the 8 myths of marketing to women

8/8/2019 The 8 Myths of Marketing to Women

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the eightmyths o marketingto women



The Eight Myths o

Marketing to Women

The good news about marketing to today’semale consumer is that when you lookinside her wallet, it is bulging with cash.Women are earning more, spending moreand making & inluencing a greater rangeo purchase decisions than ever beore.

They are choosing the grocery brands,controlling major purchase decisions inthe home and selecting the lender that heramily makes a mortgage payment to eachmonth or 20-30 years.

So what is stopping marketers rom speakingto the most lucrative and inuential consumer?

There are o course many answers to thisquestion and they are all tied to themisconceptions and misunderstandings thatstill exist around marketing to women.

The body o research that orges theargument that marketing to women should be

dierent rom men is still new and challengingor many people. As a result, mythologyprevails.

Myth # 1: Women aren’t

really that dierent to men

It was December 1974, and a hot, humid day.Hundreds o women marched through thestreets o Sydney’s CBD with placards, shouting

or equal opportunity. Spurred on by recentlegislative changes, the release o GermaineGreer’s book The Female Eunuch and theworldwide ocus on greater pay or women,gender equality had well and truly arrived to thesocial conscious o the western world.

Since then, women have ought or and wonsome major achievements in the area o equal opportunity. And here lies the sourceo the most common myth about marketing

to women. Women have worked so hard orequality – doesn’t treating them dierentlyreverse the achievements o the women’smovement?

Why would a brand want to marketspecifcally to women rather than marketing toeveryone?

While women continue to strive or equality

in the workplace, there is a growingunderstanding and acceptance that womenand men are dierent. Unortunately, thereis a common misunderstanding that thesetwo behaviours are at cross purposes andthat a measure o equality should be treatingmen and women the same. Let’s clear upthe conusion – ‘equal’ and ‘same’ have verydierent meanings in this context.

Yes, women want equal opportunity but that

doesn’t change the act that women and menare undamentally very dierent. These twoissues are mutually exclusive and the notiono marketing to women by frstly recognisingthe scientifcally proven dierences betweenthe sexes is in no way aimed at underminingequal opportunity or women.

I you choose to view the issue rom thisperspective, you will have a ar more powerulplatorm or marketing to women; you will eelless guilty and more confdent about speakingdirectly to your emale customer – looking herin the eye and speaking right to her, ratherthan eeling like your brand has to pass hersecret notes.

Once you give your brand permission to talkto women dierently, you can strengthenthat with a greater appreciation or theundamental dierences between men and

women and how this eects responses tomarketing. Later in the book, we will lookat what makes women so dierent when itcomes to purchase behaviour.

Myth # 2: Women earn a lot

less than men

While women’s salary rates have increased,it is still assumed that across the board,women earn signifcantly less than men. It istrue that in many industries women still earnless than men or the same job. Howeverthe scales are tipping and the gap is closingaster than ever beore.



It is this trend, the comparative increase inincome over time that deserves particularattention. Think about it – i the average malesalary is increasing at 5% over time and theaverage emale salary is increasing at 10%,

which market would you want to be exploring? The emale segment, as it is the aster growingconsumer market.

More important than salaries, however, isemale spending power. As outlined in theprevious chapter, women are three consumersin one – they are buying or themselves,they are buying or their amilies and in moreand more cases, they are buying or theirworkplace or business.

Myth # 3: Women don’t make big

ticket product decisions

Women still dominate decisions at thesupermarket checkout. Despite the increase inemale workorce participation rates, womenstill account or more than 80% o primarygrocery

shoppers12. Ask 10 married men what brando washing powder, soap or cereal is in thecupboard and you may get a ew blank stares.

But it is the emale inuence over biggerticket items that is attracting the attention o marketers o products that have traditionallybeen purchased by a predominantly maletarget audience.

Women are buying $10,000 home stereo

systems. They are buying luxury sports carsor themselves and they are confdentlymarching into Bunnings and purchasing apower tool or a DIY home renovation.

To assume that women are not makingmajor purchase decisions is to simply ignorethe acts.

Myth # 4: Marketing to women

requires a ‘niche’ approachI have oten sat in a boardroom givinga presentation on our SheMarketingTMmethodology or research results on the emale

market. The room oten contains a mixtureo believers and non believers. Just like myairplane conversations, I am invariably askedthe question:

“Why would we want to develop a nichemarketing campaign just or women and howwill we measure it?”

O course, the answer to that lies in onesimple act – women make up more than 50%o the population and make more than 80% o all purchase decisions.

I was actually asked this question by the CEOo a company that we were recommending a

$250,000 women’s marketing program to. Hehad valid concerns about the measurabilityo the proposed program. Ironically, he had

just signed a multi-million dollar ootballsponsorship deal, or which he was unlikelyto ever be able to measure the return oninvestment.

Marketing to women isn’t about developing aspecial, separate, niche campaign. It is aboutincluding and speaking to the unique needs

o women and directing a greater proportiono your budget and marketing emphasis tothe market that is the astest growing andthe segment most likely to become walkingadvocates or your brand.

One o the greatest challenges or anymarketing manager is how to segment theirtarget audience. There are hundreds o segmentation models that defne ‘clusters’

o consumers by age, demographic, income,liestage, sexual preerence, hair colour, typeo dwelling and the car they drive, along witha whole range o attitudinal defners such astheir eelings about the environment, levels o career ambition, political alignment and so on.

