Marketing to Women Online

Marketing Credit Unions to Women

 

In your family, who is setting up the checking accounts, balancing the checkbooks, going to the bank to make deposits, balancing the household budget?  

In many families, that person is a woman.   Women make 89 percent of the banking decisions for their families.   This is  just one of the reasons why credit unions should be actively marketing to women. 

Another reason why credit unions should market to women is to attract women business owners.  Women are starting their own businesses at a record pace.  Women business owners are valuable customers looking for financing options and merchant services.   And women-owned businesses are a good financial bet.  Women-owned businesses are as financially sound and creditworthy as the typical firm in the U.S. economy, and are more likely to remain in business than the average U.S. firm.

Finally, women want what credit unions have to offer.  Women are very community oriented and like the personal touch that credit unions bring to the customer experience.

Credit unions looking for a financial edge should take a closer look at connecting with women. Let's look at specific things you can do to attract and retain women customers, including a real-life example of a credit union doing just that.

How to market your credit union to women

 

Why We Need More Women in Finance

I do a lot of work with the financial industry. Smart companies get that they need to do a better job of selling to women.  But it's also important to have women on your management and leadership teams.  It's not only good for the consumer, it's good for the company. 

Here's Halla Tomasdottir, the co-founder and chairman of Audur Capital, a financial services firm based in Iceland to explain why. 

Halla Tomasdottir founded Audur Capital along with Kristin Petursdottir, a former investment banker, just over a year before Iceland suffered an almost complete economic meltdown in the fall of 2008. Audur Capital got through the eye of the financial storm without experiencing direct losses to their own equity or to their clients' funds under management.

What did Halla Tomasdottir and her team at Audur Capital do diffeferently?

Women and Finance Survey with Vibrant Nation

How do boomer women feel about finances and the financial services industry?

That's what I set out to find along with my research partner VibrantNation.com, the leading online community for women 50 plus.  The results were surprising and insightful.

The one message we got loud and clear was, Boomer Women want financial services companies to recognize them as important decision makers.

Boomer women and finance survey key findings

Perhaps the most striking insight came from these two questions:

Sun Trust's "Live Solid" Is a Solid Winner

I'm often asked for an example of a financial company who does a good job of marketing to women.  So here's an example for you - the "Live Solid" campaign from Sun Trust.

While "Live Solid" is not specifically aimed at women, it does a great job of focusing on what women care about. 

Why Live Solid works for women

Sun Trust and their ad agency based the campaign on a core value that many women share when it comes to money - a focus on spending money wisely vs. simply accumulating money.

Financial Education Through Fiction

 

For the last two weeks I've been immersed in the lives of Rita, Marla, Jade and Lori - characters in a novel.

After Rita's husband died unexpectedly, she discovers their financial situation is not what it appeared.  When Marla voices an interest in the family finances, her husband gets defensive, even hostile.  Is he hiding a secret?  Jade, a single architect, spends what she makes and her money habits leave her feeling trapped in her current position.  Lori, a financial planner, is maried to a shopaholic husband who's driving them into the poorhouse.

Is this the work of one of my favorite mystery writers or a novel from Oprah's book club?  Actually - it's a book about women and finances - The Bread & Butter Chronicles by Starr Cochran.  The book cover describes it as "a novel approach to personal finance."

Econodrama

This is one of those moments you hit yourself upside the head and go, "Doh!  Why didn't I think of that?"  Starr Cochran is using engaging fiction to help women learn about finances.  The characters in her book are facing real financial situations faced by women everywhere. 

Where Women and Men Differ on Investing

The Boston Consulting group conducted a global survey of women and finance.  You can read all about it in their book Women Want More.

Here's an interview on Smart Money TV with Kate Sayre, Partner Boston Consulting Group discussing:

Where women and men differ on investing

It's a really insightful interview.  Here are a few key points:

• 42% of women earned all their wealth themselves.  There is a belief that all high net worth women got their money through divorce or inheritance, but a large percentage are earning it themselves.
• Women are more focused on the long term.  Men are more focused on short-term gains. 
• Women want to be educated about finances and financial products.  Just make sure you're not condescending in your approach.

Watch the full interview on how women and men differ in investing.

 

Selling Financial Services to Women - American General

 
 
When you think of products designed for women, you tend to think of razors, or minivans, or skin creams.  But what about financial products designed for women.  Sound like a crazy idea? 

