Are You Marketing to Women? You Need to Lean In Too!

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg

The idea of “lean in” is not a new one.  Lean in means to press forward like leaning in to the wind so you won’t be blown over – or leaning in because you are more than interested, involved – all in.  In the past few weeks, you need to have been in a cloistered retreat to miss all the hoopla over Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s new book “Lean In:  Women, Work, and the Will to Lead.”  Sheryl Sandberg is an amazing woman who tells an engaging story about the workplace today and women’s own responsibility in moving up in business.

But marketers need to “lean in” as well.  Marketers need to recognize the power and influence of the women in the consumer arena and to greet that knowledge with more intuitive marketing that allows today’s women to see themselves in marketing.  Marketers need to be “all in” on the importance of women as consumers.

Here are just a few facts that support marketers “leaning in” on the subject of women and their purchasing behavior.

1.  One-third of Women are Single and Independent.   This is a growing group of women who think being independent is their most important life goal.  They have more disposable income than other women.  They are well educated, growing in management and happy to be single.

2.  Breadwinner wives are the highest wage earners in 40% of marriages.    From 2007 to 2011, women’s contribution to household income grew from 44% to 47%.  Male dominated jobs suffered the most in the past recession and women were more stable in their jobs.  Women now compose half of the workforce and are moving up the ladder.

3.  Women don’t think marketers understand them.  Women make 85% of all consumer purchases and yet, 91% of women don’t think marketeres understand them.  Women want authenticity, transparency, honesty and accurate portrayal.  Families are not longer nuclear, and women don’t measure success by how clean their laundry is.  It’s no surprise that only 3% of advertising agency creative directors are women.

4.  Marketers need to embrace women’s tools – social media and smartphones.  The newest figures out on social media usage from Pew show that the percentage of female internet users exceeds that of men (75% vs. 63%, respectively).  A new study by Weber Shanadwick provides richer insight on this social usage.  Here are some facts you can’t ignore -

• 86% have a social media account/profile with 2.2 accounts on average
• 81% Facebook is by far the most prevalent social media account
• Women spend an average of 12 hours per week using social media (nearly 2 hours/day)
• 19% say some of their best friends they know only through Facebook or Twitter

And why is this important?  Well, social women are social and have influence with friends.  They tell friends about products and services at a higher rate, they like or recommend services online, and they post comments and write reviews about products and services online.  And they post pictures or images online.

Oh, and smartphones are the most important tools in women’s handbags.  50.9% of smartphone users are women and we are using smartphones to stay in touch with our families and friends, interact on social media, and shop, shop, SHOP!!  If women can’t easily find you on their mobile phone or if you are not competitive, she will move on to another source.  Moms are on their phones six hours daily and  readily admit that their smartphones are more important than sex!

5.  Women buy based on emotion and facts. Okay, everyone does.  But marketers don’t seem to understand that in many arenas.  In purchasing decisions, 83 percent are willing to spend more on a product or service if they feel a personal connection to the company. One fifth of respondents said they would pay 50 percent or more if they felt the company put the customer first.  And yes, we have crushes on companies.  Who are those companies?  Think about your own list.  Mine includes Apple (oh, yes even if Samsung is making competitive products), Amazon (I smile when I see a box), Nordstrom’s (even my husband knows this is my brand), and Costco (a Saturday shopping pleasure).

So what’s a marketer to do?  Portray women accurately, don’t talk down to us, appeal to our emotional side, allow us to discover things about your brand, surprise us once in awhile, lavish us with great information and advice and like any good marriage – communicate, communicate, communicate.

Marketing to Women: The Overlooked “Breadwinner Women”

Breadwinner Women

Stereotypes are hard to break.  We all harbor old stereotypes about nuclear families that are not true in today’s society. One is about breadwinners.  The majority of all American women (53%) are now breadwinners in their households, according to a survey conducted by Prudential Financial.  Among the 1400 women surveyed, 40% are single and 22% of married women earn higher incomes than their spouse/partner.

Some of the traits of breadwinner women are -

•  Women are more collaborative in decision making.

•  Women are focused on household expenses.

•  Women are concerned about taking care of others first and not being a financial burden to loved ones.

