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.

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: 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.

Marketing to Women: Women Still Dominate Retail Shopping

A new report from Nielsen confirms that women still control the spending power in the US.  Some people estimate that we control $5-15 trillion annually.  Now, I know that saying women still dominate retail shopping is like saying that it still snows at the North Pole, but there are some shifts going on that are interesting.

The report points out that men are taking a more active role in the shopping process than they have in the past. Woo-hoo!  Between 2004 and 2012, U.S. women reduced the number of trips they made across most retail channels, while men increased their visits to all outlets except grocery and drug stores.

However women are still spending more money per trip than men in all shopping channels.  Women drive the larger stock-up or planned trips and outspend males by $14.31 per trip in supercenters and by $10.32 per trip in grocery stores.

So basically, women are still doing the majority of shopping, but the data tends to suggest that men are beginning to assume more shopping duties beyond the trip to the convenience store for beer and chips.

Talking to the female shopper is more important than ever.  So those  at Nielsen are concerned, like we are, about the emotional and rational content of marketing and advertising messages.

Women remember more and differently than men do, so talk to both her emotional and rational sides and acknowledge her attention to detail. Layering emotional decision-making opportunities with rational information will increase purchase intent and will have strong “sticking” power. According to Nielsen NeuroFocus, the female brain is programmed to maintain social harmony, so messaging should be positive and not focus on negative comparisons or associations.

In other words, women form value opinions based on both emotional and rational reasons to buy.  That’s why the Darth Vader spot for Volkswagen was a game changer.  It spoke to both men and women about the special moments of family life yet focused on a buying feature of the car.  And yes, women are the buyers of most cars too.

Marketing to Moms: Four Things to Consider Before Developing an App

Considering an app to market to moms?  A recent study found that 97% of moms made a purchase on their tablet in the last month and they’re spending significantly more time on their tablets than laptops. There’s a huge opportunity for brands to provide value for moms on their tablets.

One way to make the most of moms on tablets is by developing an app for your brand. However, developing an app, especially for the first time, is not an easy task. It requires a big budget, skilled engineers, and dedicated marketers to build a useful, powerful app.

So before you begin, there are 4 key things to keep in mind when planning to develop a new app:

App functionality – In order to be truly effective, apps must be smart, innovative, and provide value to the customer. Know when your customers will be downloading the app and why they need it at that moment. Determine the use case scenario and keep it top of mind throughout all stages of development. Also know that you don’t have to include all potential features in the first release of the app. Prioritize the essential elements and add additional functionality in future releases.

Operating systems – You don’t need to develop an app for all platforms to be successful. Rather, understand the devices before choosing one or a few. First, narrow down your options by knowing which device your target audience uses. For example, about 51% of moms own an iPhone, iPad, or iPod, compared to 52% of teenagers owning an Android. Second, understand the pros and cons of the various platforms. Windows is known for its flexibility and provides a great user experience. Apple has fewer models and screen sizes so testing is easier. However, a rejection from Apple’s App Store means more time and money to make improvements. With Android, though, it’s easier to get apps into the Google Play store. On the down side, there are many Android models and testing on all of them is nearly impossible. Finally, testing on various devices requires lots of Quality Assurance (QA), not only for the first release but also to maintain the app as devices update their operating systems. Don’t forget to budget for ongoing QA as you develop your plan.

Pricing model – Will the app support your core business or will it be the sole revenue stream? If your business has other revenue sources, you may offer the app for free because it builds mobile presence and authority for your brand. If this will be your main revenue source, the app itself might be free but perhaps it will generate revenue through an eCommerce engine or paid membership. While some paid apps are very successful, tablet users have been shown to prefer free apps with ads to paid apps. Paid apps accounted for only 23% of all tablet app downloads in 2012. Does your app offer something that customers will pay for or does it offer another value to your business?

Download strategies – Marketing your app and getting customers to download it provides a huge challenge. Make sure your app is searchable within the app store. You can do this by choosing the most relevant keywords. What will customers be looking for when you want them to find your app? Find out and use those keywords. Note, you are limited a specific number of characters for keywords. For Apple, keywords must be less than 100 characters. Another download strategy is through email marketing. Email your existing customers and include a direct link to the app store so they can download the app immediately. Make it easy for them to find and download. Also consider integrating a social sharing element into your app so users market the app for you.

Creating an app may or may not be worth it for your business, but after thinking through each of these topics you should have a better idea of your approach and strategy. For more insights on the habits of moms on tablets and how to build the best app strategy for your brand, download the white paper, “Tablets 101: A Primer for Mom-Focused Brands.”

This guest post is by Katie Petrillo. She is the B2B Marketing Manager at Punchbowl, where she writes about marketing to moms for the Punchbowl Trends blog. Follow her on Twitter @PunchbowlTrends and find her on Google+.

Marketing Travel to Women: Going Mobile

When looking at travel, women are the primary decision makers – making 80% of all decisions.  And we women are going mobile.  TripAdviser says some 40% of us use a mobile device to plan a trip.

A recently post on instant.ly identified two groups who are shaping mobile usage for tourism – Generation X and Digital Natives.    Gen X are the  ‘digital travellers’ making use of all  technologies in all stages of the customer journey  (mobile devices, tablets, desktop PCs etc.).  The  ‘digital natives’ (20th century kids) have grown up with technology and have interacted with digital technology from early stages in all lifetime situations.

According to Intrepid Travel, who booked over 100,00 US passengers for 2012,  63% were female (this is on par with the global figure of 64%).  The majority of  travellers were aged between 25 – 39 (46%).  So female travelers between the ages of 25 and 39 are their biggest market. Some 24 percent of American women have taken a girlfriend getaway in the past three years, and 39 percent of American women plan on taking one in the next three years.

