Kevin Burke founded boutique agency Lucid Marketing in 1998, seeking to connect consumer brands directly with their target customers, particularly moms. Mr. Burke spoke with eMarketer about Lucid’s research on mommy blogs and trends in blogging and social media.
eMarketer: Your research report “Social Media and Moms Report” points up an interesting contrast. You talk about mom bloggers ranking banner advertising as least effective, and yet this is sort of the approach that a lot of blogs use. What’s the disconnect?
Kevin Burke: The reason most of these moms are blogging is not necessarily to generate revenue. It’s first and foremost to connect with other moms like themselves. Secondarily, yes, they like to make money. Some of them are doing well that way, but the fact that most of them aren’t is largely reflective of the fact that banner ads on their sites don’t produce many results. They don’t generate a lot of CPC revenue or other types of revenue.
“Mom bloggers...are definitely open to other ways of marketing.”
So why are moms there? Well, once you put them up there, it’s easy just to leave them there. But I believe from talking to mom bloggers that they are definitely open to other ways of marketing—helping brands and businesses market their products in ways that go beyond the banner. There are other opportunities out there that haven’t yet found their way into the market.
eMarketer: Can you give me an example?
Mr. Burke: A good example is product reviews and product endorsements. Bloggers typically won’t start pitching product, but they’re happy to talk about a product, have conversations and write about things that are related to the category in which that product exists.
So, if a company has a DVD they’re promoting during the holiday season, a mom might start talking about the holiday experiences her family engages in, and it might be sponsored by that DVD. This kind of approach gets the brand involved in conversations, as opposed to just trying to push the product to the target audience.
eMarketer: Which brings up the whole issue of relevance. A lot of the blogging research we’ve looked at shows how important relevance is in the blogosphere. That’s the big goal, isn’t it?
Mr. Burke: It is the big goal and it’s going to be really interesting to see how this plays out over the next couple of years, because privacy issues are directly related to how relevant the marketing messages can be.
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Check out today’s other article, “Online Helps Marketers Do More with Less.”