The value of a conversation with an Alpha Mom should not be underestimated. Her feedback will make your product or service better, easier to sell and more beneficial to more consumers. She will help you zero in on what's best for your target audience (she is, after all, one of its leaders) and will ultimately help you sell.

This all makes it a bit difficult for brands to, well, sort out who is who. And as is typical in social media, the landscape keeps shifting. As we enter the second decade of the 21st century, keeping an eye on that moving target is going to require more information and more time to absorb it.

For busy, multi-tasking moms, the smartphone functions as a primary tool for keeping her life in order. Companies that can help her will be embraced; all others will be marked as spam.

This past Black Friday, as I made my way through the aisles of merchandise, I started thinking of the importance of holiday marketing plans and the impact of holiday sales to a company's bottom line and indeed, the entire year. One of my favorite holiday songs started playing over the store's speakers and I couldn't help but apply my own marketing tactics, set to the lyrics of the song.

In a market like this, businesses need to identify what they want to deliver and why it will benefit this market. Next, they need to take advantage of the wealth of available online tools to effectively communicate the value that they are offering. Only then will they win the attention of these savvy buyers.

I'm not advocating a reckless "anything goes" approach, especially for brands with significant equity. We do, of course, live in a litigious society. But by being too cautious one runs the risk of ignoring those moms who can be your biggest advocates and your best defense in a crisis situation.

It's a challenging task even as the economy begins to recover -- but the fact that 74% of women feel misunderstood by automotive marketers might have something to do with the industry's difficulties. Paired with BabyCenter's August 2009 "Talk to Mom" study, which found 29% of its moms were planning to buy a new car in the next year, this statistic is even more compelling.

Halloween is over, Christmas ads are fattening our Sunday papers already, and moms are already exhibiting the behaviors I believe will drive the smartest marketing tactics for 2011.

Research data and philosophical approaches toward engaging mothers are often written about here. Today, I'm going for practical and immediate tips to improve your mom-marketing.

What continues to amaze me is the sheer proliferation of ways to approach the mom consumer. It's mind-boggling and ever-changing. Unlike traditional advertising and promotions, which offer myriad ways to reach the consumer, the online space is on hyper-drive.