn’t about you; it’s about them. use the needs and interests of your audience to guide you, and enhance your brand by genuinely associating it with something your audience cares about. Empowered women want ways to share, communicate, and manage their family life. The campaigns they respond to, such as the Kraft recipe widget, allow them to do these things.

· Implement a measurement plan. choose and use a set of metrics that will give you the ability to measure success. For example, if your campaign features a widget and your goal is to increase product research behavior, use your site analytics tool to cookie widget users and then track their search and site behavior over time to see if you achieved your goal.12

SUPPLEMEnTAL MATERIAL

Methodology

In June 2008, JupiterResearch designed and fielded a survey to online consumers selected randomly from the NPD Group US online consumer panel. A total of 3,730 individuals responded to the survey. Respondents were asked approximately 40 closed-ended questions about their behaviors, attitudes, and preferences as they relate to general online behaviors, paid content and services, online video, online advertising, social networking sites, etc. Respondents received an email invitation to participate in the survey with an attached URL linked to the Web-based survey form. The samples were carefully balanced by a series of demographic and behavioral characteristics to ensure that they were representative of the online population. Demographic weighting variables included age, gender, household income, household education, household type, region, market size, race, Hispanic ethnicity, online tenure, connection speed, and student status. Balancing quotas were derived from JupiterResearch’s Internet population model, which relies on US Census Bureau data and a rich foundation of primary consumer survey research to determine the size and demographics of the US online population. The survey data is fully applicable to the US online population within a confidence interval of plus or minus 3%.

In this survey effort, JupiterResearch worked with its research partner, NPD, on the technical tasks of survey fielding, sample building, balancing, and data processing. NPD is one of the largest market research companies in the US and maintains a general research panel of 4 million individuals, of which 750,000 are kept “active.” The active panel receives surveys while inactive panelists are rested. This rotation in and out of active status helps keep panelists fresh and prevents burnout. Panel-based market research enables researchers to have baseline knowledge of each survey respondent, increase survey participation rates, and permit careful rationing of survey fielding to reduce survey burnout.



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Companies Interviewed For This Document

Proctor & Gamble

R/GA

Razorfish

EnDnoTES1 Social media consumption is becoming mainstream — if not mass-market — especially among younger

users, even as creation remains less widespread. Social networking is the most popular of social media activities, with one-third of all online users visiting a social networking site regularly and social networks often acting as hubs for multiple social media activities. See the September 23, 2008, “Social Media Consumption” report.

2 The editor of the JNJ BTW blog states, “By The Way . . . Everyone else is talking about our company, so why can’t we? There are more than 120,000 people who work for Johnson & Johnson and its operating companies. We’re some of them, and through JNJ BTW, we will try to find a voice that often gets lost in formal communications.” Source: JNJ BTW blog (http://www.jnjbtw.com/).

3 Forrester Research offers consumer social media behavior with its Social Technographics® data product.

4 Social networks have become hubs of online activity; most social networkers now use the sites for sharing, communicating, following, and consuming, as well as connecting to fellow users. By serving as a daily destination for the majority of their users and by offering them both core communication tools and media content, the social networks are fulfilling and usurping the traditional role of online portals. See the December 12, 2008, “Portalization And Polarization” report.

5 For more information, see Garnier’s “Sing In The Shower Contest” (www.garnier.com/idol).

6 Source: JupiterResearch/NPD Group Individual User Survey (6/08).

7 Source: JupiterResearch/NPD Group Individual User Survey (6/08).

8 For more information on people sharing photos and stories of their pets in an online community, see Purina’s Animal Antics (http://www.purina.com/downloads/Widgets/Index.aspx).

9 JupiterResearch/NPD Group Individual User Survey (6/08).

10 JupiterResearch/NPD Group Individual User Survey (6/08).

11 For more information on how Cheerios enables people to share family photos, see Cheerios Nurturing Circle (http://www.cheerios.com/forFamilies/YourStories/FamilyStories_home.aspx).

12 Despite budgetary challenges, measuring brand-oriented social campaigns with traditional online metrics such as clicks and impressions simply will not provide relevant insight. In the event that marketers cannot receive funding for professional buzz monitoring or brand surveys, marketers should look to tools already in their arsenal or available for minimal cost that can provide metrics aligned with marketers’ goals. See the October 16, 2008 “Social Media Measurement” report.





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Reaching Women through Social Media