The act is, you could drill down yoursegmentation so ar and split it so many waysyou could end up with clusters containing

just one customer. O course, that would be

counter-productive to the exercise – with thekey objective being fnding commonalitiesbetween customers in order to tailor yourmarketing eorts to segments.



So when emales are considered a ‘niche’ Iget conused and rustrated given that theygenerally make up the largest and mostvaluable consumer segment.

Myth # 5: Marketing specifcally towomen alienates men

I you are marketing to women, you can’t bemarketing to men, right? Wrong!

Unless you are marketing products suchas tampons, lacy lingerie or mascara,chances are you are marketing to both menand women. In act, at Splash ConsultingGroup, although our specialisation is theemale market, we do 80% o our work withorganisations that market to men and womenbut see an opportunity to more eectivelymarket to women.

In 2002, we worked with Wizard Home Loansto develop and launch a new home loaneature called ‘Pregnant Pause’ – a maternityleave option or your mortgage which allowsyou to put your payments on hold or a period

o time when you go on maternity leave whereworking couples drop back to a single incomeor a period o time.

While Pregnant Pause was clearly marketedat women, it was a campaign and a messagethat resonated just as strongly with men.

Women, in many respects, are generally morediscerning consumers than men. They havehigher expectations and will rate your brand’sperormance on a wider and more complexrange o criteria. Aim to please your emalesegment and you might be surprised at howpositively your male audience responds.

As the saying goes … Meet the expectationso women and you will oten exceed theexpectations o men.

Myth # 6: Women are

uncomortable being marketed to

“Our research has ound that women don’twant to be treated any dierently rom men”,the research manager or a major bankchallenged me with.

Ater asking a ew simple questions, it becameclear that the structure o the research skewedthe results to say the least.

Firstly, the qualitative research was conducted

with men and women in the same ocusgroups (not something we generallyrecommend).

Secondly, the primary quantitative (survey)question was, “Do you think, because you’rea woman, you have special needs rom abank?”

Gee, talk about research that makes youeel comortable to share, reveal and give

meaningul input!I could fll the next 100 pages with casestudies where marketing a product specifcallyand directly to women has been successulbut instead I have chosen just a ew dozenwhich we look at in part three o the book.

As women, we know the obvious – we aredierent rom men. We know we oten haveunique needs and oten are seeking special

treatment. Not in an elitist sense, but in a waythat a brand says ‘We understand you, yourlie and your needs.’

There is more about researching womenlater but the key to getting real, honest andvaluable insights is making women eelcomortable frst and then inviting them toshare ideas and thoughts in an open, non-threatening way.

Myth # 7: Marketing to women isabout painting it pink

From the day we are born, we areprogrammed by colour – pink or girls andblue or boys. It is a universal coding o gender. O course as we grow up, our parentsdress us in colours other than the pinkand blue playsuits that dominate our earlywardrobe but no matter what age we are,

we all recognise pink and blue coding as thevisual representation o girl and boy.

So i pink is so universally identifed as emale,surely producing a pink logo, brochure or TV



ad splashed with a bit o pink would connectwith women? I only it were that easy.

As US marketing to women experts Lisa

Johnson and Andrea Learned state in theirbook Don’t Think Pink, “Pink campaigns eellike a patronising pat on the head or manywomen … many companies have awakenedto the (marketing to women) opportunity,yet remain in need o strategies to respondeectively in order to increase their marketshare among women”.13

An eective, enduring marketing to womenstrategy requires an in-depth understanding

o the many complexities o the emalemarket and a multidimensional, holistic andmost importantly,

long-term approach that is embracedconsistently across all areas o your business.

This sounds like quite a commitment, and itis. But the rewards are there or brands willingto make such a commitment.

Anyway, i marketing to women was about

painting it pink, we’d all be scooting aroundtown in uschia hatchbacks.

Myth # 8: Marketing to Women is

easy – SEX SELLS!

A emale riend o mine recently popped intoher local hardware store one Friday aternoonto pick a ew things or a DIY job she wasdoing at home. As she walked through the

ront door she did a double take, closed hereyes and opened them again to make sureshe wasn’t seeing things. Nope, she wasn’t– the girls walking around the store were inbikinis and they were serving ree beer tocustomers.

In this case, sex certainly did not sell. Eveni she was conronted with hal naked guysserving champagne, I doubt she would havebeen overly impressed either. It certainly

would have grabbed her interest, butultimately been a distraction rom what shewas there to buy and the store’s opportunityto build a meaningul relationship with her.

Sex doesn’t sell. In act it never really did.It’s a lazy way to market. It might grab someshort-term attention or your brand but i youare committed to building long term loyalty

and the profts that come with it, you will needto make more o an eort.

This report is an extract rom SheMarketing; The Science o Marketing to Women,available in hardback and paperback. Youcan purchase rom any Dymocks Bookstoreor online at www.shemarketing.com.au

All rights reserved. No part o this report may be reproduced, stored in aretrieval system or transmitted in any orm or by any means, electronic,electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording or

otherwise, without permission in writing rom Splash Consulting Group.

SheMarketing TM is a global trademark registered to Splash Consulting Group.

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