Recently, The New York Times turned its attention to women without children and marketing to this group. If you missed the article on July 10, you can read it here. I was fortunate enough to be a part of Alina Tugend’s article that referenced the lucrative mom market. Tugend worked on this piece for over a month and gathered extensive data on women, both childless and with children. It reminded me of how often we read statistics, census data and research and react to the numbers without knowing the story behind them.
“Childless Women to Marketers: We Buy Things, Too” noted that nearly half of all women between 15 and 44 do not have children. There’s no debating the numbers; however, there is a reason for the increase in childless numbers today. Allow me to peel back the layers for you. Millennials are now the largest generation in our country at approximately 80 million. However, only one-third of all millennial women have had children. Multiple resources, including our own research done in conjunction with the release of Millennial Moms: 202 Facts Marketers Need to Know to Build Brands and Drive Sales illustrate that Millennial women are delaying motherhood.
What all this means is that there is a huge wave of new moms coming in the next three to five years; at least half of those women ages 15 to 35 will become moms in the future. This means that marketers need to be preparing today for the opportunities of tomorrow. As technology changes, it will be necessary for marketers to change their tactics to gain the results they desire.
I’m not going to take on the debate as to whether brands should add childless women to their menu of target consumers. I will leave that to CMOs and brand managers.
The 2016 presidential campaign has been a good source of data surrounding millennials. The media has lumped all millennial voters together, characterizing their behaviors as one giant, homogenized cohort. Just last night, I heard a political talking head declare that 80% of millennials get their news from Twitter, which means that more political messages have to be delivered via Twitter. Any seasoned marketer can tell that same commentator that there is a distinct difference between older millennials (30+) and younger millennials (18+).
I agree that you are likely to find older millennials combing for news on Twitter; however, Snapchat is where younger millennials dwell. Millennials shouldn’t be lumped together in a pool of data because it doesn’t tell the whole story. The same can be said for women with or without children.
