Why She Buys (35 page)

•
Overcommunicate after the sale
.

Give her an order confirmation number as soon as she’s paid; send a confirmation immediately to her e-mail address; let her know when the product has shipped; ask her how her experience was after she’s received it. These are all steps that will make women feel more comfortable about sending you their precious financial information online again.

•
Close more sales by featuring time-sensitive offers
.

Women do a lot of browsing online. Convert window shoppers to buyers by offering the same kind of time-sensitive sales that exist in the offline world. Most people need a sense of urgency to buy something, especially if
it’s something they don’t actually need. Flash-sale sites leverage this concept on a daily basis, often complete with countdown clocks. For a tutorial on how to generate excitement through time-sensitive offers, study sites like Groupon, RueLaLa, Living Social, and Vente-Privee.

• Include a “share” mechanism
.

Women are the world’s biggest drivers of word-of-mouth publicity, and as you know by now, they are always thinking about the needs of other people in their lives. Enabling women to send an e-mail to friends about what they’ve just purchased or what you’re offering on sale is just the ticket to get the word spreading. This is how I found out that fashion designer Nanette Lepore had created a new line of shoes for Keds. My friend knew I was a fan of Lepore and sent me a little e-mail notice from the Keds website. As I write this, I’m wearing my new polka-dot flip-flops from the line.

As DailyCandy CEO Dany Levy says, “Sometimes it’s okay to say something as short and simple as ‘Hey, look at this—it’s kind of neat!’ ” And she should know; it’s the foundation of her very successful, female-focused business, which was sold to Comcast for $125 million in 2008.
¹¹

7

WE HAVE SEEN

THE FUTURE,

AND IT IS FEMALE

Applying the Knowledge to Your Business

C
onsidering that women make up more than half the population (51 percent), is it even possible to consider them a business “category,” when their numbers are so large? When they range from urban Latinas to small-town moms, span the age gamut from millennials to boomers, and live in places as different as Muncie and Mumbai? It’s an important question, and the answer is this:
women around the world are more similar than they are different
.

As we’ve seen throughout these pages, women are united by their brain structures, hormone levels, and biological role in birthing the human race. They also are united by their roles as caregivers, relationship builders, and keepers of the peace. Women talk about the same topics the world over—their feelings, their families, their social issues, their latest
shopping finds, their bodies, their jobs, their plans for the weekend, and their hopes for the future.

While there is no disputing the importance of customer segmentation, which could be the subject for a different book entirely, these similarities mean that the ideas on which this book is based can be used wherever women live and work. The success of multinationals such as Procter & Gamble, MasterCard, and Unilever, which market their products to women in every corner of the globe—often through the same umbrella marketing campaigns customized for local markets—prove the validity of this concept. Yet it would be foolish to suggest that women are one large, homogeneous group. Cultural context is critical. No one would pitch a product in Los Angeles in the same way they would in Riyadh, nor would they pitch a product to an elderly woman in the same manner as to a teenager. Leveraging universal female traits, in combination with cultural context and life stage, is the one-two-three punch for winning women consumers.

There is no doubt; women’s consumer domination is here for the long term. The global trends driving women’s educational attainment, workforce participation, and purchasing patterns mean that women are expected to drive the consumer economy for the next twenty-five years or longer. As you begin the process of catering to the alpha consumer, keep in mind the new paradigm of the female-consumer world order.

The Top Ten Rules to Remember
About Women Consumers

1. Women buy or influence the purchase of most consumer products
.

2. Gender is the most powerful determinant of how a person views the world and everything in it. It’s more powerful than age, income, race, or geography
.

3. Women’s brain structures and hormone levels are different from men’s, and women are raised in an unseen gender culture that shapes their priorities and worldviews in ways that can be imperceptible to men
.

4. Female culture should be studied with the same focus that entering a foreign market requires. Mastering female culture is the key to success for companies that depend on women consumers
.

5. The person who makes a sales transaction isn’t necessarily the decision maker. Even if the woman of the house does not earn a paycheck, she likely determines her household’s expenditures
.

6. Pink is not a strategy
.

7. If women make up a significant portion of your customer base, they should be represented proportionately on your management team
.

8. There are five important trends driving the world’s female population that should be considered when making long-term planning decisions for your business
.

