With a frenetic dawn-to-dusk dash passing for normal in a working mother’s life, marketers can find getting some face time pretty tough. But thinking like a working mom, and hanging out where she hangs out, can give any marketer a head start.

First of all, ‘don’t just put up a billboard and hope that busy, frayed mothers will read it while driving by with cars full of kids,’ advises Martin Wales, executive director and host of Toronto-based CustomerCatcherRadio.com. Instead, ‘identify where they congregate – which you don’t need to knock yourself out with market research to figure out – and meet them there.’

One of those places, which he says is ‘coming on strong,’ is Internet radio networks like his – and like The Mom Network out of San Diego on which Wales regularly participates in live call-in shows.

‘Mothers talk together about their stresses and needs and get interactive information,’ he says, both when the show is actually on air and later, thanks to archived shows that include the original advertising.

But even in non-cyber space, Wales points out that there are plenty of opportunities to pursue the working-mom demographic. ‘We know that reading is a big thing for them, so if I was Chapters/Indigo, I’d provide in-store seminars on how to run a book club. If I was, say, a clothing retailer or maybe an RESP marketer, I’d get face time with the thousands of parents who show up at their kids’ recitals by defraying some of the expenses in return for having a booth in the lobby.’

On a larger scale, but in the same vein, two major U.S. marketers recently showed up at places where they knew they’d find working moms.

More.com, an online drugstore, reached two million employed mothers in a single month by delivering direct-mail pieces, which advertised 19 products and services, directly to 25,000 American preschools and daycare centres.

Additionally, Kaiser Roth, to promote its No Nonsense legwear, sent an 18-foot ‘mobile spa’ to office buildings and women-themed events in several American cities. On offer were free neck and foot massages, a juice station, consultations with a hosiery expert, mesh bags for laundering stockings and a contest whose prize was a week’s pampering at a resort spa.