Marketing to Women Online

Recession Pricing that Attracts Women

This weekend I attended an artist studio tour.   Last year, the price for a ticket was $50.   The organizers were worried that $50 might feel too high to today's budget conscious art lovers.   So they made a brilliant move.

They changed the pricing from $50 (per individual ticket) to $60 for two tickets.  

Compared to last year, that's actually a nice savings per ticket.  And by making folks buy them in sets of two- they probably increased the number of tickets sold.  

This pricing strategy is especially smart for women.  Women love to do stuff in pairs!  They can bring along a hubby or boyfriend, or they can grab their best girlfriend, or even mom to share the experience.

What pricing strategies are working for you right now?

Marketing To Women Services - How Can I Help You?

I was talking with a client recently who commented that he had just discovered some of the services I offer.  

"Holly, I just learned you do newsletter reviews. I had no idea and now I'm quite interested. I wonder how many others don't know that?"

Yeah.  My bad.  I write this blog to provide value to anyone who wants to learn more about marketing to women.  I go out of my way to not be "salesy."  But yes, I offer a variety of marketing to women services to help you improve your results.  Here's a sample:

Women Friendly Website Review

Who is this for?  E-commerce, service, or B2B companies who have a website they think can do a better job of either selling products to, or generating leads from women.

What’s included?  A review of your website to rate how “women friendly” it is.

Rating points based on:

Male vs. female communication style – how your copy is worded, website personality

Female friendly design– navigation, design feng shui, images

Female friendly content – UVP, About Us page, use of anxiety reducing elements, use of video and other multi-media, how well you answer her questions and address her objections.

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.