Marketing to Women Online

Social Media Tools: Product Reviews Vs. Twitter

In a recent Advertising Age Digital article, Abbey Klaasen suggests Forget Twitter; Your Best Marketing Tool Is the Humble Product Review.  

Twitter has been getting a lot of hype lately, but is the product review a better customer relationship builder and product improvement tool?  The Advertising Age article has this to say:

For all the ink spilled on the importance of Twitter and Facebook as feedback and customer-service channels, there's another social-media tool marketers are increasingly finding useful, not just as an online-shopping tool but as an internal, culturally changing consumer-criticism channel: the humble product review.

Why Some Mom Bloggers Aren't "Advertiser Approved"

I recently overheard a group of PR folks talking about an online promotion they did with mom bloggers, but how some mom bloggers scare them.  They mentioned one mom blogger who is wide-open in what she says and is known for her foul language.  But she has a huge following.

Welcome to the dilemma many advertisers and their agencies and PR firms face when marketing to moms.   You want to tap into the connection these mom bloggers have with their audience.  You want to tap into their authentic voices.   Yet you are afraid of....their authentic voices.

Why blogs are the perfect place for advertisers who want to reach moms

The reason why blogs and other forms of social media work so well to promote products to moms is because real moms are talking about real situations using real language.  That's why these comments/reviews/endorsements are so powerful.

Why brands and advertisers are afraid of these blogs

One thing they're afraid of is what happens if a mom blogger says something negative about their brand or product experience.

But there's something else going on.

What happens when that powerful comment/review/endorsement shows up on a blog where that mom is talking about: not loving her daughter right away, feeling ugly because her husband won't touch her sexually, breast feeding another woman's child, drinking too much, threatening to beat up another kid, or using the F-bomb.....what happens then? 

Partybeans.com - A Website Designed For Women

I'm always on the lookout for websites that work especially well for women.  I use a set of criteria to rate websites based on research on how women use the Internet and shop online.

Partybeans.com does a great job. 

Here are the reasons why this website does well with women.

Design - This is a clean simple design - not cluttered.  The site uses softer rounded corners which is a design aesthetic women like.  And the color scheme uses female friendly colors. 

Images - The site features positive images of people.  Women want to see not only products, but how people use/react to the product.  The banners flash different occasions giving her ideas of what types of occasions/parties the product can be used for. 

When Should You Offer Free Shipping?

It's a question I'm often asked - Should I offer free shipping?    Is that a smart business decision?

Bottom line, it's a good business decision if it helps you earn more money. 

Yes, there's also the appreciation from customers, especially women, who love free shipping.   But I'm in the business of helping businesses who market to women earn more money.

One reason why you add free shipping is to increase your average order size.  Is your average order size $50?  Than why not offer free shipping for orders over $55.

Is OFF! Creating Packaging Based on Gender?

Sociological Images: Seeing Is Believing has an interesting post showing two different versions of OFF! mosquito repellent packaging.

In the top example, the mostly blue package includes a male figure fishing and logos for hunting, camping, and fishing. In the bottom one, the mostly orange package includes a female figure, perhaps on a walk.

 

The comments are especially interesting.  A lot of the women take offense to the stereotyping.

One commenter makes a wonderful observation about the look of the actual product:

and, more importantly, who would want to wear something that looks like a big plastic air freshener on their beltloop?

I think our commenter is on to something.  It's not just the package design, but the product design that you need to pay attention to. 

I'd love to know if the makers of OFF! did any testing and if they found one version sold better than the other based on the consumer's gender.

What do you think?  Smart idea to try to create packaging that speaks to each gender?  Or, a case of stereotyping gone amuck?

Thanks to Andrea Learned for tweeting about this.

 

Too Busy To Shop Book Review

   

Today's women have a lot on their minds.  A whole lot.

In Too Busy To Shop, author Kelley Skoloda calls them "multi-minding" women. 

