Why She Buys (28 page)

What will be interesting to watch over the next five years is whether bloggers’ credibility diminishes as they begin to accept more advertising, product placements, and corporate largesse. It would be ironic if the very people who seek bloggers’ endorsements because of their credibility—marketers—end up undermining it through their efforts. Indeed, this very issue has led the Federal Trade Commission to establish guidelines mandating that bloggers disclose “freebies” and compensation for the products and brands they promote.

Women: The Original Social Network

It used to be that marketers wanted people to love their products; now they will happily settle for “like”—at least on Facebook, the largest social networking site in the world. Leveraging the viral power of social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, LinkedIn, MySpace, and Flickr, as well as the vast number of online community groups, has become an all-consuming quest for consumer businesses. And it’s no wonder. Social networks are like big rooms where millions of people are gathered, talking enthusiastically. Marketers, of course, want to get in on the conversation, but this is easier said than done. Typically, the goal is to recruit as many fans and friends as possible for products and campaigns. It’s interesting to consider that for nearly the entire span of human history, being a friend has meant that at the very least, one had to be human. What kind of “friendship” can a person realistically forge with an inanimate object, like a brand of mustard? Marketers are working day and night to push the boundaries and find out.

As with bloggers, but on a much larger scale, the mass documentation of people’s lives makes it inevitable that they will mention the brands, products, movies, restaurants, and service providers with which they interact.

Getting involved in people’s conversations without being viewed as intrusive, slick, or overtly promotional is challenging. One can imagine the agony of producing an expensive YouTube commercial that goes nowhere, while an amateur’s 30-second shot of his cat sneezing becomes a global hit. The truth is that like any other form
of media, consumers aren’t in it for the advertising. And while social networks have become sophisticated at segmenting consumers’ profiles for the benefit of advertisers, a great way to get talked about online is to first identify which sex is doing most of the talking. Can you guess?

Globally, women spend more time on social networking sites than men do.
¹⁰
This isn’t surprising, given the fact that women have long driven social communication in the offline world. Females constitute the majority of Facebook users (57 percent) and are more active on the site than men. They have 8 percent more friends and supply the majority (62 percent) of sharing and updating.
¹¹
As we have already learned, women routinely recommend products to friends and ask for opinions from other people. When they find a great product, women feel it’s their
obligation
to tell their friends. Enter social networks, which magnify these natural female behaviors and make women’s “word-of-mouth” publicity even more invaluable to businesses. Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg put it this way:
“The world’s gone social. And women are more social than men.”
¹²

As people share their lives through status updates, tweeting, posting photos, and voicing their opinions, they are often “advertising” products on social networks in the most credible way possible without necessarily realizing it. Every time someone poses a question like
“Any ideas for what I should get my husband for Valentine’s Day?”
the word-of-mouth recommendations start flying. Naturally, the vast majority of women who answer such questions don’t see themselves as promoting a product; they’re simply having a conversation with a friend and trying to be helpful.

The principles of gender appeal are important to keep in
mind when it comes to reaching women on social networks. The following are three ways to incorporate gender appeal into your social networking strategies:

•
Help your customers look like heroes in the eyes of their friends
.

Supporting a worthy cause, for example, is almost always a great idea for humanitarian reasons, and it offers the added benefit of making supporters feel proud about helping the world become a better place in some small way. Recently, I pressed the “like” button on Facebook for Kenmore home appliances, and as a result of my click, Kenmore sent a dozen cookies to U.S. soldiers overseas. My small act of kindness (which was actually Kenmore’s act of kindness) was displayed on my status update, making both me—and Kenmore—look like heroes.

•
Engage women in conversations around a topic or issue that you’d like to be associated with
.

In most categories, it’s unrealistic to expect people to carry on lengthy conversations about a specific product or brand. Try engaging women in discussions
related
to your product category, not just the product itself. The idea is to engage women in conversations with which you’d like your brand to be
associated
. For example, a paper towel brand might initiate discussions about how to keep a healthy and green home, and ask consumers to share their ideas. Don’t just offer free product in exchange for publicity; it’s considered gauche. “The days of ‘mention my product and I’ll give you a free one’ are over,” says Megan Calhoun,
founder of the influential social networking group SocialMoms.

• Incorporate a photographic element whenever you can
.

Women are the photo sharers, memory keepers, and documenters of family events. They are more involved in photo-sharing sites than men are,
¹³
and are often on the hunt for good photos to post online. Challenge yourself to get your customers involved with your brand through photography. The possibilities are endless—a pet store could easily have a “me and my pet” photo contest on Facebook where the person with the most “likes” for their photo gets a year’s worth of free dog food. Travel destinations could run a contest for the best family vacation photo, with a great prize that drives consumers to tell their friends “Vote for my picture!” Brands with mascots could create applications that allow consumers to create images that feature their own face next to the mascot’s. When it comes to your customers, photography is a great way to create an interactive experience and get included in their conversations in a dynamic, natural, and viral way.

What to Do When Your Product Is a “Me Too”

M
ANY
people have the job of selling products that are comparable to (meaning no better or worse than) those of the competition, hence the need for good marketing. Innovative
products are few and far between. So what happens when you really struggle to come up with a compelling reason for women to buy your product instead of someone else’s?

Or worse, what happens when you realize there really is no compelling reason for them to buy it instead of someone else’s?

