EMBiz: What To Do When Your Target Market Is Kids
What To Do When Your Target Market Is Kids
Laurel Mintz
Why we’re known as the plushie marketing agency
Hi, everyone, Laurel Mintz here, CEO of Elevate My Brand and this is EMBiz. One of the brands that we are very much famous for is Squishmallows. In fact, we get so much business still from that brand. We took them from 0 to 50 million in less than three years and sold to private equity shortly thereafter. And so a lot of questions we get are all about marketing to kids which yes can be a very awkward conversation. But really it's about marketing to plushies. Like we are really a plushy marketing agency in one of our focused categories or really a toy marketing agency or how do you market to children without being creepy or without being illegal without making sure that you are violating any kind of policies or or laws.
So we did that with Squishmallows with Doomlings, with City Threads, with Paw Patrol. I mean, the list goes on and on. We're very lucky to be in this very playful and fun category, but you have to really watch yourself. You have to be very careful and very honest and very aware of what you can and can't do. And so I wanted to have a conversation around the legalities behind marketing to this category.
Know the laws
First of all, you have to be aware of COPPA, Children's Online Privacy and Protection Act. This means that you cannot collect personal information from children. One of the ways that this is really important is especially when kids are coming to your website, when you pop-ups or you're collecting information in any capacity on social channels, et cetera, you cannot collect that kind of information from anyone under the age of 18. This presents very unique challenges especially to marketing agencies whose job is to collect information so that you can remarket to to people so that they can buy your products or services. We have special tools and techniques to ensure that we are not violating those laws.
The FTC also has a special page with a lot of information. In fact, food advertising specifically to children, make sure that they are protecting their safety and security. And also noting that a minor cannot legally sign a binding contract. This is really applicable, especially when you're talking about influencer marketing, especially in a day and age when there are so many YouTube stars and kids who we want to, we wanted to engage with in order to promote a lot of the products and services that, that were in that under age category.
How to effectively market to kids
There are lots of effective marketing strategies you can still implement within those target audiences:
Making sure that you're supplementing text with visuals is one really great way of ensuring that you are still talking to that audience without being violative.
Making sure that you're being quick and keeping attention. So, again, not using like the copy using visuals is one great way of doing that.
Creating a multi-sensory experience is one another great way of doing that using songs and visuals and let's face it this day and age, kids and parents, all folks don't consume content like they used to. So visuals, videos, etcetera, really great way to kind of get around some of these issues.
Cross marketing and product placement, huge way of utilizing marketing in an effective way to ensure that you're not being illegal and of course sponsorship and influencer marketing as well. And again, just making sure that you are staying on top of the most current rules and regulations, they are constantly changing. And, and I think this is for the best, right?
We wanna make sure that we are ultimately protecting the youth of America and making sure that while we are giving them the products and services that we want, we are not overwhelming them and really targeting them that is not the impact or the intention behind targeting them for these products and services. That is a little bit about how we get around some of the issues and laws. But really more than anything, we just want to make sure that you are aware that there are really protective approaches to making sure that kids are not targets as it relates to marketing. If you have any more questions, of course, reach out. This is an area we really feel very strongly about. We love marketing to this group of very special consumers and of course their parents and stay tuned for more from elevate your brand.