Kids are a lucrative audience and it’s now possible to reach them online with content tailored to their interests. Platforms like YouTube have opened up an engaged audience of children who are used to being entertained with mini-versions of adult content.

However, pandering to young children can be tricky. Unlike with their parents, who may well be willing to spend money on online content they think their children will enjoy, their primary audience on YouTube is going to be digitally savvy and able to recognize bullshit when they see it.

That’s why it’s so important to develop a strategy, built on the right foundations, when approaching this audience. In this article, we’ll run down the steps to creating an effective digital marketing strategy for your brand.

Focus On The Right Platforms

First things first, it’s important to focus on the right platforms. While the world of online marketing is incredibly diverse, with countless methods, tricks and tools to sift through, marketers need to narrow their focus to a couple of key areas. These are the platforms and the channels within them that make up the future of digital marketing.

To begin with, there’s undoubtedly no getting away from the fact that the majority of people now shop online as compared to in-store. That’s made the world of web analytics, or measuring and analyzing online activity, more prominent because there’s always a way to gain some insight into what’s going on with your website or blog. If you’re not tracking traffic and conversions properly, you’re simply guessing at how well your efforts are going and not getting the full picture.

One of the most important factors in ensuring effectiveness of a digital marketing campaign is to set up automated ways of tracking results so that you can measure the return on your investment. Even if you’ve got a whole team of specialists working on a campaign, you’ll still need someone to maintain the systems and analysis tools that allow you to track performance and adjust course.

Building A Prospective

Now that you’ve got your platforms in place, you can start to build a prospective audience. Just remember that unlike with adult content, where you’re aiming to attract as many people as possible, with kids’ content you need to focus on building a small but engaged following.

To achieve that, you can create mini-games, apps or challenges for children to participate in. The better the app or game, the more engaged the audience will be, which can lead to better conversion. You can also try out new things and experiment with different kinds of content to see what works best.

However, there’s more than one way to engage children on social media and you don’t always need a game or app to do so. Sometimes a simple status update, showcasing your product or service in a relatable manner, can be enough to keep them coming back for more. It’s important not to overdo it and make it too commercial, as that’s likely to turn off even the most engaged of audiences.

Determining The Right Metrics

Even with a small audience, you still need to determine the right metrics for measuring the success of your campaign. You don’t necessarily need to adopt the metrics that online retailers and marketing consultants throw around but rather find ones that work best for your situation.

If you’re looking for quick wins, something as simple as the number of click-throughs to a landing page or the amount of times your product/service is mentioned on social media can be a good indication of success.

However, these are relatively easy metrics to game and it’s a good idea to track numerous trials before you begin to see significant results. Even then, you should keep an eye on your competition to see what’s working and what needs to be modified.

Attracting The Right Buyer

Ultimately, your goal is to attract the right buyer for your product or service. With kids, you’ll need to put in the extra effort to find the right influencers and content creators who are already aligned with your product or service.

The first step is to determine the kind of person you’re looking for. Are you targeting men or women? Older or younger children?

Once you’ve got an idea of who your ideal buyer is, you can start to develop personas, or descriptions of them, so that you can target and reach out to the right audience. A persona is simply a combination of words or phrases used to describe a group of individuals with similar behaviors, interests and lifestyles. For example, if your product is designed for moms, you might want to create a persona around that. Or, if you’re trying to target the Gen Z market, you might want to create a persona that embodies their values, interests and behaviors.

You can also use these personas to engage with your audience through stories and videos. If you want to create a sense of urgency around an upcoming product launch, you can use a persona to talk to your audience, sharing your experience, the problems they might be facing and how your product can help.

The Importance Of Keywords

When you’re building content for children, it’s important to use keywords relevant to their interests and to the platform you’re on. YouTube is a great example of a platform with a sophisticated set of algorithms that suggest content based on your keywords and phrases. If you’re not using relevant keywords, you may end up with irrelevant content that doesn’t convert well.

It’s also important to research the competition on the platform you’re using. Knowing what your competitors are up to is the key to staying ahead of the curve. You don’t necessarily need to play dirty, but sometimes it’s necessary to know what strategies your competitors are using so that you can get ahead.

Create Long-Form Content

When you’ve got a limited amount of content to work with, try to go the extra mile. Create longer-form content, whether that’s a blog post, an infographic or an in-depth video. The more you can pack in, the more value you’ll provide to your audience and the better chance you have of encouraging them to take action, promoting your product or service and becoming a recognized authority in your space.

The takeaway from this is that, when it comes to marketing to children online, you don’t necessarily need to do or say anything different. The difference is in the detail, in making sure that every part of your plan, big or small, makes sense and is tied together with a strategy.