Call: 01225 851 044 | contact us
Robert Craven Website

Targeting Number One

Women make the majority of buying decisions today. Robert Craven explains why reaching this segment is possibly the number one opportunity for businesses.

 

Faith Popcorn, one of America's foremost consumer trend experts, said in an interview with Tom Peters, ‘Fortune 500 companies think they're marketing to women... but they're not. They're not talking to women. They don't know how to talk to women... They really don't realise that women have a separate language and a separate way of being.’  Why is it necessary for businesses to learn how to talk to women?

Research from NFWBO (National Federation of Woman Business Owners) shows that women are the primary decision makers for consumer goods in 85 per cent of households, and women make 75 per cent of decisions about buying new homes, make 81 per cent of the decisions about groceries. They influence at least 80 per cent of all household spending. In addition, Tom Peters reports that women make or influence 85 per cent of car-buying decisions, 92 per cent of holiday decisions, and 89 per cent of new bank account decisions.  Women are now the majority decision makers for the purchase of luxury cars.

What’s peculiar is that you’d never know that women are now in control  by looking at the current marketing and advertising.

Women are not the same as men, and they do not make purchasing decisions in the same way as men.  Books like Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus by John Gray and  Why Men Don't Listen and Women Can't Read Maps by Allan and Barbara Pease have determined that both genders not only communicate differently, but also buy differently. It is wrong to think that advertising that focuses on men will work for women. 

Martha Barletta in Marketing to Women explains why marketing professionals should focus their undivided attention on women.  She says that women reach purchase decisions in a different way from men, "Men and women don’t communicate the same way, and they don’t buy for the same reasons’. She continues, ‘He simply wants the transaction to take place.  She’s interested in creating a relationship. Every place women go they make connections… 91 per cent of women say that ‘advertisers don’t understand us’”.

Meanwhile men dominate!

Men dominate most industries and the advertising industry is no exception. Although roughly half of advertising staff are women, recent IPA (Institute of Practitioners in Advertising) studies show that men monopolise the coveted creative positions: they account for 86 per cent of art directors and 62 per cent of designers. Shockingly women accounted for only 10 per cent of senior executive positions. If the advertising industry is missing out on half of the talent pool then it would be reasonable to assume that this influences their creative output.  Is it reasonable for a  male-dominated industry to expect to communicate effectively with a female-dominated marketplace? 

So, we have magazines selling advertising space to male-dominated advertising agencies that have sold outdated concepts to male company executives and boards to increase sales to females. It would be hilarious if it weren’t so tragic!

I have picked the brains of my wife, daughters, female friends and work colleagues about how they feel that the marketing and advertising worlds try to communicate with them. Did they feel that the ads are patronising? Did they feel that the advertisers are missing the target?

My daughter, Jessie, in that wonderful 20-something age group, summed it up, ‘The ads aren’t the point. You have to look past the glossy nonsense in them to find out what the product gives you and whether it gives you what you want. You have to see through their rubbish to see what they are really selling.’  Sounds like a lot of hard work. What’s worse is that this sentiment was echoed repeatedly.

In fact, according to Iris Female (IF), almost 50 per cent of women said that advertisers are behind the times and a staggering 91 per cent said advertisers don’t understand them.

I flicked through three recognised women’s magazines myself to figure out what was going on. I was surprised: 95 per cent of adverts aimed at women are identical in presentation to ads I found in a 1999 copy of the leading women’s magazine (except some of the models don’t look so depressingly anorexic). Female models are consistently presented as some form of sex symbol (often in relation to some dominant Adonis of a man). It is totally baffling to work out what message is being communicated, or why or to whom. Are the ordinary, size 10/12/14/16 women meant to be aspiring to look like these goddesses? Most ads differ very little, while a few try to impress with science.

These ads are not trying to communicate with women – they are not creating a relationship, or demonstrating values important to their target customers (which is what the literature says these organisations should be doing).  Slick, glossy ads are being produced because that’s how it has always been done in the industry.

Do these adverts work? I don’t think so. The only evidence that I could find, looking at the relationship between advertising and sales, suggested a trend of sales declining over time in response to advertising spend.  In other words, advertising is becoming less and less effective, in particular for women. Surely the advertising departments of the magazines suppress this kind of information. Why would so many companies invest in more advertising when it is painfully obvious that the law of diminishing returns has set in?

I sometimes wonder if the client companies have a finance director who questions whether they are getting value for money from their design agencies; are they getting the biggest bang for their buck?  Meanwhile an entire industry is doing very nicely out of it, thank you.

The Times, They Are Achangin'

Thankfully, awareness of female purchasing power is changing the way that some companies design, make and market products – and I have to say that this is more than just ‘making the same thing in pink’. (Although looking at last year’s pink sales one has to say that this simple strategy can pay off.)

The recognition that women buy differently is being acknowledged in America.  Women do buy differently from men: they like to research more and are less likely to be influenced by advertising. So, one moral is that less direct/print/traditional advertising will be effective and subtler ways of communicating might work, such as word-of-mouth marketing and viral marketing.  To go one stage further, it is time to design products (and marketing campaigns) that actually appeal to the buying needs and habits of women.

