Cross-Promotional PR Programs with Canadian Mom Media

When trying to attract new customers and raise awareness about your product/service,  I regularly encourage my clients to consider cross-promotional relationships with media outlets, key influencers (mom bloggers), like businesses and other organizations. These type of relationships are a win-win situation that cost nothing and typically only require an exchange of in-kind services or products.

We recently took this same strategy for limelitePR and have implemented three unique cross-promotional relationships with two of Canada's leading online mom-focused publications:

This month SavvyMom.ca launched their third annual Mom Entrepreneur of the Year Award and as you will see, limelitePR is one of the top 5 prizes for the grand prize winner!

Grand Prize – Take Your Business to the Next Level with $15,500 in Prizes!

The overall national winner of the SavvyMom Mom Entrepreneur of the Year award will be crowned Canada’s Top Mom Entrepreneur and receive our grand prize, a custom package of cash and services valued at $15,500 designed to improve every aspect of a growth-oriented business and help the winner take her business to the next level. The grand prize includes:

• a cash prize of $5000 for investment in the business


• a Q & A feature on Todaysparent.com


• a full-year business mentorship with Canadian Sitter Inc. founder, Martha Scully, winner of the 2008 SavvyMom Mom Entrepreneur of the Year Award


• a workplace productivity assessment and program courtesy of Clear Concept Inc. valued at $3000


• a consultation and 90-day Action Plan courtesy of Limelite PRvalued at $6000


• a search engine optimization (SEO) assessment courtesy of Eighty8 Online 
  valued at $1500

In the fall 09, SavvyMom.ca and limelitePR will also be conducting reader surveys to learn more about Canadian moms' habits. First up is mobile technology - what brands are Canadian moms loyal to, what kind of applications are they downloading, why do they use it. Stay tuned for more details and results.

Finally, as we know the best way to interact with moms is to be part of their community and create a special experience that taps into their core values, feeding their desire to be better moms.  In partnership with yoyomama.ca (Vancouver's leading e-newsletter for mums on-the-go) limelitePR will develop custom interactive brand experiences that will raise brand awareness and develop customer loyalty. This grassroots influencer program is an out-of-the-box results oriented program that allows you to personally interact with yoyomama's loyal readers (across the Lower Mainland) and create a buzz within the mom community. Benefits include the ability to distribute samples, coupons, promotional items; cross-promote with local retailers and other like-businesses; develop strong strategic partnerships and effectively promote a unique marketing initiative to acquire customers.

Want more info? Contact limelitePR www.limelitepr.com 

Canadian Moms' Media Habits

New Survey Reveals Canadian Moms' Media Habits

Vancouver, BC/Toronto, ON (May 6, 2009) - With moms controlling 85 percent of household spending and more companies focusing their marketing efforts on gaining the attention and loyalty of this powerful consumer market, limelitePR, Canada’s first PR firm wholly focused on connecting companies with moms, has conducted a nationwide survey in conjunction with Toronto-based urbanmoms.ca to investigate Canadian moms’ media habits. Results reveal that moms trust and refer to websites and TV for current and relevant information, are most interested in local stories and receive more information digitally than by traditional mediums such as magazines and newspapers.

“In order to develop impactful campaigns for our clients, we felt it was important to determine the most trusted and valuable mediums for the mom market,” says limelitePR Principal Jeanette Miller. “What this survey has produced is a deeper understanding of where moms currently turn for relevant information. We strongly believe that Canadian moms’ reliance on digital sources will grow as younger Gen Y moms move up the ranks but word-of-mouth (aka word-of-mom) will continue to reign as #1.”

The survey garnered over 700 respondents from coast to coast and polled Canadian moms on the sources they most commonly refer to and receive in their home.

The limelitePR and urbanmoms.ca survey highlights include:

• 73% of moms receive 4 or more e-newsletters
• 43% of moms consider websites the most trusted, valuable source for accurate & relevant information
• 37% of moms subscribe to 1-2 magazines, with 20% receiving no print subscriptions at all
  40% of moms refer to TV programs as their source for news and current events
• Canadian moms are most interested in local stories (30%) but parenting/family stories and lifestyle stories (food, fashion, trends) also garner worthy attention at 20% each.
• Moms’ community of peers and friends (including online community) overwhelmingly influence moms’ decisions by being the primary source when looking for information and recommendations on products or services.

“Mothers and community is not a recent trend. Throughout history moms have been depended on each other for connection and information. However, technology now enables moms to connect and share virtually which provides a trusted voice with a vastly broader scope and reach,” says Jen Maier, urbanmoms.ca founder.

“The survey results demonstrate that moms refer to online sources for stories about their community and rely on their peers and network to provide them with practical information that will make a positive impact on their families’ lives. We believe that it’s important to have multiple points of contact in order to create brand loyalty in the mom market,” says Miller.

About limelitePR limelitePR is a boutique public relations firm that is dedicated to creating a buzz and connecting leading brands with moms across Canada and the USA. By conducting traditional media relations, blogger outreach, and creating influencer mom-market activities and programs, the limelitePR team develops an integrated PR approach that will generate brand awareness at a consumer level, which directly increases sales and maintains brand recognition.

About urbanmoms.ca urbanmoms.ca, founded by Jen Maier, Toronto marketer and mom of 2, is Canada’s leading online community for moms. Based on the philosophy that when a woman has children she doesn't magically conform to a one-dimensional world of motherhood, urbanmoms.ca provides women with a forum to connect and build relationships while directly influencing some of Canada’s leading brands.

For more information contact:
Jeanette Miller, principal limelitePR O: 778.786.1495 M: 778.552.2949
E : jeanette@limelitepr.com T: @limelitePR

One final note: Hatley was generous enough to donate one pair of adult rain boots and one pair of child rain boots for one survey respondent. We hope you love them as much as we do!