Think a minute about your customer base.  You probably have many “breadwinner women” in the ranks.  I personally know many of these strong, successful women.  Thanks to the fabulous Bridget Brennan and her blog on Forbes, here are three important reminders on how to appeal to “breadwinner women” and one more from me!

1.  Invest in Customer Service.  Women have higher expectations of customer service than men do and are willing to walk when they are not treated with the appropriate attention or service they deserve.  Just one example – For years, women have been taking a “token” man to car lots and mechanics to ensure they get the best deal.  But they won’t much longer.  Sales training should include a long look into who is making the purchase decisions for a wide variety of purchases.  Currently women have 80% of the purchase decision power on buying the family car.  Women also make 62 percent of new car purchases and have over $5 trillion in purchasing power. And when the car breaks down, women make 65 to 80 percent of the service and maintenance decisions.

2.  Provide convenience in-store and online.  Women are multi-taskers and their time is limited.  They expect retailers to offer multi-channel solutions.  They expect physicians to be open after five and on weekends when children really get sick.  They expect everyone to have easy-to-use websites that are easy-to-view on all mobile and laptop.  They want services personalized and customized to their needs.

3.   Provide a helpful experience.  Women buy more than just a product.  They buy a service.  Women love Nordstrom’s not just for the beautiful shoes, but also for free shipping and free returns that puts them in charge.  Women love Lexus because they also care about roadside service, giving you a loaner and making sure your car is washed and clean inside and out when it comes back.

4.  Provide help in making decisions.   Women like to gather information and collaborate on decisions.  That’s why providing a steady stream of information is important in the healthcare setting.  And it’s why 9 out of 10 women seek online health info.  It’s why women want to understand financial products before making a decision on them. It’s why women spend time on blogs, message boards and product fan pages to research products and get firsthand product reviews and recommendations.

Marketing to Women: 10 Cool Ways to Use Pinterest

There is certainly a lot of buzz about Pinterest.  Of course, it’s popular, driving more visits than many hot social media sites.  It’s a women’s social medium – 70% women , most under the age of 45.  It’s fun, it commands users’ attention, but how as marketers do we use it to our advantage.  Here are some tips that might help you.

1.  Add a Pin It  or Follow Me button to your website and set up boards on your own Pinterest page.  Real Simple, the print magazine whose editorial embodies the Pinterest’s female-skewing demographic, has found huge referral traffic from Pinterest, beating out referrals from Facebook in the month of October 2011.”  Real Simple has 53 boards on Pinterest and 39,926 followers.  Nordstrom has 31 boards and 10,515 followers.  Pinterest is a top traffic driver for women’s magazines like marthastewartweddings.com, marthastewart.com, Cooking Light‘s website, Country Living and Style.

2.  Use Pinterest to promote a special offering.  Starting in February, Lands End is using Pinterest to promote their Canvas products.  The product site, www.landsendcanvas.com,will feature a “Pin It” button on product pages, providing shoppers a simple way to pin fashion finds directly onto their own Pinterest boards. Lands’ End Canvas recently launched a successful contest on the site. The Holiday Pin it to Win it contest asked Pinterest participants to create a virtual pin board featuring Lands’ End Canvas products for a chance to win one of ten $250 Lands’ End Canvas Gift Cards.

3.  Showcase interesting ideas and uses of your product.  Take the example of Kate, hair stylist and jewelry maker, who started her blog (thesmallthingsblog.com) only one year ago. For the first eight months, she had a grand total of seven readers.  But between August of 2011 and January 2012,  Kate has had over 10 million page views because of Pinterest. She pins photos of really attractive hair styles on Pinterest and directs them back to tutorials on her blog.   Kate has now gained 16,000 blog subscribers and 23600 Pinterest followers in just a few months.

4.  Use the Facebook connect to foster more social media interaction.  The site now connects with Facebook enabling users to automatically post new pins to their Facebook feed for others to see. This means more eyes from other channels get access to your pictures. However, for now, you still cannot connect Pinterest to your Facebook business page so you might want to have your brand ambassadors help you out.  You can also sign up through your business Twitter account, assuring that your pins are noticed on Twitter.

