Marketing to Women: Power to the PANKs

On the eve of Mother’s Day, I thought it would be important to salute those amazing women who are influential in the lives of their nieces and nephews but have not given birth to a child.  I know lots of these important women who have been nicknamed PANKs, Professional Aunts No Kids.  They are actively involved in the lives of children around them.  In fact, one in five women is a PANK, or approximately 23 million Americans.  PANKs are roughly half of all the women who are not a mother or grandmother.  This group is actually growing as women are choosing to stay single or marry later.

PANKs spend $9 billion on toys and gifts for children annually, according to “The Power of the PANK”, a study by Savvy Auntie and public relations firm Weber Shandwich.  PANKs tend to have about the same income as the average woman, but they have more disposable income because they do not have children and are more likely to be single.  PANKs estimate that they spent an average of $387 on each child in their lives during the past year, with 76% having spent more than $500 per child.

Additionally, PANKs are younger. The average age of a PANK is 36 (vs. 46 years for overall women), a highly desirable age group for marketers because it suggests that PANKs potentially have a network of friends and family members with growing families. This important group of women are also mighty among social media influencers.  PANKs tend to spend more time on social media than women in general.

PANKs are great at sharing information about clothing, vacation/travel, websites/social networks sites, and products for digital devices.   They also index higher on traditionally “mom” categories, such as groceries/food and beverages, household appliances and home decorating goods, and knowledgeable about more male-dominated areas of expertise: electronics, automobiles/other vehicles, life and property insurance, and financial investments/services.

Some 43% of PANKs say advertising and marketing is not geared to them, and half of them say that society does not acknowledge them.  Imagine what would happen if advertisers acknowledged this group.  This important demographic would be extremely loyal to brands that reach out to them.

Marketing to Women: Dove Self-Image Campaign Elevates Advertising

Dove’s new Real Beauty campaign exposes the fact that only 4% of women around the world consider themselves beautiful.  Their new campaign has a new tagline “You are more beautiful than you think”.  The revealing video has been viewed 42 million times! What is so provocative?  Take a look.

The video shows a forensic sketch artist drawing images of women based on their own descriptions.  After drawing the first sketch, the artist then draws a sketch of the same person from the description furnished by someone else.  The resulting sketches showed the difference in the beauty that others see in us versus our own self-image.  The truth in these spots revolves around the way women undervalue themselves and their looks.  The popularity of the sentiment is undeniable.  Tanzina Vega chronicled the popularity of the work in a recent New York Times article.

Dove has worked to communicate that real beauty is more than the waif-like models and celebrities that most beauty brands use.  Does this type of soul-searching grow business?  Evidently. Dove was a $200 million soap brand in the early 1990s that has grown into a brand that has been estimated to be nearly $4 billion dollars today.

Why do women value this approach?  The brand Dove has communicated to women that it understands and values them.  This approach is not only true to women’s emotions but it is differentiating from most beauty products that sell a more unattainable beauty.  The truth of the brand is the truth of women.  The brand speaks to emotional benefits that reward inner beauty, not just vanity.  This compelling message allows the brand to speak to all generations, to launch brand extensions, and to create meaningful programs with women and girls.  A similar approach was taken by P&G with their Olympic Mothers campaign.  It showed Mothers they were valued and important.

Brands that can speak to a higher truth that women value will win both marketing to women and the purchase war.

The Mother Lode: Mother’s Day 2013

Just wanting a gift of love from these two!

I love Mother’s Day.  Of course, I do.  I am a mother.  I love spending time with my son and daughter.  I love silly cards, I love sweet cards.  I love flowers.  I love handmade things. I love hugs and kisses.  Seems I am not too different from others.  A gift is good but love is best.

Market researcher NPD  found that of the more than 2,000 moms of kids 18 and younger it surveyed, a handmade gift from their child was on the top of the list, chosen by 14.6%. In the study commissioned by Child’s Play Communications, the second most popular gift was a day off entirely for herself (13.6%), closely followed by a spa day (12.9%).  Only 1.3% say they want breakfast in bed. 