PR That Gets Moms Buzzing

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

PR That Gets Moms Buzzing

View more presentations from Jeanette Miller.

What is Word of Mom?

Since starting this blog, I have discovered that blogging is more difficult than I expected. My admiration for those who blog faithfully has greatly increased, with a special spot held to mom bloggers because as a busy mom and entrepreneur, I find it incredibly difficult to squeeze more time out of day to write something inspired (in a peaceful, writing-condusive environment). I've been seeking advise from fellow bloggers about how to get through my "Bloggers Block" and have heard some fantastic suggestions. While I contemplate implementing vlogging (video blogging), some structure to my posts and peer blogger support, I have been watching the online mom blogger world join together to support one of their own - again proving the power of the word of mom.

Online sadness and heartbreak was projected worldwide last week when a 17 month old Madeline Alice Spohr died. I didn't know her or her family; I had never even read the family blog (written by mom blogger Heather Spohr of www.thespohrsaremultiplying.com) until numerous mom bloggers tweeted their shock and heartbreak and I just had to find out what they were all talking about. I was instantly in tears and emotionally distraught the next day as bloggers worldwide expressed their sorrow and started blogging about their grief. I couldn't stop reading, nor could thousands of others. These are the best of the worst kind of blog posts. They hit you in the gut and make you think about your own life. You relate in some small way to someone you've never met but now feel some sort of kindship to because of an experience, emotion, reaction. You see the bigger picture more clearly, realize that sweating the small stuff is stupid and discover that seeking support from your community is not defined by borders.

Mom bloggers came together to support one of their own. When floods of visitors overpowered the Spohr's website and their server dumped them for going over-capacity, mom bloggers banded together to get it transferred to another server (it was twitterer @princessJenn from Canada who came to the rescue, btw). In mere hours housands of dollars (there was a tweet about hitting $10,000 by mid-morning) were raised for the Walk of Dimes in Maddies's honour and teams across the USA have been formed to Walk For Maddie http://sarcasticmom.com/walk-for-maddie/

This universal support system, this innate ability to relate to another person soley based on the joint experience of loving a child, is the foundation of word-of-mom. I don't think even Maddie's mom could have envisioned the impact her experience would have on moms worldwide. When it comes to spreading messages, especially when its for the greater-good, moms are the influencer and source.

My thoughts continue to be with the Spohr family.

Twit, Twit, Twoo!

I'm just getting set up but if you are twittering, send me a tweet! http://twitter.com/limelitepr

Introduction to Mom PR

It's Saturday morning and I'm stumbling around my house in the way many moms do. I've just put a load of laundry in, my youngest is napping, my eldest is watching Saturday morning cartoons, my husband is napping - he took the early shift by getting up at 6am while I had a lie-in, and we have both been picking through the Globe and Mail and will continue to do so for the next 4 days.

We love our weekend edition of the Globe (Canada's largest national daily newspaper) because it lasts the week; taking us 4 days to read it cover to cover. It's the perfect size and offers a great range of articles - current affairs, fashion, business, that fit into our time-crunched lifestyle.

Between the both of us, we read a lot of newspapers & magazines. Probably way more than the average Joe because we both work in/with the media. He is an ex-CBC'er, taught radio journalism at our local college and now works in the Public Affairs Bureau for the Province; I own a PR firm that specializes in the mom market and monitor a huge range of media from blogs to TV programs. We read most newspapers online or via our Blackberry but we do enjoy the tactile feel of a newspaper on a weekend.

I think we are a typical example of today's generation and that's why many of today's media outlets are struggling to survive. We are reading more newspapers online. I don't think the printed edition will completely disappear (for the sanity of our Saturday mornings let's hope not!) but I think media oulets will continue to focus more towards online content because that's where their current and future readers are.

The other impact on the media is advertising revenues, which are down dramatically and today's recession (or talk of recession) will ensure that this trend continues for a while.

So what does this mean and how does it impact you? Well, look at what happened in the last month alone

- the National Post has recently decreased the amount of printed editions in order to cut expenses. Suddenly we see the Financial Post (a business column that originated in the National Post) being included (or taking over) 1/3 of the Business sections in a lot of the Canwest chain newspapers. In my backyard this affected the Victoria Times Colonist and Vancouver Sun who both ran 2-3 pages of the Financial Post pages.

- Canwest Global cut 650 jobs across Canada. Most of the cuts were felt in small communities which continues to push this centralization of coverage to specific larger markets.

- CTV are cutting expense budgets which means no more travelling. That means if you are not located in the top Canadian cities - Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Montreal - then getting some of the larger media outlets to attend and cover your event may require a budget for airfare, hotel and transporation costs. That is if they are allowed to accept those 'perks', which many of them aren't thus you may be better off pitching freelancers who can accept free things but there's no guarantee of coverage....but I digress.

The fewer reporters available to pitch and decreased amount of pages dedicated to local coverage means more opportunities and barriers when tying to get press coverage for your company. And you want press coverage because it increases sales when its part of an overall marketing plan.

Now combine that with today's online, technology-driven mom and you will have what this blog is going to be about.

This is the intersection between the media and moms.

(We) moms control 85% of every household dollar. We want value for our dollar, we research online, and best of all we chat with our networks and tell our friends what's 'rockin' our lives right now' - be it a product, a service or the latest Method product (thanks Oprah!).

Moms are synical of ads (on a personal note, my husband and I love the Berenstein Bears No More Commercials book), we read 4 magazines a month, look to the internet to network, shop, bank and book vacations. We are the most powerful consumer group in the world.

My goal is to provide you with useful information that you can apply to your business as well as understand how to tap into the influential Mom Market.

So, welcome and thanks for reading.