It’s not uncommon. Most products in most categories are pretty good, or they wouldn’t survive. In my view, there’s only one solution to this problem:
provide better customer service than anyone else
.

We’re talking about customer service in a chapter on marketing because in real life, customer service and marketing are the same thing. The only place customer service and marketing aren’t one and the same is in the halls of corporations. All too often, they’re housed in separate silos, which means the people in these departments don’t interact or work with each other on a regular basis.

From billboards to TV commercials to online ads and YouTube videos, most marketing energy goes into a full frontal assault on the senses. But what happens
after
the customer is acquired is just as important, if not more so. It’s an enormous opportunity for brand differentiation with women. That’s because great customer service is still rare. Research shows that 61 percent of people feel that “most of the time, the service people I deal with don’t care much about me or my needs.”
¹⁴
Some industries are worse than others. “When I’m having a problem with my cable company, I have to work myself up all day to get the strength to call them,” says forty-five-year-old Theresa. “I know I need to set aside an hour, minimum, and that I will be angry and
depressed afterwards. Just knowing I have to talk to them ruins my whole day.”

We’re all exposed to an endless parade of marketing messages, which means that expectations are high when we make a buying decision. Yet it seems that service after the sale is too often forgotten in the thrill of the hunt for customers. Once the customer is snagged, the wooing is over and the romance is dead. There is no shortage of terrible customer service stories and rants on the Web about every industry. You probably have several of your own. To be confronted by bad service after aggressive wooing puts many people in an adversarial relationship with the very companies that are supposed to be serving them.

With so many options, people are less willing to put up with bad service. The fact that customer service is a consumer hot button also makes it a major opportunity for differentiation. We’re going to devote the rest of the chapter to discussing how it can be implemented most effectively, since most of your competitors are probably doing a lousy job of it.

Gender matters here as well

The research firm Yankelovich recently commissioned a study about customer service in which it asked people whether it had improved over the previous five years. The results showed a gender gap: 44 percent of women felt that service had gotten worse, compared to just 33 percent of men.
¹⁵
For several reasons, women have a low tolerance for poor customer service. One is that they interact so frequently with customer service people, given their role as
chief purchaser for their households. Unsurprisingly, these interactions can be less-than-joyful experiences.

The second reason women resent poor service is because it wastes their time. Encountering long hold times or inefficient automated menus on the phone is stressful. Finally (and this is the reason that’s not so obvious), women have a distinct point of view about how people should be treated, based on female culture and the unique qualities of the female brain.

Mothers teach kids about fairness from the moment a toddler starts interacting with other children. They drill their children with instructions about sharing with their siblings and friends and tell them thousands of times to say please and thank you. Mothers everywhere have antennae for small injustices, because it’s their job to notice when these happen with their children. As young girls, women were taught to be sweet, polite, and modest, and that’s still how little girls are socialized, right alongside all those “girl power” messages. Women are expected to be caring, fair, and the champion of the underdog. There’s a reason Miss Manners isn’t Mr. Manners. There’s a reason Dear Abby isn’t Dear Frank. So when a woman is on the receiving end of a bad customer service experience … well, as they say, hell hath no fury like it.

The psychiatrist and brain researcher Dr. Daniel Amen agrees. “Women have an expectation of how things should be,” he says. “If they don’t believe they’re being treated fairly, they get angry. And when they get angry, it’s like a loop that runs over and over in the brain. They will stew about it longer than men will. That’s the front part of their brain working hard—the worry part.”

Automate this

Obviously, corporate bean counters think they are doing the right thing by using cheaper, twenty-four-hour call centers in India and elsewhere, and by automating customer service or using voice recognition systems. Yet they may not fully understand the problems this can pose for customer satisfaction. While there’s certainly nothing wrong with automation, it’s how it’s used that’s an issue. There are dozens of routine transactions for which people are thrilled to have a self-service option. How many people could survive without cash machines? But people appreciate automation only when it makes their lives better, not worse.

Customer service call centers are the white-hot nucleus of consumer anger. Being forced to pick from only five categories on a menu of reasons for a call, all of which may be irrelevant, is infuriating to the person angrily pressing buttons on the other end of the line. Even worse is being charged or penalized for talking to an actual human being. Research shows that the majority of people still want to talk to a real person in a wide variety of customer service situations, including when they’re getting a diagnostic health test, seeking technical support, buying or selling stocks, checking out at grocery stores, checking in for a flight, and depositing money into a bank account, among many other transactions.
¹⁶
Because there are vast differences in people’s technical prowess, providing both high-quality automated and human options is the ideal.

There are numerous implications for gender differences in customer service. The fact that women use more words than men and are most interested in the details of any conversation
is just one aspect that could be reflected in training for customer call resolution and scripting. The fact that many women run their errands during the lunch hour is another implication for the timing of customer service staffing schedules.

Companies should consider taking a fresh look at customer service measurements and standards, especially as they relate to marketing. We all know that the two departments must work in sync for maximum effectiveness, but the ugly truth is that most of the time they don’t. High awareness on the front end of marketing is considerably less meaningful if consumer loyalty is decreased on the back end. The Internet has increased expectations and, frankly, made it more dangerous to provide bad service, because of the propensity of people to rant about it publicly. As one manager of a four-star hotel told me, “Websites like
Tripadvisor.com
are the bane of my existence.”