Women 25-54 report that on average they think about 9.5 things in any given five-minute period.  Furthermore, almost 6 in 10 women say they have much more on their minds now, compared with five years ago.  That is 18 percent higher than the total public polled, 20 percent higher than men ages 25-54, and 35 percent higher than men in general.

More things are competing for women's attention, they are easily distracted, and they are not just thinking about themselves.  Three-fourths agree they spend more time thinking about the needs of others than their own. 

The question for brands and advertisers, is how do you market to this time-starved, multi-minding female?  Too Busy To Shop has some terrific answers.

Mommy Bloggers - Why Advertisers Want Them

You want to reach moms?   You want word-of-mouth advertising?   You want moms to get on board with your brand or product and to tap into the influence they have with their friends and family?  

Meet the mommy blogger.

Companies small and large are trying to climb on to the mommy blogger bandwagon. Advertising Age recently did a story about the phenomenon - Inside the Mommy Blogger Business. 

Despite their lightweight moniker, mommy bloggers have become marketing business heavyweights. Now said to number in the millions, these online women have cobbled together content networks that rival some mainstream media companies. And they're clearly a force that retailers underestimate at their own peril. In this "About Digital" report, we talk to a retail giant, an analyst, major publisher and a PR agency to better understand how various segments of the industry are adjusting to this phenomenon.

There's a reason why mommy bloggers are gaining the attention and respect of advertisers.  

What I Learned About Women and Design at an Art Show

For the past several months I've been doing a lot of work/research on women and design to see which design elements are most persuasive for women.

After reading Gender, Design and Marketing by Gloria Moss, I thought I'd take my new knowledge based on her book plus my own research and do a completely unscientific test at an art show.

My test was simple -look at a painting and guess whether the artist was male or female. (Then look at the caption to see if the name was male or female). The great thing about this art show was, all the paintings were the same size - so there was some uniformity, which made the research a little easier.  (Rather than trying to take size, material, etc. into consideration).

I wasn't enough of a geek to keep an actual tally of how many I got right or wrong. It was a spur of the moment idea. But it felt like my success rate was better than 50/50. 

Mom Bloggers - The Hot New Advertising Medium

More and more companies and advertisers are waking up to the power of mom bloggers. 

Nielson recently published a list of their top 50 mom bloggers.

Nielsen also published its list of the top 50 mommy  bloggers, which categorizes these influential online contributors by topic and behavior-based segment.

In what Nielsen calls “a collection of leading voices in the mom blogosphere,” the Power Mom blogger list is based on a blend of blog posts and comments, and inbound/outbound traffic captured via Nielsen BuzzMetrics, as well as Twitter followers and other metrics.

Companies are anxious to reach out to these influential women to help them promote their products.

Using Mom Blogger to Promote Musicians

I also recently read about a venture with Barbara Jones and One2One Network and Steve Greenberg of S-Curve Records to promote one of my favorite new artists Diane Birch.

New Book Focuses on Gender, Design and Marketing

Have you ever tried to have an objective discussion about design?   Do you find the conversation involves terms like "good design" "bad design" professional design" "unprofessional design"  "I like version 2"  "I prefer version C." 

Is it possible to take a subjective discussion of design and make it objective?

Do our personal preferences sway our choice of what constitutes a "good design?" 

And do men and women have different design preferences?

The answer to all of the above, apparently, is "yes." 

You can learn all about it in a new book by Gloria Moss - Gender, Design and Marketing:  How Gender Drives our Perception of Design and Marketing.

Tom Jordan was recently lamenting the lack of research into marketing to women.  Tom, meet Gloria.  Gloria, meet Tom.

Gender, Design and Marketing is based on research, research, and even more research.  it's actually the only complaint some may have about the book - there's so much research it can be a little academic sounding, but the information is so worth the read.   (Gloria Moss is a Senior Lecturer at Bucks New University and Visiting Professor at the Ecole Superieure de Gestion (ESG), Paris.)

And I understand and applaud Gloria Moss' thoroughness.  She's putting forth some game changing information that's going to ruffle some feathers.