Until the dawn of the internet, most brands with children between 5-12 as their primary demographic had limited direct marketing opportunities – often relying on expensive TV commercials or drive-time radio ads to get their products in front of children.
Due to increased freedom—as well as access to smartphones and easy-to-use payment applications—children today are intrinsic to direct-to-consumer (D2C) retail, according to Forbes, especially when it comes to toys.
Children under the age of 18 have long been key influencers in what their parents buy and consume – everything from television shows, games, and Christmas gifts… to concert tickets and live events. Children even have a say in travel destinations and what kinds of automobiles the family owns.
Here are some ways you can leverage influencer marketing to reach a kids demographic effectively.
How to Reach a Kid Demographic with Influencer Marketing
1. Recruit conscious, authentic influencers.
Because reaching children online has some potential risk factors, it’s critical to recruit ambassadors who align with your brand’s values.
Authentic creators value the relationship they have built with their audience – and seek to offer beneficial content that will resonate with them and offer value.
Look beyond the numbers an influencer has… and focus on their content and engagement.
- How do they engage with their community?
- Do they respond quickly and appropriately with their audience?
- What values and beliefs do they communicate – and is your brand in alignment with them?
Which creators your brand chooses to work with matters. It only takes one oversight to ruin the reputation of a strong, well-meaning brand… so doing your homework before entering into an influencer relationship could mean make or break for a company.
2. Create a simple, intuitive user experience.
Young people today often have 1-click access to their parents online accounts – and therefore their credit cards.
Kids under the age of 12 have very limited attention spans… so when it comes to creating content intended to lead to a purchase, making the user experience intuitive and simple is key.
Creatable offers a user experience that allows consumers to engage with an influencer’s content directly on the brand’s own ecommerce platform. A viewer can easily tap a button and purchase – directly from that content page.
Not only does this method allow for first party attribution, it also streamlines the steps from content consumption to transaction completion, which has been shown to generate up to 3x conversion for brands.
3. Leverage social proof and peer acceptance in your content.
Children start being influenced by their peers at early ages, often as early as 5 or 6.
Social proof in influencer marketing often comes in the form of tutorials or product demos by relatable influencers – many creators put out content on major channels like YouTube, although TikTok and Instagram are becoming major players in influencing whether young people buy a product. Brands have the opportunity to leverage these trends, as well.
Take beauty brand Elf, an affordable alternative to expensive department store makeup targeted to a teenage audience. They use informative tutorials in their influencer marketing as well as their user generated content (UGC).
This style of social proof content not only allows Elf to promote their products, it also trains young consumers on how to use them. Savvy brands know that having impressionable children choose their brand at this stage often leads to years of loyalty—and years of purchases—down the line.
Spin Master is a global children's entertainment company that tapped TikTok and YouTube star Claire Rosinkranz to write and perform its new Mermaid High fashion dolls theme song. Claire has nearly 200,000 followers on Instagram, over 262,000 subscribers on YouTube, and almost 700,000 fans on TikTok.
With such a wide audience of followers in Spin Master’s key demo, this collaboration led to a high performing relationship with multi-platform content designed to generate online engagement… and omnichannel sales.
Brands that use Creatable also have the benefit of collecting first party data, which means they can utilize a full funnel marketing approach and create a positive, impactful customer journey that has been shown to skyrocket conversions and customer retention.
The bottom line?
Kids today have never experienced life without technology. Gen Z and Alpha audiences expect brands to provide more than just a product or service. They expect transparency, education, and social impact to be part of the brand’s DNA.
Their expectations are even higher when it comes to ease of use and the authenticity of the creators they choose to follow on social media. That’s why it’s never been more important to partner with the right influencers for your brand – and create a seamless user experience for savvy consumers. Creatable is the premier platform for brands looking to tap into the under-12 demographic… while streamlining operations, recruiting high quality, relatable influencers, and boosting ROI.
Creatable offers a robust creator marketplace combined with native integration into your ecommerce platform. The result is owned content… clear, easy to understand analytics you can take action on quickly… and real-time data you can trust. To find out more about how Creatable can help you reach kids effectively with influencer marketing, schedule a demo today: https://www.creatable.io/demo.
