AVOID THESE SEVEN CLASSIC MISTAKES WHEN MARKETING YOUR BRAND TO WOMEN

There’s a fine line between attracting customers and alienating them.

We don’t always know where that line is until we’ve crossed it.

Based on our research at Female Factor, there are seven classic mistakes to avoid when engaging women consumers.

While they are not hard-and-fast rules – because so much of marketing depends on the kinds of products and services you sell – they are a helpful guideline for connecting with this powerful consumer market.

See if you recognize any of them:

1. Acting like customer experience and marketing are two different things. Women place a premium on service. Try contacting your customer service number or online chat to see if your company’s mission, vision and values come alive through these channels. In a world of busy women, customer service can be your most powerful differentiator. It’s shocking that outstanding service is still considered a novelty in almost every industry.

2. Depicting women as delicate flowers. The world is littered with syrupy, passive depictions of women. Reflect reality by showcasing women actively. (Example: showing a woman in the driver’s seat of car, instead of the passenger seat.) Companies tend to shy away from using humor with women and this is another opportunity: women love a good laugh but rarely get one from marketers.

3. Automating everything. Don’t underestimate the power of human connection. Apple is one of the most technologically advanced companies in the world and yet its stores are filled with helpful employees. Make human help available as an option and don’t hide your customer-service number as if it were plutonium. (See #1 above.)

4. Believing pink is irresistible to women. Put the pink stick down and slowly back away. Unless you’re raising money for breast cancer causes or working on the next Barbie movie, strive to feature more colors than pink in your design and marketing efforts, especially with gender-neutral products. Pink is not a strategy.

5. Creating imaginary worlds where all women are in their early 20s. The mature-adult population is a powerhouse of influence and spending power. People over 50 have the highest net worth and greatest assets of any consumer group. Yet they are consistently ignored by consumer businesses outside of pharmaceuticals and financial services.

6. Underestimating women’s decision-making power. Women’s buying power and influence is the most powerful one-two punch in the consumer economy. Women drive upwards of 70-80% percent of consumer spending through a combination of buying power and influence. They are the chief purchasing officers of most households and increasingly buyers of B2B services. Underestimating their power and influence can be dangerous to the bottom line.

7. Excluding women from strategic leadership teams. This is just plain short-sighted but it still happens. If women are an important part of your customer base, they should be represented proportionately on the internal and external teams creating strategies to engage them. Research shows that diverse teams achieve greater results.

The companies that best understand women consumers are poised to dominate their markets.

If your business hasn’t addressed this market with enough focus in the last few years, now would be a great time to start.

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