How conversations from moms are driving brand insights: Tamanna Dhamija

Authored by Tamanna Dhamija, Founder & CEO, Baby Destination.

Fueled by her own experience of searching for clarity on information, Tamanna Dhamija, Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Baby Destination, took it upon herself to build the biggest digital community of mothers in India, as she was starting to discover motherhood. This very concept started off simply with just a Facebook page where she started posting content for mothers, and a handful of mothers across a WhatsApp group that started with offline interactions. Today Baby Destination has beautifully turned into India’s largest organic community of mothers online.  
 

Today, we have jumped into an era of millennial moms. These moms are distinctly different in the way they make brand decisions and consume products, and they are changing the traditional outlook of family and society. Millennial moms are a growing community representing one out of every five mothers and 90% of all new mothers according to a study in 2017. With mothers controlling almost 85% of household purchases, brands are working around the clock to understand this new segment, the mediums they consume & trust, and the messages that will drive them. Outside of direct insights, observation studies and other insights tactics, looking deeper into conversations moms have amongst themselves will be the key to unlocking the most optimum strategy for marketing.

New age mommies have embraced digital as their go-to medium. Whether it is to find answers for health issues of their baby, discover great products or just to connect with other like-minded mothers, digital mediums provide a great playground for the new age mothers on the go. Marketing to mommies requires brands to understand the way they think. This audience is looking for answers, and while brand story telling may be great, it means nothing to the mother juggling work, family and their baby, if they don’t get a functional answer. They just don’t have time. But when it comes to conversing with other moms, this audience makes time. They love to share their experiences and hear other mommy views and opinions. A marketer can find more answers in studying conversations between a trusted, organically grown community of mothers than any amount of marketing research or messaging studies.

Studies show new/ expecting mothers perform twice as many online searches.  If we study closer, mommies are looking for helpful and credible content online. Brands need to offer the right content and in the right time. But, how do we know the ‘right’ content and time for a new age mother? This is where conversations become key. Analyzing conversations amongst a community of mothers can help identify their needs, aspirations, desires and expectations. Moreover, conversations segmented by topic can make this exercise even easier by understand the category drivers and key messages mommies are looking for around specific topics. Sentiment analysis of relevant conversations and frequency tests to evaluate the importance and priority metrics within each category will further help to define message parameters to drive brand interest and purchase. Brands need to understand that digital is not only about pushing their products, but creating trust through utility-driven, relevant and empathetic content can drive more engagement for the brand than any other tactic.

The key to studying conversations is to build technology, which can read, analyze and make sense of the data collected. This requires expertise of data scientists to splice and filter the data to derive actionable outputs and key messaging aspects to build marketing communication strategies. These conversational insights can be the difference between getting your brand message right or missing the bus completely. There are many insights studies focusing on depth interactions with mothers, and while these can provide some useful insights, nothing beats listening into mothers conversing amongst themselves. Digitally, this is possible, but only when the platforms where they are discussing are open, credible and organically grown. Only then, will the conversations be genuine and credible. So brands may love conversations, but when it comes to mothers, the conversation needs to be at the right place and amongst the right, trusted, and organically grown community as well.