Spending Trends

In a different study,  National Retail Federation’s Mother’s Day spending survey conducted by BIGinsight, consumers indicated they will spend an average of $168.94 on mom, up 11 percent from last year’s $152.52.  The survey found 14.1 percent of shoppers – the highest in the survey’s history – will spend more than $2.3 billion on electronics, treating Mom to a tablet or smartphone.  And more than one-third (34.4%) of gift givers will buy jewelry, spending a total of $4.2 billion.  That’s a lot of glitz!  Also setting a record is the fact that nearly three in 10 (28.5%) Americans will buy their gifts online, up from 25.6 percent last year.  Mother’s Day can mean purchasing gifts for their wife, daughter, grandmother, sister, mother or stepmother.  If you are marketing to women, don’t forget that many of these women are guiding or actually doing the purchasing of these items.

That Takes the Cake!  The History of Mother’s Day

Seems honoring Mother has long been a tradition.  In 16th century England a celebration called “Mothering Sunday” was held annually—a Sunday set aside for visiting one’s mother. The eldest son or daughter would bring a “mothering cake,” which would be cut and shared by the entire family. Family reunions were the order of the day, with sons and daughters assuming all household duties and preparing a special dinner in honor of their mother. Sometime during the day the mother would attend special church services with her family.

Here in the US, the day was first celebrated on May 10, 1908, when a special Mother’s Day service was held in a church in West Virginia, at the insistence of Anna Jarvis.  She campaigned heavily to have the day observed first in West Virginia, then finally the U.S.  In 1914, President Woodrow Wilson signed a bill designating the second Sunday in May as a legal holiday to be called “Mother’s Day”—dedicated “to the best mother in the world, your mother.”

Marketing Travel to Women: Do Travelers Trust Online Reviews?

It’s the travel season.  I recently booked rooms in far-flung places where I had to rely on online reviews to steer my decisions. I looked for high ratings, seemingly honest guest reviews and photos that travelers had taken.

Do consumers trust online reviews for hotels?  Yes, of course they do, and they trust online reviews more than brand websites and ads.  TripAdvisor recently celebrated an impressive new statistic:  the travel review site reached 100 million reviews and opinions this month.  The reviews include more than 2.5 million accommodations, restaurants, attractions, and local businesses in more than 116,000 destinations.  Central Park in New York has more than 12,000 reviews!

 Here are some of the findings from Trip Adviser:

95% of travelers say reviews are trustworthy.

78% of travelers say reviews help them feel more confident in their booking decisions.

74 percent of travelers say that they write and post online reviews because they want to share a good experience with others.

53% of travelers won’t book a hotel that has no reviews.

35% of new reviews on TripAdviser are submitted by Facebook-connected travelers.

5% claim the hotel was not as good as the reviews implied, but 80% say the hotel met their expectations based on the reviews.

What signals a trustworthy review?  Travelers look for the number of reviews, pictures and images, and the quality and detail.  And all hotels should respond to hotel reviews.  I gave the Hard Rock Hotel in Chicago high marks because they have an active social media presence and will respond to guests on social media.  It sets them apart. Almost 90 percent of hotel general managers agree that it’s critical for their staff to manage, respond to, and monitor hotel reviews on user review websites like TripAdvisor, Yelp, Google+ Local, and Travelocity.

To find out how to spot a fake review, check out the infographic from Olery.

Marketing Travel to Women: Get Smart About Apps

It is becoming hard to say travel without talking about mobile devices today.  By 2014, smartphones and tablets are on track to capture nearly one in five travel dollars. And those who are marketing travel to women should take note of some of the opportunities and challenges.

Travel Decisions Made by Women

Some 80% of all travel decisions are made by women and 40% of travel is planned using a mobile device.  The tablet is the preferred device for planning travel and the smartphone is the choice for booking trips while on the go.  In fact, three-quarters (76%) of us reach for the smartphone when booking travel on the go.

Poor Mobile Experiences

So you know the drill – you are traveling and something happens to cause you to change your airline reservations.  You go to your handy app.   But you have a hard time loading the information, it gets confusing and then, you just call the airlines or the hotel or the car rental or the restaurant because it was a hassle figuring it out on that handy app.  It’s happened to me before – and apparently, lots of others.  A ResearchNow study released by Mobiquity shows the top negatives:

• 60% of smartphone owners, 52% of tablet owners found mobile travel sites slow to load
• 51% of tablet owners rated search and selection options on travel apps as complicated
• 20% of tablet owners were disappointed the apps were not integrated with their loyalty programs

Poor mobile experiences can cause travelers to take an alternative course and could result in decreased revenue for travel brands.  More than a third (35%) of connected travelers would be less likely to book again with the travel brand after a slow, confusing of non-optimized experience when research or booking travel on a mobile device.  Some of the issues in addition to slow load time are  complicated search and selection, poor navigation, not linked to loyalty programs or not designed.

