All businesses need an efficient marketing strategy to develop customer loyalty and generate revenue from their products and services. Once a company knows its target market, there are many ways to create a marketing strategy. Through this, companies can use promotional tools like advertising alongside other tools like sales promotion and public relations to build brand awareness. According to a G2 article, advertising allows companies to communicate with large groups of people through different touchpoints. However, there are often many ethical issues associated with it.
One of the big ones is advertising to vulnerable or impressionable groups, which includes children and youth. These individuals are unable to make informed decisions on their own, thus putting them at risk of manipulation. But what happens if a company’s primary business operations are directed at children, such as a toy store? How do you advertise to this target segment while remaining ethical?
Advertising Standards
Suppose a business wants to target children in its advertising campaigns. In that case, the key is to ensure these advertisements, whether offline or online, do not contain anything inappropriate, harmful or scary. That includes dangerous and scary words, images, and videos. Because children and youth are vulnerable, this content can impact their physical and mental well-being. In other words, even though the shock and fear appeals in advertising can generate awareness, such as a charity using images of the unprivileged, this isn’t the correct framework to use when marketing to children.
That is particularly important to remember when conducting digital marketing campaigns. Many children are currently being exposed to harmful content on the internet, and no company wants to be put into this category. For example, ExpressVPN’s survey on social media usage by children indicates that 26% of children and youth between the ages of 4 to 13 report have been seeing scary videos and images on the internet.
That knowledge has increased parental concerns over social media, and many have taken to boycott platforms like Instagram. Unfortunately, social media is a primary avenue for revenue generation for many businesses, and the success of social media marketing campaigns relies on target markets using these platforms.
What Can Companies Do?
When advertising to children, the best thing to do is to use their language. Businesses don’t want to come across as authoritative. When a company is creating its marketing strategy, they want to segment its target market using factors like demographics. If a toy company is targeting children 12 years old and above, they need to use language that relates to this demographic.
Likewise, businesses need to consider what tools they will use to connect with their target market. For example, if a toy company is trying to advertise to children and youth on social media, then YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, Roblox, and Instagram are the most used in the United States in that order. However, in the United Kingdom, Roblox is more popular than YouTube. According to The Guardian’s Roblox platform article, around 1.5 million children use it in the UK.
Advertising is a crucial part of a company’s success, but it can be tricky. That is especially true when a company is targeting children and youth. It’s important to remember the different ethical issues associated with this marketing communications tool and how companies can avoid falling victim to them.Â
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