5.  Make your boards the best on a particular topic.  If you want to be known for a specific topic, you need to build the board with intent, curating great images or topics.  Make sure they follow your SEO strategy.  So your business is not a visual one, what to do?  Make sure your curate blogs around topics of interest to your target.  Maybe you have photos of your culture or projects or work styles.  What about infographics or data charts that support your premise?  What about great quotes or books that are pertinent to your business?  What about pictures of your customers, maybe enjoying your product.  You could encourage a guest gallery that others could pin to.  The Today Show has a special board with antics from their anchors to help develop personality.  Of course, they have an Oscars board posted today.

6.  Use Pinterest for research.  What a great place to be able to understand your customers likes.  It’s a delight to see what they pin and their “pins” might give you ideas for other product or service offerings.  See the infographic to see if your target audience is active on Pinterest.

7.  Celebrate with your followers.  Post a board that is specific to a holiday or an event.  Valentines ideas were all over Pinterest, but you could use a board to also support an upcoming conference or trade show.

8.  Link, Link, Link.  Don’t sell, but make sure that all of your relevant pins have descriptions that include a link back to your website, blog, landing page or video.  Also use hashtags that relate to boards you have developed.

9.  Non Profit Uses of Pinterest are huge.  Curate readling lists with books and blogs that are important to your cause.  Post photos that help support fundraising events.  Picture the many good things that you do on a page.  Use it to celebrate your important landmarks.

10.  Follow brands that you admire so you can learn from them.  We have mentioned several brands here that do a good job but there are many more.  Even Mashable has its own Pinterest page.  Etsy is doing an amazing job in curating ideas for their customers.  Whole Foods has a great page.  Who knows?  Maybe I will be talking about your Pinterest page soon.

Related articles

• 10 Most-Followed Users on Pinterest (gabrielcatalano.com)

Marketing to Women: Pinterest Rules!

Women are the social media experts and they have deemed Pinterest the new ruling site.  I confess, it’s pretty addictive.  It’s a social bulletin board where people can easily post visuals they’d like to save and share. It’s great because you can save any picture you see online and post it to a specific board of personal likes – travel, food, craft projects, clothes, home decor and more.

Women love inspirations – and Pinterest organizes all those wonderful idea-starters that we used to tear out of magazines and stuff into notebooks and drawers.  I got it immediately.  For every house we have built or remodeled, I had very detailed inspiration photos that helped shape our new homes.  It’s even better than our own because we get to see our friend’s inspirations as well!

Real Simple magazine recently reported that it drove more traffic to their website than Facebook.  Pretty incredible.  Big name brands are jumping in – folks like Nordstrom’s, Land’s End, Etsy and more.  Some people say “Pin it” is the new “Google it”.

Pinterest now has more than 7 million unique visits per month. Pinterest drives more referral traffic (3.6%) than YouTube (1.05%), Google+ (0.22%), and LinkedIn (0.2%) combined, according to Shareaholic’s January 2012 Referral Traffic Report.  Okay, so Facebook, StumbleUpon, Google and Twitter still do a pretty incredible job.  But here is some of the power of Pinterest.  Collecting images rules at Christmas. Pinterest grew 44% from 2.5% of referral traffic in December 2011, after owning just 0.17% of the traffic in July 2011.

It looks like Pinterest users are primarily women (70%) because it is a place to house all of their interests.  But men could find it useful for do it yourself or home projects.

How Should Business Use It

Business should make sure all of their content includes terrific visuals that lend themselves to be pinned.  Make sure you know how to use Pinterest and use it consistently so that you are visible.  You can curate your content on boards that make it easy to find things.

Happy Pinning!

Marketing to Women: Will Women Ever Shop Again Without A Coupon?

 

Dumpster Diving for Coupons

There are many legacies of the Great Recession and it seems that coupons, deals and a desire to win by shopping smart are among the most important.  All we have to do is look around us to see the impact made by coupons and daily deal sites.  In fact,  the trend is so strong that a new television series Extreme Couponing premieres on the TLC network tonight.  The show follows along some of today’s reality star extreme couponers, creating a show somewhere between Hoarding and Deal or No Deal.

