Welcome to the Neighborhood

Sign a mortgage for $250,000 and suddenly $500 for a washer or $30,000 for a car don’t seem like such big price tags.

That’s one reason new homeowners are a good target audience. Add in the fact that any consumer moving into a new home (owned or rented) needs items on a long purchase cycle, from brooms to cars, and you’ve got a target audience.

Approximately 43 million Americans move each year — half of them between June and August — and spend more than $100 billion on related goods and services.

New homeowners will buy more products and services in the first six months than they will in the next five years they’re at that same address. They spend an average $10,000 on non-move related items in the first 90 days alone, says Chip Smith, vp-marketing at Monstermoving.com, an online marketplace for relocation information and services (and sister site to online job marketplace Monster.com).

“People spend more money the year they move than anytime else,” he says.

These consumers open their wallets for more than moving vans and carpet cleaners. People buy a new car right after buying a new home more often than any other point in their lives, per White Plains, NY-based Monstermoving.

They tend to overhaul their spending habits, and try brands they’ve ignored in the past. And 53 percent of movers are 21 to 39, an attractive audience to most brands.

“On the surface, a lot of the brands we work with seem surprising, but they’re really not,” says Richard Greenberg, vp-marketing at Greenwich, CT-based Madison Direct Marketing, whose direct-mail package to new homeowners has attracted advertisers from DirecTV to music club BMG and contact lens manufacturer Lens1st. “This is a time when life patterns are redefined, and so are the products a new homeowner may need.”

Madison recently boosted circulation to 400,000 households per month. Lens1st’s new ads will emphasize that it offers the same product as doctor’s offices, without the office visit.

“When you’ve just moved, it may not be convenient to see your same [optometrist]. People are ripe to try something new,” says Jerry Young, vp-marketing at Marietta, GA-based Lens1st. “This has been our lowest-cost customer acquisition program and it’s worked very well.”

Two-year-old Monstermoving offers services for pre-move (think rental trucks and self-storage) and post-move (mortgage and finance). The site averaged 1.5 million visitors per month this summer. Its post-move segments (Living & Shopping, Repair & Cleaning) have gained visitors and advertisers this year, says Smith.

Advertisers include Home Depot, Culligan, and Midas Inc.

Next year, the site will run partner-oriented promos in addition to its calendar of three promos per year that boost awareness and registrations. In August, Monstermoving ran a Make Your House A Home sweepstakes that awarded a $10,000 grand prize and gift certificates from retailers including Sears, Roebuck & Co., Lowe’s Home Improvement Warehouse, and Bed, Bath & Beyond as secondary prizes. A May sweeps, On the House, awarded $20,000 in cash and $100 gift certificates.

Retailers are a natural to target movers. Wilkesboro, NC-based Lowe’s runs a Lowe’s Movers Program at lowes.com with city profiles, information on mortgage payments, and tips on home repairs. Visitors register; they’re asked if they plan to move within the next six months.

AT&T ratchets up its targeted marketing next year with the first-ever full-feldged promotion from its 12-year-old Move Marketing division. A p.r. push for newspaper stories on AT&T services preceeds the promo and raises the telecom’s visibility beyond the bill inserts it’s been doing since forming the Move Marketing division in 1992 to fend off new competition. Eighteen percent of AT&T’s 50 million customers move each year.

“The moving market has had its ups and downs, but in the past few years it’s been very robust,” says AT&T national marketing manager Judi Dean. “We’ve got a lot of plans for this market.”

Do you?

Shopping Lists

A few things marketers should know about today’s college freshmen

Marketing to young adults? Better take into account their frame of reference.

Most of the students of the class of 2006 were born in 1984, and see the world differently from older folks. These kids don’t remember a time before rap music, minivans, and deregulated phone service. Heck, most of them think bell bottoms and platform shoes are new.

That’s why Beloit College, Beloit WI, created its fifth-annual Mindset List to remind its professors that their students may never have dialed a phone, or used a typewriter. Here are some of the facts that have always been true for today’s freshmen. (Warning: This might make you feel really old.)

• Barbie has always had a job.
• George Foreman is a barbecue grill salesman.
• Cars have CD players and air bags.
• Weather reports are available 24-hours a day on TV.
• Big Brother is merely a TV show.
• Richard Burton, Ricky Nelson, and Truman Capote have always been dead.
• South Africa’s apartheid policy does not exist.
• They have no recollection of Connie Chung or Geraldo Rivera as serious journalists.
• Peter Jennings, Dan Rather, and Tom Brokaw have always anchored the evening news.
• Mrs. Fields’ cookies and Swatch watches are favorites.
• Nicholas Cage, Daryll Hannah, Eddie Murphy, and John Malkovich made their major film debuts that year.
• General Motors’ Saturn has always been on the road.
• Ozzy’s lifestyle has nothing to do with the Nelson family.
• Women have tattoos.
• Vanessa Williams and Madonna are aging singers.
• Perrier comes in flavors.
• Cherry Coke comes in cans.
• A “hotline” is a consumer service — not something to avoid nuclear war.
• Hip-hop and rap are popular musical forms.
• They grew up in minivans.