Designed For Women

Business Week reports that women make over 80 per cent of the buying decisions in US households today. In effect, they have become nearly every family's chief purchasing officer. It's no longer men alone who decide whether the house needs a plasma TV, more shelves, a new bath, or even a remodelled kitchen. We are now in a situation where women are buying a majority of all consumer-electronics and home-improvement goods in addition to the the weekly groceries. In the process, women are dramatically changing how products are designed and marketed.  It is only a question of time before this theme reaches across the Atlantic.

In 2001, 3.6 per cent of all new products were specifically tailored to women.  That number more than doubled to 7.9 per cent by 2005 according to Datamonitor’s Productscan Online.  Some were great but some were just a marketing hook to target women.  Do you remember the Samsung SGH-E530 mobile which came in lavender pink with women-friendly features such as a calorie counter, fragrance-coordinator and a menstrual cycle calendar? Was this product edgy or patronising?

Other more practical offerings included:

• Computer manufacturer X2’s line of laptops called Stylebooks, available in green, powder blue, and pink, not just the usual black and silver. They weigh less than four pounds, have a full-size keyboard, the latest mobile processor, and Wi-Fi wireless networking built in. These laptops not only look great but also don't skimp on features.
• In 2006, 80 per cent of women plan on doing some home-improvement project, and 75 per cent of them will do it themselves. Barbara K's 30-piece tool kit will help them. These tools are not only better looking but are also made for a woman's size and strength. They weigh a little less than regular tools, and the grips are sized to better fit a woman's hand.
• The iPod Mini digital music player comes in several colours and has drawn more women buyers than the standard white model. At the same time, accessories for the iPod market have exploded, attracting even top-end fashion houses like Burberry to make carry cases.
• General Electric’s GlamCam is a high-resolution Web camera that flips open to reveal a mirror on one side and a colour LCD screen on the other. It can record video and be used for instant messaging or video-conferencing while connected to a computer, or as a stand-alone portable digital camera.
• Harley-Davidson, long a symbol of male pride, recently added a section on its website dedicated to women motorcyclists, with tips on how to ride a bike safely with the right gear. Harley was responding to the growing popularity of motorcycles among women.  Women now buy 10 per cent, or 23,000, of all Harleys sold, vs. just 2 per cent in 1985.

Designing products for women is not a feminist thing but a straight-down-the-line business argument. The women’s market is not a niche, a speciality group or a minority: women have wallets (over the last 30 years their income has soared by 63 per cent, while men's has only grown by 0.6 per cent, according to Iris Female), and for many businesses, women as decision-makers and consumers hold the key to future success.

How far is too far?

So, am I advocating that all businesses focus all their attention on this untapped market? Should every business create women’s products as well as standard or men’s products? Should we have women’s bank accounts, mobile phones, cameras? No, but some more attention is required. This is the point where some common sense should prevail.  Applying the Tesco Three Points, the business needs to ask:

• Is the product better for the customer?
• Is the product easier to deliver/receive?
• Is the product cheaper to deliver/purchase?

What is clear is that many products can be customised/tailored to suit individual needs and this may satisfy the needs of women customers.  Communicating in a way that women customers can respond to is the clever answer to the conundrum: corporate communications that appeal to women (focusing on relationships) and staff recruited, trained and rewarded for offering empathy.

If You Want To Sell To Women...

Before attacking this market segment there does need to be some understanding of how it operates: women as consumers are not a homogenous group that behave and act in one uniform way.

Nicola Armstrong from Iris Female points out that the women’s market must be segmented. Lifestyle transitions – the movement from one life stage to the next – represent powerful marketing opportunities. If you can gain the trust of a consumer at one life stage and in subsequent periods of transition, then you can keep them literally for life. If a brand fails at  the moment of transition then that trust may never be regained. For example, it is doubtful that you will go back to a bank that refuses you a student loan or account.

Marketers who want to sell to women need to recognise that:

• Women need to be treated differently at different stages of their lives
• One of the best times to communicate is in a life stage transition
• Being patronising, smug or insincere will not get you sales
• Trying to get people to aspire to unrealistic role models is futile
• Women will pay more and spend more with a brand that acknowledges her lifestyle and treats her well.

Those businesses that do not change their approach to the market will get left behind. Stop listening to James Brown singing ‘Its A Man’s World‘ because the tide is turning. More importantly, some of your competitors will grasp the importance of communicating effectively with women and will take business away from you.

Women are now the key decision-makers and purchasers to be courted. Lest the stale, male-dominated boardrooms don't hear the message,let me say it one more time: Women make the majority of buying decisions. Ignore them at your peril.

Resources

• EVEolution: The Eight Truths of Marketing to Women -  Faith Popcorn
• Marketing to Women - Martha Barletta
• Just Ask a Woman: Cracking the Code of What Women Want and How They Buy - Mary Lou Quinlan
• www.rethinkpink.com, The Marketing to Women Portal

About the author

Robert Craven is a keynote speaker and author of the business best-sellers 'Kick-Start Your Business' and 'Customer Is King'. He runs The Directors’ Centre, helping growing businesses to grow.
For further information, contact Robert Craven on 01225 851044. (rc@directorscentre.com) www.directorscentre.com

©2006 Robert Craven.

publication details

First published in London Business School's Business Strategy Review, Autumn 2006.