 It didn't sound so crazy to American General Life and Accident Insurance Company (AGLA). 

While much of the insurance market is down, AGLA’s business is up 20% and they credit it largely to a product they call "Quality of Life…Insurance^®."    The product development and marketing was driven largely by what AGLA heard from women in focus groups. 

Are You Driving Away Female Consumers With Your Messaging?

 
The following are true incidents...

A woman and her husband walk into a car dealership. The salesman spends all his time talking to the husband. At one point he suggests the woman go into the showroom to, "pick out her favorite color."  

Only problem was, she was buying (and paying for) the car for herself.  Her husband was just along for the ride.   Needless to say, that dealership did not get her business.

Home owners in a maintenance-free subdivision that catered to many single, divorced and widowed women found letters in their mailbox from an irrigation company reminding them about their winter service.  The letter began, "Dear Sir."  

The women in the community, including married women who'd received the letter, found a more female-friendly competitor and switched their business. 

It's 2010 people.  You'd think marketers and sales people would pay more attention to the messages they send.  But there are two factors playing into marketing messages that don't connect with women.

Part of the problem is your message.  The other part of the problem is how she interprets your message.

Are Women Indecisive?

 
  
I do a lot of work with the financial industry, training people to do a better job of selling to women.   One complaint that I hear often is, "women can't make up their mind," "women are too slow to make a decision," or  "I prefer working with men because they're quicker to pull the trigger."

Just for the record, it isn't just men that feel this way.  Many women in the financial industry have the same complaint. 

Are they right?  Are women indecisive?   The answer is, no.  Women simply have a more deliberate decision making process.   While female clients may take more time to close, they are worth it.  Let's look at why.

Women have longer checklists

When making a buying decision, women have a longer checklist of things that matter to them. 

In Re-Render the Gender, Tom Jordan shares an example of his father buying a condo.  Look at the different checklists of what a man and a woman look for when buying a condo.

The guy takes a look around, makes sure he's getting a good price, and he's pretty much ready to buy.  But you can see that the woman has a longer checklist of criteria that matters to her when buying a condo.  Until she's satisfied everything on the list has been addressed, she's not ready to buy.

Women are more risk aware

Notice I didn't say women are more risk averse.  They are simply hard-wired to plan ahead to try to avoid bad outcomes.  Think back to hunter-gatherer days when men were focused on the short-term outcome - hunting their pray to bring home that night to eat. Women were focused on longer-term objectives, like having enough food to last the winter.  

In a study on how men and women make investments, they measured brain activity in the subjects as they made investment decisions.  In men, the reward center of the brain lit up.  In women, the reward center lit up, but so did the consequence center.

When making buying decisions, she is planning ahead, wondering what will happen down the road, and wondering what might go wrong and who might be affected.

How to speed up a woman's buying process

At this point, sales people have a better understanding of her decision making process, but still want to know if there's anything they can do to speed it up - to get her to "yes" faster.

There are three things you can do to speed up a woman's buying process

1. Address her concerns and objections.   It's important to find out what her concerns and objections are as early as possible.   If a woman says no, it's usually because she has a concern that hasn't been adequately addressed.  
2. Use testimonials.  Have you worked successfully with women in the past?   Get those women to write you a testimonial.  Better yet, have them record a video.  Let those women share, in their own words, what they like about working with you.  Let the women sell you rather than selling yourself. The second reason why you lose a sale with a woman is because she does not trust you.
3. Sell with stories, not facts.  Don't just list out features and benefits.  Share a story about how someone in a similar situation used the product or service. Stories are more memorable and make that emotional connection that motivates women to take action. (And just FYI, stories are a great selling technique for men as well.)

If you care about client retention, you want women clients.

Because women are more deliberate, because they put more time and research into their decisions, they tend to be more confident in those decisions.   Women are more loyal to individual service providers (aka financial service providers) than men. 

If you care about referrals, you want women clients.

Women refer more often than men do.  Ask any woman how she found her financial adviser, pediatrician, hair stylist, and she'll tell you, "a friend recommended him/her."  

When you do a good job with women, they notice, especially if it's an industry, like the financial industry, where she feels she's been ignored, or misunderstood.  If she has a good experience, she's going to share it with her friends and family and recommend you.

The choice is yours.  You can view women as indecisive and not waste your time with them.  But chances are a smart competitor is out there making a serious effort to sell to women and seeing the financial rewards because of it.