Social Media, Location Based and Mobile (SoLoMo) Marketing

SoLoMo marketing is increasingly becoming a critical and pivotal tool for tourism marketing. It combines social media, location and context based marketing as well as mobile devices. Interactions are becoming digital real-time experiences at a physical location.

Top US Travel Apps / Sites

When looking at the top U.S. travel apps and sites, consumers seemingly prefer apps for guidance and the mobile Web for trip planning.  Seven out of the top 10 Travel apps during June 2012 featured a map/navigation function, while the top mobile websites mostly included airlines and travel aggregators, such as TripAdvisor and Priceline.com.  Interestingly, during a summer when gas prices were on the rise, GasBuddy, which lets users search for local gas prices, ranked as the number-two Travel app with nearly nine million users. Along with Google Maps, MapQuest and Southwest Airlines appeared on both lists but had more mobile Web users than app users.

Easter: Holy Day or Spring Holiday?

Easter is one of the holiest days of the Christian religion and yet research conducted by The Barna Group in 2010 found that only 42% of Americans could correctly identify the meaning of Easter as the resurrection of Christ.

So what is the significance of Easter today?  Is it a celebration of resurrection or a Spring Holiday?

Most Americans consider Easter to be a religious holiday.   Two out of every three Americans (67%) mention some type of  religious connotation. Barna found responses included describing it as a Christian holiday, a celebration of God or Jesus, a celebration of Passover, a holy day, or a special time for church or worship attendance.

As you would expect, the persons most likely to identify it correctly are evangelicals (93%), attenders of large churches (86%), born again Christians (81%), and weekly churchgoers (77%).  Age is another indicator of understanding of Easter.  Baby Boomers (73%, ages 45 to 63) were among the most likely to describe Easter as a religious holiday for them, compared with two-thirds of Elders (66% of those ages 64-plus) and Busters (66%, ages 26 to 44). The youngest adult generation, Millennials (ages 18 to 25), were the least likely age group to say Easter is a religious holiday (58%), reflecting the increasingly secular mindset of young adults.

Who will be at church this Easter?

It’s not surprising that Easter attendance in churches is declining.  While Easter is still the highest attendance day, it seems that the overall population is changing. When you look at the total population, 41% of Americans say they will be attending church and 39% will not.

A recent poll taken by LifeWay Research, a religion data tracking firm in Nashville,  found that among self-identified Christians, just over half said they will attend Easter services this year. Protestants (58 percent) and Catholics (57 percent) are most likely to say they plan to go, followed by 45 percent of nondenominational Christians.

Churches are planning for bigger crowds this weekend.  And, according to Barna,  here are the people most likely to invite you to a service this weekend -  women, parents of young children, evangelicals, Protestants, those who attend small churches (less than 100 adult attenders), and non-white adults.

How we are celebrating – Jelly Beans or Chocolate?

According to the National Retail Federation survey, about eight in 10 adults plan to celebrate Easter this year, spending an average of $145 on candy, decorations, apparel and food.  The holiday is one of the busiest seasons behind Christmas and Thanksgiving.

The survey found much of our Easter spending will go towards food for a family brunch or dinner: 86.9 percent of those celebrating Easter will spend an average of $45.26 on items needed for their holiday meal. As a kickoff to Sping, many are purchasing new spring attire. Nearly half (48.4%) will purchase clothing this Easter, spending an average of $25.91 on bright new outfits for their children and even something new for themselves. And, most of us (90.5%) will stock up on Easter candy, spending an average of $20.66 on jelly beans, chocolate and more. (Read Cadbury eggs here.)

 

Marketing to Moms (and Dads): The State of the American Mom 2013

The 2013 State of the American Mom report is out – and interestingly, they actually looked at opinions of both Moms and Dads.

Here are some of the results important for marketing to moms – and dads:

Men shop around too.  An equal amount of Moms and Dads, 78% and 76% respectively, shop at more than one grocery store weekly.  Most make the extra trip for the best sale prices.

Smartphones are the tool of choice.  Almost 60% of moms have a smartphone, compared to 44% in 2011.  It is certainly the primary organizer of life.  The report shows Moms are playing games (64%), looking up stores/locations (58%) and finding nearby restaurants (50%).

Baby wants a smartphone and a laptop too!  Of course, you know children won’t even know how to turn pages in a magazine or a book.  43% of Moms report their children start using a laptop or desktop at 3 – 6 years, and 25% of Moms say that’s when they start using a phone or tablet.

What are the trends behind these facts?

Multichannel Shopping.  Consumers are challenging retailers and brands to keep up with their multichannel shopping behaviors.  Two-thirds of all shoppers regularly use more than one channel to make purchases.  While the Mom report is talking about physical grocery stores, many are shopping online, warehouse stores, farmers markets, specialty stores and grocery stores to fill their pantries.  Some 70% still use bricks and mortar stores, but 47% are online.  And all research begins online before those “reality” shopping trips.

Life on a Smartphone.  We just feel smarter with a smartphone. Nielsen says in their 2013 Mobile Consumer Report that 61% of all adults have a smartphone and 94% have some type of mobile phone. Of course, we don’t actually talk on our phones.  We send and receive an average of 764 text messages versus 164 calls sent/received on our phones.  We use our phones for a variety of activities – email, music, shopping, location services and internet browsing.

Digital Children.  Hilary DeCesare, a cyberbullying expert and CEO of kids’ social networking site Everloop, thinks in an increasingly digital world, it’s important to expose children to different technologies early so that they are prepared to adapt and thrive in more advanced professional settings. The digital expert thinks kids as young as 2 can benefit from tablet use, as long as the parent “is monitoring what [the] child is watching.”