Marketing to Women? Don’t Forget PANKs!

Don’t Forget to Market to These Women: PANKs.

PANK: Professional Aunt No Kids.

A joint study recently released by Savvy Auntie and Weber Shandwick with KRC Research revealed that PANKs are a “sizeable segment of younger women with disposable income, dynamic influence, and a digitally-connected lifestyle.”

The acronym for this emerging demographic of 23 million women who love children but have none of their own was first coined by Melanie Notkin, founder of Savvy Auntie. According to the study, one in five U.S. women is a PANK and are important because they are:

Big Spenders: More than 76 percent of PANKs spent more than $500 per child this past year, for a total of $9 billion.
Highly Influential: 68 percent of survey respondents said that they’re a role model for the kids in their lives.
Avid Info-sharers: 73 percent of PANKs are likely to provide information about products and services to others, both in person and through social media.

PANKs represent an excellent opportunity for brands that are looking to market to women. To gain the hearts and spending power of PANKs, here are some important strategies to keep in mind:

Acknowledge PANKs: Recognize them as a powerful market.
Avoid stereotyping PANKs as non-domestic: While they enjoy their domestic lives, they find their community service and charity work to be equally important.
Develop online campaigns: PANKs are digitally savvy, with 56 percent trusting online reviews more than their own instincts (47 percent). Create social platforms content for them, as their postings are likely to go viral.
Focused messaging: PANKs are proud of the relationship that they have with the kids in their lives, regardless of their “non-mom” status.
Build a base of PANK advocates: Many PANKs will become moms one day. Brands should look to secure their loyalty now.

“PANKs have the time, income and passion for purchasing the best for the kids in their lives,” says Leslie Gaines-Ross, Chief Reputation Strategist for Weber Shandwick. “They are well worth a marketer’s attention.”

Marketing to Women: Emotional Attachment & Brand Loyalty

Brand Loyalty and Marketing to Women

Emotions play an important role in a woman’s purchasing decisions and brand loyalty. We don’t always buy a product or service because it’s the best value for our money; many times our choice is driven by an emotional connection.

Brands often develop exclusive campaigns and programs to build and maintain this brand loyalty. The recent success of P&G’s ‘Thank you, Mom’ campaign focused solely on females, is a great example. Brand loyalty now is a two-way relationship; businesses demonstrate their loyalty by listening to the needs and concerns of their consumers, actively engaging and responding to their issues, and using that information to anticipate market trends. In this way, customer loyalty is a mutually beneficial relationship, rather than a one-way flow of products and information.

The 2013 Brand Keys Customer Loyalty Engagement Index® indicates that brands driving the highest level of emotional engagement were ABC (evening news category) with 97 percent, Amazon (online retailers category) with 96 percent, and three companies at 95 percent– Pampers (diapers), Dunkin‘ (packaged coffee), and Subway (quick-serve restaurants). Other category winners include:

• Credit card: Discover, 94 percent

• Automotive: Ford and Hyundai at 93 percent

• Luxury cosmetics: Clinique, 93 percent

• Natural food stores: Whole Foods, 93 percent

• E-readers: Kindle, 92 percent

• Tablets: Amazon, 92 percent

• Breakfast cereal: Cheerios, 91 percent

• Gasoline: Shell, 89 percent

• Discount retail store: Walmart, 89 percent

• Social networking sites: Facebook, 88 percent

• Airline: US Airways, 85 percent

• Search engine: Google, 85 percent

• Pizza: Domino’s 84 percent

• Car Insurance: State Farm, 82 percent

• Casual Dining: Applebee’s, 82 percent

• Luxury hotel: Inter-Continental, 82 percent

• Bank: JP Morgan Chase, 79 percent

It bears repeating that women are the top marketing opportunity in today’s economy. They make 85 percent of all consumer purchasing decisions, and account for $7 trillion in consumer and business spending. Savvy marketers understand this, and will continue to look at ways to build brand loyalty with this key consumer.

Do Teen Preferences Rule Your Marketing to Women Strategy?

There has been quite a bit of talk lately regarding the exodus of teens from Facebook. A recent Business Insider story noted that teens are obsessed with Instagram and Snapchat, but are less enthralled with Facebook. And while the reasons that Facebook has become “boring” could be many for teens (including the fact that nothing is cool if your parents are involved), it doesn’t make Facebook irrelevant for key audiences. Teens typically are on the cutting edge of technology, adopting new platforms faster than I can whip up a batch of my chocolate chip cookies. For marketers, it’s important to clearly understand your target audience, and where they spend their time engaging with their communities. And if as a marketer you are targeting women, then Facebook is still a relevant place to engage them.

Question: can you clearly identify where your audiences/customers spend their time online?

