| Gender Marketing |
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Women in relationships should be in everyone's target market because these women make the decision to buy, or strongly influence the decision to buy, in 80% of all consumer goods sold, even in such seemingly male markets as motorcycles, technology or house sales.
Online, the female dominant trend continues. Females outnumber males on social networking sites. According to a recent study by pingdom, 16 out of 19 of the most popular social networking sites had a 53% majority of females. The sites with the highest female audience are Bebo, MySpace, Classmates.com and Xanga ranging from 65%-68% female.
Twitter and Facebook tend to be, while still female dominant, closer to a 50/50 split. Slashdot, Digg and Reddit are the exceptions, with between 60%-82% male to female ratios.
This should make e-marketers think about how they are marketing on social networking sites because women buy for different reasons than men.
- Women tend to react better to storytelling. They'll buy something because they tell themselves a story about how having it will change their lives, improve themselves or their relationships. Men buy because they want it. Women tend not to buy without the emotional storytelling component. That's why so many diet programs, exercise machines and self-help books are sold to women. It's an easy product to tell a story about. Buy this and just imagine how good you'll look/how sexy he'll find you/how your relationship will improve/how you'll become a better person.
- Women want "relationships" with the people they do business with or with the idea of the product. It's not a sale, it's a relationship.
- Women want to feel they know you before they move on to business. Women must share a bond that men doing business with men never pursue. In fact, men mistakenly blame female salespeople for moving "off topic" when their female colleagues ask about another woman's handbag or admire her shoes. Actually, the women are being very perceptive when they do so. Sticking strictly to business may be a mistake when dealing with women.
- Avoid hierarchy, qualifications and waving past victories at women. (After Harvard, I won the Cheerios account when I was made the youngest partner in our prestigious Wall Street firm.) Women don't care, won't be impressed and in fact, they turn off at such tactics.
- Depression and anxiety are strong shopping triggers for women. Tap into ways to make them feel better and you're hitting paydirt.
- Be honest, sincere and show you care. Don't blow smoke at women, they are born detectors of b.s.
- Make introductory statements, not directive. "I'd like to show you how this can save you time vs You must have this!"
- Give them the features. They need lots of details to make a decision, to compare and contrast with other products and other service providers.
- Acknowledge that women have many irons in the fire and appeal to them by showing how you can help them do what they want to do.
Why do they work that way?
- Women's brains have strong connections between left and right sides. They are born multi-taskers whereas men feel they must do "one thing at a time".
- Women have a larger hippocampus which controls memory. They have a better memory for detailed information such as features and benefits offered in various models.
- Women's brains contain neurons created during empathic interaction and they rely heavily on those brain areas. They have an enhanced ability to feel compassion, in fact, they need to feel it.
- Women compete with themselves differently to how males compete amongst themselves. Women focus on finer details, subtle social cues, body language, expressions.
- Women have an enhanced language ability. Words matter. Spelling and grammar errors will bother women more than men.
Bear these traits in mind when interacting on social networking sites and keep women in your sights, because they will likely be the ones buying most goods and services. If you know how to speak to them, it improves your marketing outcome online as well as face-to-face.
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| Signing Up with Constant Contact? |
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If you are planning on signing up with Constant Contact to have me do your newsletters, or to do them yourself, will you kindly sign up under my business name so that I get credit for referring you? I get a little bit of money for it, and it costs you nothing. Thanks!
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| Note to Self |
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Happy Valentine's Day
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| About Me |
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No, I'm not in the Red Hat Society. I'm just a woman with a red hat. A rogue red-hat-wearing female.
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Laurel Ennis |
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Contact:
604.536.4702
I am a professional writer, copywriter (person who writes advertising copy) and e-mail marketing specialist with a B.A. degree and a post-graduate diploma in design.
I work with Constant Contact which is the industry leader in email marketing. Their reputation online gets your marketing material past spam filters. Their database set-up prevents duplicate e-mails and reports back on how your e-mails did. How many opened it? How many clicked on the link to your website?
I design, create, write and send out e-mail marketing campaigns for my clients and report back on how they did. My clients have a better than average open rate (% of recipients who open an e-mail marketing piece) due to my writing/design savvy. I do database management so my clients don't have to worry about that.
What I do is oversee every aspect of my client's e-mail marketing campaigns. I can write the articles and I can create the graphics. Writers don't generally do graphics and graphics artists aren't writers. I am the one-stop-shop for e-mail marketing and I do it at an affordable rate suitable for small businesses and entrepreneurs.
e-Newsletters
are my niche
in the marketplace.
It's a niche
I know.
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| Word of the Month |
As a reader and a writer, I am a word enthusiast. Here's one you may not know.
Alphette (AL-fett)
1) Otherwise known as an "alpha female", the dominant female in a pack of animals. Alpha females in wolves are dominant over the other females and over the alpha males as well. Because she can provide the pups, the males must obey her wishes or be disqualified from mating with her.
2) A self-assured and strong woman who displays strong leadership traits.
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TIP-Get Measurable Results |
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When you send your e-mail marketing out into the world wide web, what happens to it?
Constant Contact e-mail marketing reports back. It will tell you how many e-mails you sent, the number that were opened, who opened their e-mails, who clicked on your links and which links they clicked on. You can also get lists of new subscribers, unsubscribers, bounces and check if anyone filed a spam complaint against you. By understanding the individual campaign results, you will know your subscribers better and build more effective future e-mail campaigns.
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