Even during a pandemic — actually, especially during a pandemic — mothers deserve to be celebrated. So in preparation for their big day, brands need to launch relevant and engaging content to reach Mother’s Day shoppers.
See also: What is native advertising?
It is, after all, a major purchasing holiday in the U.S. and around the world. As the National Retail Federation reported, 86% of Americans planned to celebrate the holiday in 2020, up from 84% in 2019. Their average spending was expected to increase year-over-year, too, with top gift categories including housewares, books and CDs, and electronics.
Now, with Mother’s Day 2021 around the corner, we’re helping businesses prepare for another big spending season by analyzing:
- The top news categories driving traffic this time of year
- Best practices for building Mother’s Day campaigns
- Case studies and examples to inspire your strategies
Here’s what you need to know.
Top News Trends for Mother’s Day
We pulled Taboola campaign data from August 2020 to January 2021 to find out which news topics are driving the most traffic across the web. (As a note, we filtered out all news trends related to Biden, Trump, and coronavirus because they eclipse everything else.)
Across consumer categories, the top five news topics are:
- Investing
- Shows and events
- Food
- Movies and TV
- Amazon and Apple
Take investing, for example. Last Mother’s Day, TimesNowNews.com launched an article about how people can help their moms invest and make smart financial decisions for the holiday:
Shows and events also took place during the pandemic — albeit virtually — to help families celebrate mom safely. That’s why publishers like USA Today shared lists of Mother’s Day livestreams and socially distanced events to keep the party going from home:
Meanwhile, over in the food category, publishers like Business Insider had no shortage of content to launch about edible gifts to send to mom:
How to Build a Campaign Strategy Using News Trends
With these news categories at their fingertips, brands can better understand what keeps their audiences’ interest. And then they can build, distribute, and target their campaigns to reach users who are ready to consume Mother’s Day content.
Here’s how.
Creative Best Practices for Mother’s Day Campaigns
We took these news categories over to Taboola Trends to check out real-time data and insights about the images, videos, keywords that can drive the most clicks for your Mother’s Day campaigns.
Images: Opt for Food and Color
Filtering by lifestyle content, we can see that images with food generate a 33% higher clickthrough rate (CTR) than those without food. And images in color with no text can help you increase engagement on your ads.
Videos: Keep Them Active
When it comes to video ads, action drives performance — specifically, completion rates. That means it’s best to incorporate activities like air travel, swimming, water sports, and driving into your creative. Oh, look: Eating increases video completion rates, too, which matches up with that data about images featuring food.
Headlines: A/B Test Your Titles
Taboola’s Title Analyzer takes the guesswork out of creating great headlines. The tool helps you pit your headline ideas against each other to find the ones with the highest predicted CTR.
We analyzed these titles, for example:
- “The Top 10 Gifts for Mom on Mother’s Day”
- “Try These Mother’s Day Gifts She’ll Never Expect”
- “Mother’s Day Presents for the Mom Who Has Everything”
The answer is clear: The headline “Try These Mother’s Day Gifts She’ll Never Expect” is likely to deliver the best performance.
Creative Best Practices in Action
Tying these creative best practices together, here’s a look at what some click-worthy website ads might look like for Mother’s Day:
Targeting Best Practices for Mother’s Day Campaigns
Once your creative is optimized, you need to make sure you’re sending it out to the right audiences — those who are most likely to engage with that content.
According to our data, these targeting best practices can boost your Mother’s Day campaigns:
- Automate your bids in real time: Taboola’s SmartBid feature automatically adjusts your baseline bid every time your ad is displayed to help you optimize conversions and pageviews.
- Distribute campaigns across tablet devices: Mother’s Day advertisers have a big opportunity to reach consumers on tablet devices, where engagement is high, but spend — and competition — is lower.
- Use interactive content formats: Keep people engaged by incorporating personalized and interactive elements into your ad content, like quizzes, games, and surveys.
10 Aspirational Mother’s Day Campaign Examples
Now that we’ve looked at the hard data, let’s take some inspiration from Mother’s Day ads — and campaigns across relevant content categories — that have already driven success.
1. Penguin Random House
Book publisher Penguin Random House invited Twitter users to #AskABookishMom for personalized Mother’s Day gift recommendations.
2. Tophatter
E-commerce retailer Tophatter worked with Taboola to run content discovery campaigns across six countries — targeting men and women interested in deals on jewelry, electronics, fashion, and beauty products. As a result, Tophatter saw a 3.7% higher conversion rate and 4.7% more clicks to purchase compared to its other paid channels.
3. Godiva
Godiva knows if moms want something, sometimes they have to ask for it. So the chocolatier encouraged moms on Instagram to tag their kids and make sure they get their orders in on time for Mother’s Day.
4. Google
Before there were virtual home assistants, there were moms — ready to answer questions, break up fights, and offer comfort in times of need. Google celebrated moms by turning their most-heard phrase, “Hey, Mom,” into a hashtag and heartwarming commercial.
5. The Line
The Line, an online boutique, launched ads to promote its series of online stories, which seamlessly incorporated its products. Chapter 13, for example, is called “Part of a Whole: Building a Timeless Wardrobe.” This innovative campaign delivered over 72 million impressions, a 100% traffic increase in one month, and a 12% jump in email subscribers.
6. Audible
While many people grew up with mom reading them stories before bed, Audible said, “Now, tell her a story.” This ad inspires subscribers to embrace “the power of a great listen” for Mother’s Day.
7. UrbanStems
Flower delivery service UrbanStems partnered with publications like GQ and People to provide readers with special discount codes in anticipation of Mother’s Day.
8. Food Network
The Food Network channel leveraged Taboola’s technology to launch article and video ads — showcasing recipes and cake decorating techniques — across top publisher sites in the UK. Traffic from this campaign outperformed campaigns on all other paid channels and drove a 160% increase in video views.
9. Johnson & Johnson
In the midst of COVID-19, Johnson & Johnson launched a commercial reassuring moms that they’re doing okay. It also, of course, promoted the brand’s gentle baby shampoo in the process.
10. Uber Eats
Uber Eats partnered with Starbucks to invite people to #SendACup to their loved ones on Mother’s Day — complete with a shareable tracking link.
Make the Most of Your Mother’s Day Campaigns
We may be in the wake of a historic pandemic, but people still want to celebrate mom. And brands and publishers can help them do just that by sharing relevant ad content that speaks to their interests.
So use these trending content categories and data-backed best practices to fuel your Mother’s Day campaigns. This way, you can be sure you’re reaching target audiences with the most click-worthy content — in honor of mom.