If the target demographics of your brand skews females, then tighten your seat belts and get ready for a Women History Month‘s learning ride, because this post is going to take you through the adventure of understanding and targeting a female audience! After all, women have a purchasing power in the United States that ranges between $5 and $15 Trillion, yes it’s a trillion with a T annually and controls over 60% of all personal wealth in the U.S. For the majority of the brands, women represent the bulk of their customer base. It implores the question, why are so many brands marketing to a female demographic with ineffective, outdated, or failed tactics? Is marketing to the female audience a struggle for the brand? If so, then you are not alone. Research of Insights in Marketing shows marketers are often failing to connect with the female audience, with only 9% of women believing they are marketed too effectively.
Marketing to women is not as simple as throwing pink on every product or service where you want their attention. If you are wondering how to target women consumers more meaningfully, begin with understanding them.
Women are the primary consumers of products and services across all sectors of the market. They are responsible for purchasing or influencing the purchases of goods for themselves and everyone around them such as partners, kids, aging parents, friends, etc.
Speaking to them means understanding the fact that women are more complex than traditional marketing personas show. Their differences influence their views worldwide. So, before finding some solution on how to market to women, we need to understand their psychology.
Understanding the Psychological Profiles of Women
The fact is that women aren’t that complicated. After systematically reviewing 60 years of psychological and industry research, Insights in Marketing found that women, irrespective of their demographics, attitudes, purchase behavior, can be categorized into a relatively small set of profiles. Here is a summary of these profiles:
- 1st Profile: Optimist, Driven, Active: Females in this profile value achievement and making a good impression on others. These women lead a busy life and carefully manage their to-do lists.
- 2nd Profile: Conservative, Nurturing: Women of this type are very focused on their family and inner circle. These women are a careful spender and are attracted to products that are good for their family or home.
- 3rd Profile: Satisfied, Planner, Resolute: Women in this profile are predictable. They might seem rigid or inflexible, but routines help them clear the clutter of unnecessary decisions and minimize stress.
- 4th Profile: Uncertain, Stressed, Loner: Women in this category are dealing with the stress of trying to keep up with the momentum of life and need affirmation from others. They will splurge, but not wastefully.
- 5th Profile: Social, Open, Outgoing: Women in this category are experienced junkies. They are a high-energy enjoyment seeker. They open to trying and buying, but you will need to vibe for their attention.
Top 5 Tips for Marketing for Female Demographics
- Don’t Stereotype your Marketing Messages
This might come as a shock to you, but you just cannot create a single type of message and expect it to be relevant with all types of women globally. The good news is, the majority of the brands know this already and split their messaging into buckets like “single mid-20’s urbanite” and “new mothers”, but even targeting on that level can often be too broad. A new mother in a small town in a rural area will be having a different experience, expectations, and requirements than a new mother in downtown San Francisco.
Narrow your marketing demographic to be as specific as you can possibly get, then think through the desires, requirements, and triggers of that further defined target group. Develop content and draft messages that speak to this more refined audience.
- Ditch the Pink(or at least use it thoughtfully)
Recoloring a package pink might have surely worked in the ’50s, but today a simple and altogether too common color change will not really grab the attention of your target female demographic. And won’t even help you in getting started on the ‘Pink Tax’ that some brands insist on placing on products designed particularly for women.
You shouldn’t be surprised to hear women purchase more than 50% of traditional male products, including home, automobiles, improvement products, and consumer electronics. And this doesn’t mean Amazon will have to make a pink “Echo for Her”; what this directly implies is that marketers need to strip away the genderization of such commodities and rather create marketing messages and campaigns for these products that resonate with targeted women audiences.
At the end of the day, it’s not the product, but It’s the content of the message that distinguishes a campaign and makes it resonate with women.
- Think outside of Traditional Market Research
Traditional marketing research depends upon recalling and language, both of which are centered in the conscious brain. While we need to understand the subconscious brain to improve marketing for women, it is literally impossible for us to do so by utilizing traditional marketing research techniques. To unveil deeper insights into what makes women tick, it’s important to blend traditional marketing research with other approaches to better capture the subconscious of the respondents.
- Employ Women from Different Backgrounds
One of the best methods to market to women is to employ females on your team. And not just one woman or one kind of woman, but multicultural women who can share their diverse perspectives with your business and strategize marketing accordingly.
Having women from different backgrounds at the table of creation helps in ensuring that you are targeting your female consumers with intention. And doing so also enhances your offering because a diverse array of ladies’ voices will be capable of bridging gaps in the market to your attention.
Marketing to women is less about gender and more about having a human layer to your approach.
It means developing a brand that prioritizes people. Take the help of data and it will guide you in trying an intersectional approach.
Why Do Marketers Need to Market Women Differently?
It’s far too generic to split the whole population into two groups and those two groups that can be formed can only be done on the basis of gender. If we are planning to build a marketing strategy that targets women, we should remember that different women have different needs and requirements. They are all in different situations, on the basis of their age, location, their families, and so on. If you focus on one type of woman, you risk missing large sections of the women population as well.
You actually need to go deeper to find out what motivates your maximum target audience. Issues such as age and income are often far more important than they are considered, but not everyone agrees. We believe there is a need to understand that marketers should market differently to women and tailor their marketing campaigns accordingly to stay relevant to each type of women and obtain maximum attention and sales.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Aashish Yadav
Content Writer, Martech Cube
Aashish is currently a Content writer at Martech Cube. He is an enthusiastic and avid writer. His key region of interests include covering different aspects of technology and mixing them up with layman ideologies to pan out an interesting take. His main area of interests range from medical journals to marketing arena.