9. Women around the world are more similar than they are different
.

10. When you please women, you tend to make your male customers happier, too
.

Whether you’re male or female, you can learn the most important drivers of the world’s alpha consumers and apply these insights to your business.

“The greatest thing I’ve learned is that if you’re a man, you have to create a filter that overrides your own natural responses as a male, or as a businessperson in an industry that’s traditionally skewed male,” says Ryland Homes’ Eric Elder, who spends a great deal of his time studying women home buyers. “Your filter needs to be made up of real facts on how the female segment functions in your business, not stereotypes. I tell my colleagues that I’m not trying to understand women just to be nice; I’m doing it because they’re the ones who write the checks.”

H
OW TO
B
EGIN

At this point, you may feel enthusiasm for creating a more female-focused organization, but you’ll likely need the participation of your colleagues to accomplish this internally. The steps outlined in the pages ahead can help you begin the process.

First, the diagnosis. The following framework will help you determine the “female literacy” of your company. Stage 4 is the most sophisticated; Stage 1 is the least
.

BENCHMARKING YOUR ORGANIZATION

BUSINESS FOCUS

Customer Knowledge

STAGE 1

No data on female/male customer split

STAGE 2

Baseline knowledge of female/male customer split

STAGE 3

Clear understanding of gender split and whether company’s share of women’s market is going up or down

STAGE 4

Corporate culture aligned around a predominantly female customer base
BUSINESS FOCUS

Customer Service

STAGE 1

No data on gender split of customer service inquiries

STAGE 2

General sense that women are lead callers/inquirers but no specific initiatives to address this

STAGE 3

Consistent data collection on gender split in customer service inquiries and customer loyalty

STAGE 4

Education of call center employees to address dynamics of gender; customer service experience in sync with marketing messages
BUSINESS FOCUS

Sales Training

STAGE 1

No gender-specific training initiatives for sales employees

STAGE 2

Informal acknowledgment that sales techniques may be modified based on whether prospect is male or female

STAGE 3

Formal training/education to address gender differences

STAGE 4

Formal sales training for employees of both genders to address women’s communication styles
BUSINESS FOCUS

Marketing and Sales Strategic Leadership

STAGE 1

No women in marketing and sales leadership positions
No on-the-job gender education

STAGE 2

Junior-level women in marketing and sales positions

STAGE 3

Senior-level women in marketing and sales positions
Education for staff on gender differences

STAGE 4

Management-level women in marketing and sales positions, and training for all staff members on gender differences
BUSINESS FOCUS

Product
Development
Leadership

STAGE 1

No women in product development/design leadership
Human factors engineering does not include female factors engineering

STAGE 2

Junior-level women in product development/design
Some female factors testing

STAGE 3

Senior-level women in product development/design
Female factors testing and in-depth research with women

STAGE 4

Management-level women in product development/design, and ethnographic research programs with women
BUSINESS FOCUS

Ad Agency
Creative
Execution

STAGE 1

No women on creative team for clients targeting women, no training on gender education

STAGE 2

Junior-level women on creative team for clients targeting women

STAGE 3

At least one senior-level woman on creative team for clients targeting women

STAGE 4

Director-level woman on creative team for clients targeting women, and gender education for staff members

Once you’ve got a good grasp of what stage your company is in, it will become clear where to direct your efforts. When I work with companies that are at the initial stages of creating a more female-literate organization, I’ve found that the process outlined in the pages ahead is a realistic and practical way to begin.

S
TEP
1: G
ATHERING THE
D
ATA

Begin by using statistics to make your case. Most important business decisions are based on data, and that means the numbers are the best and most credible place to start. Gather the data on female purchasing for your industry and determine how well your company measures up. If you have fewer women customers than the industry average, use this information to justify an audit as the first step in initiating change. If you don’t collect customer data by gender, now would be a good time to start.

S
TEP
2: C
ONDUCT
a M
ARKETING
C
OMMUNICATIONS
A
UDIT

Using the principles outlined in this book, audit your company’s consumer-facing communications (the simplest place to begin) to determine whether or not your marketing has female gender appeal. Review your website, advertising, public relations programming, marketing collateral, online customer reviews/blog entries, and twitter postings to determine the kind of image the company is projecting to a female audience. Use the following brief checklist as a guideline:

Emotionally resonant messages about how the product will make her life better and/or improve the lives of the people she cares about