Commentary
What's For Dinner? Moms Click To Cook
- by Maryanne Conlin , October 17, 2012
While interest in cooking shows is at all-time highs, and magazines splash the latest from celebrity chefs, the real news in the kitchen starts with a click.
Several recent studies have confirmed that pretty much all moms are online now! Ninety-nine percent, per a Blogher study, own a computer, and almost as high a percentage owns a smartphone. Tablet use by moms is also higher than in the general population.
What this means in the kitchen is that, despite the growth in purchase of cookbooks in the last year, for moms, the number one source of inspiration for meals is food websites. Online sources far outpace newspapers, magazines and even recipes from mom’s mom.
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With the explosive growth in tablet sales, which are already becoming a natural part of meal preparation, look for this trend to only intensify. (Look for more ways to solve the slimy fingers on touchscreen tablet issue, too!)
Good news, right?
However, while a majority of moms mention food websites as their source for recipe planning, they don’t necessarily mean your brand’s food website. So, getting your recipes out to moms requires some outreach, and the sheer multitude of choices can be overwhelming!
Here are a few tips for making sure your brand gets noticed when mom clicks to start dinner.
1. Make sure recipes and tips featured on your website are optimized for search -- especially Google recipe search. As in most things, Googling is the fall-back search method. Make sure it’s easy for readers to share, pin and post individual recipes.
2. Work with the highest traffic community food sites, Allrecipes.com, Food network, About.com food, Cooks.com and Food.com. Advertise, upload, partner.
3. Make it mobile. While marketers are just exploring how to integrate mobile into the marketing mix, more than half of consumers are using their smart phones while grocery shopping. Optimize for mobile, integrate your recipes into popular mobile apps and explore new ways.
There are, of course, a wide variety of other tactics to employ to maximize your efforts, but these few ensure at least a reasonable presence. With hundreds of new recipes uploaded each day, mom has lots of choices when she puts on her apron and gets ready to click.
Great post and important push for brands to consider opportunities beyond their own recipe sites! Two sources that the Allrecipes.com study did not acknowledge are Pinterest and message boards. Some of our recent work shows that both of these sources outweigh the influence of general recipe sites, and that moms actually seek IDEAS rather than recipes during the meal planning stage which supports why these types of sites are primary "go to's".
Note: To clarify - we found that Pinterest and forums are more often "go to's" during meal planning, whether that happens on a weekly basis or even the same day. When it comes to actually making a meal, general recipe sites immediately become more relevant because she is looking for the "how" rather than the "what" to make.
Thanks Jenny - those are great points about the meal planning process. Do you have any additional information on the "what" versus the "How?"