Top Mobile Travel Apps

The top mobile websites mostly include airlines and travel aggregators, such as TripAdvisor and Priceline.com.  Of the 8% of iPhone users that use travel apps, the top airline apps are:

United Airlines  (1.6%)
Southwest Airlines (1.5%)
Fly Delta (1.3%)
American Airlines (1.3%)
JetBlue (0.5%)

Some of the other popular apps for travel are included in the following infographic:

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/198843/travelers-expect-more-from-mobile-on-the-road.html?edition=59193#ixzz2RWRst23x

Related articles

• Travel fragmentation is extending to mobile (tnooz.com)

Marketing to Women: Mobile Advertising Yet?

Smartphones now comprise 57% of the mobile market in the United States.  By next year, there will be more mobile devices than there are people in the world and more mobile phones than desktop PCs.

With all that mobile action, why then is mobile advertising not growing as fast as smartphone adoption?  According to IAB, some 53% of agencies say they don’t have experience in mobile advertising.  And 70% say they would purchase more if clients understood it better.  Translation:  Agencies and clients need to go to school on mobile.

The Google Factor

So here’s a tip for all the late adopters:  Mobile ads work!  Or at least that’s what Google says.  Mobile ads appear to be the most effective paid method of driving page likes, and Google reports that smartphone users are unusually responsive to advertising. Forty-two percent of users click on mobile ads they like, found the Mobile Movement: Understanding Smartphone Users survey. Of those, 49 percent go on to make a purchase, while 35 percent visit the advertiser’s site, and 27 percent call the business in question.  A lot of that clicking is on local sites;  95% of people look for local info on their smartphone.

All that smartphone usage leads to smartphone shopping. While strolling the aisles, 49% of us compare prices, 44 percent read reviews of stuff while we shop, and 34 percent are using their phones to check the store’s inventory.

Gender differences in shopping:  In a new study by Millennial Media and comScore, findings show men are more likely to use phones to check product availability, compare prices, find deals or make online purchases. Women are more likely than men to use phones in stores to text or call friends about products, send pictures of products, or research product features.

Mobile-Optimized Sites and Apps Necessary

Those that will win in mobile will have sites that are responsive and won’t have roadblocks like Flash.  I was working with a client recently, and I tried to view her website on my iPad.  Because her site was built in Flash, it was not at all accessible on any Apple devices.

Right now, people spend more time on apps than mobile websites.  Tablets seem to be the online shopping tool of choice.  Important features include side-by-side product comparison, 360-degree zoom, customer ratings, and an easy checkout process are most important to shoppers.

So let’s go mobile!

Marketing to Women: In 2016 44% of Retail Sales Impacted by Web

Whether we buy online or research online, all retail is going to be impacted by online activity.  Not ten years from now, but just a couple of years from now.  How can that be, you ask, when only 5.4% of retail sales were reported as e-commerce in the fourth quarter of 2012?

Well, here’s the news bulletin.  While online retail sales are a smaller portion, many of today’s sales are web-influenced.  In fact, 70% of consumers research online before they make an in-store purchase.  And the average shopper may be using 10.4 sources of information to make a purchase decision.   Social media and mobile continue to become important  influencers in this shopping behavior.

Moms continue to be the heavy shoppers and one-third of all moms own a connected device.  Moms spend 6.1 hours per day on average on their smartphones – that’s more than magazines, TV or radio.   62% use shopping apps and 46% took action after seeing a mobile ad.  Mobile usage is growing among moms.  It’s  40% higher today than in 2009 for these mobile moms.  The statistics for moms shopping on tablets are off the charts - 97% made a purchase using their tablet in the last month.  And 46% actually want to receive information while they are in a store.

Warning to Retailers:  many retailers have been shown to be slow to adapt, and are without tablet websites or iPad sites.  When you don’t keep up, you are giving the competition the edge and giving iPad shopping startups a shot, like Pickie or Fab.com or others.

For more statistics on shopping, read more here.