I had the great pleasure of “meeting” Toni, the smart mommy behind the website Marketmommies.com through Twitter. Marketmommies.com is a great site where you can shop and support Mom owned and run businesses, I adore the concept and think it’s so important for us moms to support each other in our endeavors. I love the mommy love!
Toni is mom to 3 children, 2 boys 5 years old and 3 years old and a little one year old baby girl. She worked in media/public relations and as a television news producer before children and after quiting to stay at home with her son, she started to meet moms who were following their dreams of starting their own business. A number stay-at-home moms I’ve met are, “mompreneurs” (moms who are entrepreneurs,) or want to be one.
Most mom businesses thrive on word-of-mouth advertising, especially for the start-ups. It’s a great way to spread the word and it’s free advertising essentially. Plus, most of us moms will tell everyone we know if we love (or hate) a product. Toni mentioned that word-of-mouth, coming from her pr background, is one of the slowest forms of advertising. To help her friends, and other mommies alike, Toni pushed around a few ideas and came up with the idea of creating a directory for mom owned businesses. Now, if you’re already a stay-at-home mom, like me, you may not have lots of extra income to throw around at listing your business on the web, well get this, Marketmommies.com is completely free!
When Marketmommies.com was created November 2009, Toni could not conceive that at only 7 months old her directory would have nearly 1,000 businesses in her directory, what an accomplisment!!
How does MarketMommies.com work? Toni explains, “The goal is simple. Shop and Support Mom Owned Businesses. The directory is broken down into 15 catagories from Oh Baby! to All About Mom. With the website growing so fast, I went back to get a redesign of the homepage to better showcase all Marketmommies.com has to offer. Included in our redesign is a new Blog Directory, which will be similar to the Marketmommies Business Directory. Mommy Bloggers will be able to list their blogs for free, upload their button, twitter and facebook info and select a catagory for their blog to be listed in the directory. We will also feature a Product Review category that will allow Mom Business Owners and Mommy Bloggers to connect regarding product reviews and giveaways.”
So, Marketmommies.com has a lot to offer mom-businesses, AND mom-bloggers, connecting the two for maximum exposure. Go to http://www.marketmommies.com to check out their featured business and blogger in their right side-bar, add your blog or business to their directory, and even though it may be slow, tell your friends, and business contacts all about it!
