Marketing to Women, Don't Ignore the Female Dollar

Research has shown that today, women often earn as much as men and in families, they frequently control the finances. This means that women have a lot of purchasing power and cannot be ignored.

This is especially true in the areas of home furnishings, health, weight loss and domestic appliances. Research clearly shows that these areas women's purchasing power is much higher than that of men.

As a result, if you target these areas for your on-line marketing campaigns you must write your copy and design your site to appeal much more to women than to men.

Women as Buyers

Overall, women are less decisive than men when it comes to making purchasing decisions. Men, typically, will make a quicker, more 'on impulse' decision and take a far more linear route towards making a decision. Women, in contrast will tend to go into lots of detail about their purchasing decision and will check and re-check any information that they are presented, particularly if they are uncertain about something.

As women feel more satisfaction in caring for others, they tend to go into high levels of detail when making a purchase, and they are always on the lookout for where best to spend their money. They also want the best and most suitable product on the market to suit their needs.

As a result of this, women take a more spiral type of decision path and require more reassurance that their purchase is going to be the right choice.

For women you need to create empathy with your website as women are more person-orientated. Women take longer to make a decision, so ensure that your website covers all the levels of detail that they will require to make a purchase.

Factors when Marketing to Women:

When aiming your content towards women, here are some of the factors to consider:

1. Ensure that your website has a more personal approach. As a minimum, ensure that you have a profile section about you on the site.
2. Write the website in the first and second person.
3. Use emotional advertising
4. Focus on human benefits rather than just the plain facts and figures. Think of the emotional impact.
5. Make sure that all the details of the product you are promoting are on your website and no more than one click away from where the user is now.
6. If there are any details supporting the product (medical backing and clinical studies for example) ensure that these are available on the site.
7. Make certain that you have a personal touch. Liberally use testimonials, have review sections and figures on how many people have visited the site recently. A forum is a good idea to get user feedback. Allow discussions on the 'hot topics'.

How to Write for Women

Women make decisions in groups and are more people oriented. Women value relationships with other people and believe that nothing is too mundane or profound in a relationship.

Women's aspirations are more family and benefit oriented. Not immediate personal benefit, but broader benefits. Your site should reflect this. Women crave detail, richness and depth and your site must reflect this. But the site still needs to be logically organised and easily navigable. Women do not like a messy site either.

Do not make the common mistake of putting the product centre stage. It is not the 'product as hero' for women, but how the product can be beneficial to the problems women face.

Use case studies focussing on normal women. It's not the aspirational that women latch onto, they want to see other women like themselves.

Use everyday language and focus on the human benefits. Use emotional styled ads to create lots of empathy.

When using images, feature women prominently and think about the right kind of image.

Women are good at giving feedback and online surveys and quizzes are an excellent way to glean more information from your target audience.

If you are targeting both women and men, then have separate landing pages for both sexes and separate navigation through your site.