Marketing the Tools to Understand Your Family's Past

Who do you think you are? That's the question as consumers increasingly buy products to help them discover family history and ancestral origins. TV shows like Who Do You Think You Are? and Genealogy Road Show are getting people interested in genealogy and the geographic and ethnic origins of their ancestors. Marketing opportunities abound! Two big names profiting from this interest are Ancestry and 23andMe.

Ancestry.com, one of the biggest names in genealogy marketing, reports it has 2.3 million members worldwide, with websites in North America, Sweden, UK, Australia, Germany, Italy, France, and other countries. Ancestry uses TV sponsorships, commercials, social media, and a 14-day free trial (sampling), as this home page excerpt shows. It has its own YouTube channel and 1.5 million Facebook likes.

23andMe offers DNA testing as well as digging deeper into genetic and medical info that might help consumers make more informed decisions about their health. The company has more than 200k Facebook likes and 58k Twitter followers. Although health is a big appeal, family origins are also important to many who purchase the DNA test.

Privacy is a concern with DNA testing gone mainstream. Still, looking back to the past is getting even more popular.