Daily deal sites have become a way of life.  I get four in my inbox daily and more are screaming for my attention.  According to BIA/Kelsey, U.S. consumer spending on deal-a-day offers, is expected to grow from $873 million in 2010 to $3.9 billion in 2015, representing a 35.1% compound annual growth rate (CAGR).

BIA/Kelsey estimates there are 178 cities with deal-a-day sites reaching 102 million people in the United States. Groupon and LivingSocial are still the leaders in a marketplace of 200-plus players, but the broader field includes destination sites and white-label providers working with local media providers such as directory companies, newspapers, and radio and television operators.  There are all types out there.  Some more beneficial to retailers than others.  I have written about some of the specialty sites like Daily Deals for Moms who provide better marketing advantage for retailers.

A new study Moms Shopping Trends Report from Totsy.com and BSM Media reveals that 86% of Moms have purchased from online sale sites and 32 percent of Moms place this category in their top three cost saving strategies.  There is a certain “high” that comes from  saving money.  The study says that one in four moms compare finding a good deal to the emotional value of guiltless chocolate or a special night with a significant other.  Almost 94 percent of moms admit to buying ’feel good’ purchases for themselves, with the most popular items being clothing, sweet treats and accessories.

But where will all this addiction lead?  All of the recent studies on shopping have reported that our shopping habits have been altered for good.  But are we really saving money, or just feeding our new addiction to save money?  And what happens to brands in this saving frenzy?  Are they becoming the grist for the commodity meal?  Some brands have entered the fray with their own shopping partnerships to ensure they have a place at the table.  One that I have written about is Sole Society, a partnership of HauteLook and Nordstrom.  More of these type of strategic partnerships will have to happen to ensure that brands keep their relevance.

 

 

Marketing to Women: The New Online Personal Shopper

Okay, I just joined Sole Society.  Sounds like a band or nonprofit, doesn’t it.  But it’s a new monthly shoe club, pioneering the idea of personalization in the group buying world.  For those of us who remember Columbia Record Club, you will understand the concept.  Every month, you are sent an email with a group of designer quality shoes priced at $49.95.  You can either purchase or decline.  The difference in this concept is that shoes are selected based on style preferences.  The style preferences are recorded based on a short quiz from which you pick pictures that portray your personal style.

Why is Sole Society different?  After all, in the world of online buying sites, there are more than enough to go around.  Just looking in my own inbox, I see Groupon, Living Social, RunDaisy, Daily Deals for Moms, Jetsetter, SniqueAway, ShopItToMe.com, Rue La La, Beyond the Rack, Shoebuy,  OneKingsLane, Tasting Table, UrbanDaddy,  and My Perfect Sale. I  don’t even include Hautelook and Gilt Groupe, two of the biggest fashion players.  (No, I don’t buy from all of these.  It’s research, right?)

How many of these does a girl need, I should ask?    You pick the ones that match your needs.

Personalization Missing From Most Group Sites

Each of them is striving to have a special niche.  Yes, they may be devoted to travel, local deals, food, clothes,and home accessories.  They may offer my selection of brands.  But they hardly ever really personalize to me. They may be local but they don’t know my neighborhood. They may be brand savvy but not know my style.  Yes, I love them but sometimes I need more.

But Sole Society seems to attempt to become a personal shopper for me.  Now that is something that will set Sole Society apart from the others. Sole Society is owned by HauteLook, which was recently purchased by Nordstrom for $270 million.  Right now, they are offering a house brand called Marco Santi, but with Nordstrom in their blood, I am sure other brands are coming in the future.

This wave of e-commerce represents billions of dollars as noted by the sale of Living Social to Amazon and the courtship of Groupon and Google. There are some 200 Groupon clones in existence right now.  Is personalization around the corner for some of these other sites? Hopefully, as the concepts begin to mature and competition becomes more prolific, the marketplace will offer better choices for the consumer.

Groupon has just announced it is launching a new mobile deals service next month called “Groupon Now.” The idea is for users to be able to click two buttons — “I’m Hungry” or “I’m Bored” — and get a deal for a restaurant or service nearby that is valid RIGHT NOW, but might only last for a few hours.  That’s getting a little bit closer to really helping me out.

And what did I buy?  Some snazzy red pumps in just the right heel height for me!

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/groupon-now-ad-network-2011-3#ixzz1H5cLDUkY