Marketing to Women Online

What She's Not Telling You - Book Review

For anyone who has ever done market research for a new product or campaign that women said they liked, only to have that product or campaign fail miserably - this book is for you.

What She's Not Telling You - Why Women Hide the Whole Truth and What Marketers Can Do About It is the latest book  by Mary Lou Quinlan and other top minds at Just Ask a Woman.

What She's Not Telling You takes a brutally honest look at the Half Truths women tell not only to marketers, but to themselves.  I found myself nodding my head, "OMG - that is SO true" and laughing out loud.  

The book looks at specific things you, as a marketer, can do to make sure you aren't relying on Half Truths which can sabotage your efforts.  The secret to success is moving beyond her Half Truths to her Whole Truths.

A Half Truth is something women are willing to admit.  A Whole Truth is what women really believe, do, and buy.

Women will save the Whole Truth for those who respect who she is and what her life is about, who ask smarter questions, and who are honestly intent on hearing her answers.

How Men and Women Communicate

One of my all-time favorite movies is Lars and the Real Girl.  There's a magical scene in the movie where Lars and a female co-worker (with whom there's a mutual attraction) have an exchange in the office lunch room.

I'll let you watch the scene, then we'll talk about what we can learn about how men and women communicate. 

Women have more connections to the verbal centers of the brain.  Women often talk out problems.  Men are hard-wired to take action.   While he may not be able to express himself verbally, he often finds other ways to express himself.

Party Like It's 1909

To all my fellow travelers who are braving this blizzard - I salute you.  My personal travels started Saturday at 6 am and I just made it home.  

I was grabbing a bite to eat in one of the airport bars when I saw a middle-aged couple walk up to the bar.   They didn't even sit down.  They just ordered a shot of tequila each, downed the shot (the woman hacking slightly - guessing she doesn't do a  lot of shots) and walked right back out.

I thought to myself, "I know exactly how you feel."

In attempting to change my flights online, I had an interesting experience with US Airways.  The site could not pull up my reservation.  I couldn't figure out what was wrong til I looked closely at the screen. See if you can spot the problem.

That's right - the calendar was for December....1909.

I actually sort of feel for the airlines right now.  The weather was not their fault.  But defaulting to 1909....that's just too good to pass up and not say anything.

Marketing Gifts for Her When He's Buying

Holiday shopping can be a bit tricky if you're a guy buying female products - like lingerie or lipstick.   Joseph Carrabis has some great advice for marketers who want to help men buy products for her, and  for women who want to buy products for him.  

Imagine a cosmetics commercial that shows a man putting on lipstick. Depending on what follows in that ad, the brightness of the lighting and the colors of the room in which the act occurs, that ad will sprout legs or not. Have the man in a brightly lit, steamy bathroom, towel around his neck, powerful arms and chest showing, hair wet and tussled as if just from a shower and the consumer is greatly confused.

Have him do a bad job of putting on the lipstick, then turning to his wife who's sitting on the tub rim watching him, hiding her laughter poorly and him saying, "You're right. This is tougher than shaving" and trust me, you've sold that lipstick to both genders. It'll fly off the shelves.

There are some great examples and some sound advice that will help you create winning ads this holiday season and throughout the year.  Read the full article.

Win Customers By Treating Them Like Idiots

It is often uncomfortable to deceive people in person.   Most people don't like having to look someone in the face and lie to them.   But email......well, that's a different story.

Ardath Albee shares a story of deceptive email practices in her blog post Do Your Marketing Emails LIE?  She talks about an email she received after attending a conference:

They start off with thanking me for visiting their booth at Dreamforce. Which I did not. And the message tells me they likely sent a blanket email to the entire attendee list.

Then there's this paragraph:

"I have appended a "Weekly Marketing Insight" below which I thought you would find interesting. Sent to your Inbox automatically, it helps uncover where you might consider saving marketing dollars, which of your online prospects should be followed up on immediately, and which web pages are viewed the most by your target markets."

I thought, Cool - something useful. And scrolled down. But what I found wasn't useful. Heck, it wasn't even truthful.

They proceeded to show me a few charts professing to reveal activity at my website. However, when matched against my analytics for the week specified, the numbers had zero correlation to reality.

This blog post has already been picked up by MarketingProfs.  My guess is tens of thousands of folks are now reading about  Ardath Albee's experience with this deceptive company. 

5 Tips for Search Engine Optimization

I'm hearing from a lot of clients right now who are asking, "Are there some simple steps I can take right now that will help me grow my business in 2010?"

Yes.  One of the best things you can do right now is make sure your website is super search engine friendly.  

I know just enough about search engine optimization to be dangerous.  But I thought I'd bring in an expert instead to give you some great ideas on specific steps you can take to make your website or blog more search engine friendly.  

Michelle Strassburg has 10 years experience managing online marketing.  She has this to say about current best practices:

While there are many ways to drive web traffic to your business such as affiliate marketing, paid ads and even guest blog posts, natural traffic from the search engines will always prevail over others because of the sheer amount of customers using the search engines. In this post I am looking to highlight some of the less known search engine optimization techniques which became popular in recent months and how your business should react to changes in the search engine ranking algorithm.

5 tips for improving your natural search engine rankings

Is Your Order Confirmation Page Working Hard For the Money

She works hard for the money.....so hard for it honey...

Donna Summer often pops into my head when I look at order confirmation pages.  They are some of the laziest, "Hey, I'm just here to take my minimum wage paycheck and go home" kind of pages.

Think about it....

"Thank you for your order.  Here's your confirmation number. Have a nice day."

A customer has just spent money with you.  They have accomplished their goal.  This is a prime place to engage them to take further actions, or send them off with a little something positive to remember you by.

Make a great last impression.  Remember, the first and last part of an experience are the most important.

Here's an example from Zappos.  This is an order confirmation page working its little patootie off: