How To Market Your Business To Women
By Jessica M. Broughton
Ladies, It’s official: Women have now overtaken men as the gender with the most purchasing power, contributing an estimated $7 trillion to the global economy. And most of the market is largely untapped by business.
This news of an untapped demographic should be causing businesses to jump for joy. However, many companies have not answered the siren’s call to specifically target their marketing toward women, even when faced with the statistic that women make over 80 percent of all household purchasing decisions. Women are not just the big spenders in their personal lives but are responsible for over half of the buying decisions in the corporate world. And in their personal lives, more and more women are making buying decisions that were once considered to be of the male realm. Women are purchasing investments, buying automobiles, buying and building homes, and are keeping up on the latest trends in technology. Despite their purchasing power and control over the market, companies are missing the boat entirely when it comes to understanding how to attract more female customers.
Before analyzing what women want, it’s probably best to discuss first what they don’t want. Women don’t want products that have simply been given the woman’s touch, such as a cutesy-fied logo or more feminine colors. Study after study has shown that women are not impressed by things that look like they are geared toward women. Women want products and services that, if geared toward women, are geared toward them for a specific reason. For example, many female-friendly tools don’t simply just come in pink. These tools are designed to fit a woman’s smaller hand shape and to be lighter to handle. A car company tried to make a women’s concept car and failed to impress the ladies at large, and the car was relegated to a warehouse. In the end, labeling a product or service as being geared toward women means nothing without a distinct understanding of their demographic.
What is the crucial bit of information that companies are missing in marketing to this lucrative demographic? According to Nancy Sacunas, owner of Sacunas, a public relations and marketing firm, the answer is simple. “Women have a very high need for information,” says Sacunas. “Companies need to focus on informing women as consumers.” Simply adding cute designs or brighter colors to their logos does not work at all and in fact may turn women away. Before women decide on a purchase, they tend to do a lot of research so they understand thoroughly what they are purchasing. Women, by their nature, need more information than the average male consumer before they make a choice and will spend more time seeking out that information.
Sacunas has experience working with a wide variety of clients, which has helped her tailor marketing plans for businesses looking to market to women. One of the things that she says businesses need to realize is that most women don’t respond at all to a hard sell. Like the start of any relationship, companies must court their female clients if they truly want their business and must do so on a woman’s own timetable. If anything, a hard sell will simply turn female clients away to their competitors. One of the biggest factors that women consider when making a purchase is how flexible a product or service is. When considering a purchase, women want to know that what they are getting will fit their lifestyle no matter what their stage. This is particularly true in the realm of investments and real estate. Most women now list financial independence as their primary life goal, over wanting to get married and raise a family. Women are not waiting until they are married to buy a house or start investing for their retirements, but those types of purchases need to be flexible enough to reflect how their life is growing and changing.
Nancy Sacunas also suggests that companies work harder to understand women as a demographic. Because women are not the easiest target to reach, businesses should do extensive research about the type of women that would seek them out. Businesses need to narrow down the statistics about their ideal female consumer and find out everything they can about this type of woman. Is she single, married, a wife, a mother? Is she a small business owner or the CEO of a Fortune 500 company? What needs are important to her in her everyday life? Because women are so difficult to reach as a demographic, Sacunas recommends that businesses use focus groups to help test how their product or service will be received by the female community. Businesses also can’t simply take their marketing strategy for a male audience and do the opposite. Sacunas echoes this idea: “Companies need to ask how women think as opposed to how they don’t think.” If your clients are primarily male, and most of your business is generated by boldly colored direct-mail pieces, simply creating a direct-mail piece that instead features pastel colors with the same message will not attract more female clients.
 What Women Really Want
|
