It’s A Balancing Act – The Art Of Appealing To Two Audiences, According To This Children’s Marketing Agency
There are few things more difficult in life than trying to market something to two demographics at polar opposites to one another. But that’s exactly what you have to try and do when you’re marketing a children’s brand.
On the one hand, you need to appeal to the demographic with the purchasing power; in most cases this is the responsible (and worn down parent). On the other hand, however, you need to look at how you’re going to hook the kids in, themselves. A 5-page pdf brochure explaining your business’ salient USPs may win over the balding Dad looking for his next cordless lawnmower. However, you’ll find that tactic doesn’t work quite so well with a 10-year old bouncing off the walls, desperate to get back onto Fortnite…
With that in mind, the team here at VerriBerri, a children’s marketing agency in Essex, wanted to examine how to best strike this balance.
First And Foremost, Make Sure It Appeals To The Kids…
As a general rule, kids find it much easier to badger their parents into submission through endless nagging, than parents do trying to logically argue that it’s in the child’s best interest to eat a new vegetable, say. In other words, when a kid wants something? They want something. If your kids’ brand isn’t appealing to the kids, then you’ve fallen at the first hurdle. Regardless of how much adults may admire what you’re trying to do, some rules of marketing never change. Knowing your audience? That’s very much one of them.
Get Clever With Your Marketing
If you’ve ever watched a Disney Pixar film, as an adult, then you’ll probably have noticed something. Whilst your kids erupt in hysterics at a funny facial expression, or a bit of toilet humour, you’ll find yourself picking up the odd euphemism or adult-targeted quip. What they’ve managed to do is something very difficult – genuinely engage two disparate audiences. It’s a difficult thing to do, but it’s by no means impossible. Your tone of voice must be so particular when marketing a kids’ brand, and factor in so many different considerations. It can be easy to get it all too wrong.
Baby Bear’s Porridge
You don’t, for example, want to come across as patronising or overly childish. (Especially if your brand is targeted at slightly older children – a brand that’s a bit ‘cooler’). Nor do you want to strike too mature a tone so that it doesn’t engage the primary audience (as touched on before).
Then, on the flipside of this, is the risk of coming across as arrogant or smarmy in your attempt to appeal to the adult with the wallet. Cleverness for the sake of it can be an alienating brand characteristic, and has been known to put people off from buying. We realise we’re saying a lot of “here’s what not to do” at the moment, rather than specifying what to do. The truth of the matter is, however, that there’s no one winning formula when it comes to children’s brands. There is no baby bear’s porridge! Which is a shame, come to think of it, because I’m a sucker for a good bowl of oats. Your best bet is to get parents on-side by offering a subtle nod to their position as ultimate purchaser; whilst still prioritising how the product/service will be received by the child.
Get Broad With Your Marketing
Nowadays, the best way to market your business is to do so comprehensively. At least, that’s what we advocate here at our children’s marketing agency. By taking a multi-faceted approach to your marketing, you bolster your brand identity in the best, most effective way possible. What does a multi-faceted approach look like, in practice? Well, it includes the following:
- Content creation (in the form of blogs, thought leadership pieces, videography)
- PR – a massive discipline, in its own right
- Ideation (it sounds obvious, but far too few brands give themselves the requisite time to think up good marketing campaigns!)
Asides from brand identity; having a well-rounded marketing strategy exudes a professionalism that will set your business apart from its competitors. In truth, this is now seen as a standard. It would be easy to think that the quality of businesses is so much higher now, but that isn’t quite the story. It’s true that, by conducting even the most cursory of online searches, you’ll find competitors operating at a high standard. However, the case is more that there are just lots more businesses, full-stop. So, yes, there are very good businesses out there, against whom you need to adopt a broad approach to compete. But there are also businesses languishing far down the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) that you’re not seeing, precisely because they’ve not followed a branching marketing strategy. You don’t want to be one of those businesses…
You Have An Immense Duty Of Care When Managing Brands That Are Targeted At Kids
Children’s brands have a duty of care like no other. It’s imperative that businesses offering products or services targeted at children are not simply compliant with regulation and safeguarding measures, but going above and beyond that, as well. If not from the perspective of simply it being the right stance to take, then it makes sense to put the extra effort in in order to safeguard your own reputation. You don’t get second chances when it comes to children’s brands. If you’re seen to ‘drop the ball’, so to speak, then parents will look elsewhere without a second look.
Part of our work as a children’s marketing agency is to regularly audit and review where we think a client’s brand is from a reputational point of view. Is there anything that could conceivably lead to a storm being kicked up? When it comes to this kind of business, it’s much better to err on the side of caution and be overly-prepared, than it is to end up getting blindsided by something unexpected, something from which you may not recover.
Contact our children’s marketing agency
So, if you’d like to find out more about our children’s marketing agency, then get in touch, Just click here! Contact VerriBerri today on 01376 386 850. We’d love to have a meeting – be it in person or over Zoom – to learn more about you and your brand!