Marketing to Women: Baby Boomers and Beauty

We’ve spoken often about how women baby boomers are the most affluent consumer segment today; yet they are continually underrepresented or (worse yet) completely ignored by marketers. BOOMbox Network conducted a survey with women over the age of 45 to see how they feel about their beauty at this life stage. As the survey notes, it was no surprise to find respondents lamenting about how most beauty brands do a very poor job of communicating with them. Details of the findings are in the infographic below, but some highlights of the findings include:

For women over 50, hair is super important!
They feel more beautiful in midlife than when they were in their 20s
They do not believe most beauty product claims
They do not like the use of younger models or celebrities in advertising targeting them
They define beauty in terms of confidence

Beauty marketers, are you listening to these Baby Boomers?

Truths About Marketing to Moms

Marketing to Moms: A List of Truths

Recently Holly Pavlika shared her predictions for how marketers will attempt to engage moms. We’ve noted a few of them below:

Television, social media, and motherhood will recognize that they need each other. It’s already happening with blogger integration. Television is the second screen to her, and it will be interesting to see how apps like Zeebox, which integrates television shows and social media, will fare.
Technology and smartphones will become more and more a part of her life. Brands need to get ahead of the curve with mobile.
Brands will continue to try to reach moms through “pinked” and specially designed products. And they will fail miserably. Painting a product pink and adding glitter to something hardly raises its ability to effectively meet the buyer’s needs. To win her over, focus on features, benefits, providing value, and superlative customer service.
More and more advertising will feature moms. Until we want to scream. Advertising and marketing to moms is so blatant right now, it’s almost laughable. Brands will continue to think putting a mom in the picture will attract moms to listen their pitch. The emphasis should not be on “hey, mom,” messaging, but rather on recognizing whether or not moms really need the product in their lives.
We’ll see more growth in the Latina mom market. Brands need to get ready for her – she’s highly social, has huge spending power, and isn’t afraid to use her voice.

The Networked Mom will continue to adapt and use technology and social media to share ideas and connect with others. She loves the ability to share her passions and use her voice, and she will continue to be a primary focus of the media and marketers in 2013.

Photo courtesy of Episencial

Marketing to Women: Mama Needs a Glass of Wine

Marketing Wine to Moms

by Pia Mara Finkell and reprinted with permission from CRT/tanaka

Before becoming one myself, any term modified by “mommy” made me wince. Mommy blogs, mommy marketing, mom(my) jeans. Barf. Now that I have an adorable, bubbly, giggling, non-sleeping baby at home, I’m warily starting to take notice. I find myself secretly reading some of these mommy blogs, thinking about buying some of those mom-targeted products, and contemplating the rising waistline of my jeans. It’s unavoidable, I guess.

One that I really get, now more than ever, is why wine is increasingly marketed to women, particularly young moms. In my house, we call it mommy juice, and apparently, we’re not the only ones. Someone’s already packaged a product with the same name, and there’s no shortage of others trying to take advantage of the fact that, according to a recent Gallup poll, 52 percent of women prefer wine, compared to 20 percent of men, and according to The Beverage Information Group in 2011, make up 58.1 percent of wine buyers. Mommy’s Time Out actually filed for trademark infringement due to MommyJuice’s use of the ubiquitous word in their wine marketed to women. Mad Housewife, Lulu B.(which, full-disclosure, I used to represent as their North American Brand Ambassador), Girl’s Night Out, Bitch Wines, and on and on and on. Needless to say, there’s a lot of competition for my evening tipple of choice.

This has become such a hot topic that even The New York Times recently wrote an article, Marketing Wine as a Respite for Harried Wine Women, discussing the brands above, as well as popular Facebook groups, such as “Moms Who Need Wine,” (640,000+ followers), and “OMG I So Need a Glass of Wine or I’m Gonna Sell My Kids,” (127,000+ followers). Interestingly, this article also discusses a new campaign primarily targeting women from a brand that doesn’t obviously target women through name alone, Chateau Ste. Michelle. Targeting their wines at women like me, 25 to 38 and referred to as “reluctant adults,” Chateau Ste. Michelle’s ads and Facebook campaign use an “engage-with rather than talk-at approach,” asking women to declare and share how they most enjoy wine.

Chateau Ste. Michelle is betting this choose-your-own-adventure method of engagement will make women feel the brand really “gets them,” affording them a sympathetic sound board, as well as an evening buzz after the kids’ bedtime. Something tells me they’re not the last wine brand to go down this path. As for me and what will fill my glass tonight, now that my little guy is finally sleeping, it will likely come down to taste, how well it pairs with the dinner my lovely husband made and, to be honest, the speed at which it’s poured.

Cheers!

Marketing to Women This Holiday Season

Marketing to women is worth it.

By now most of us understand that women are the primary consumers in the U.S. today, responsible for 85 percent of all consumer spending. Women’s combined consumer and business spending is fast approaching $7 trillion – roughly the size of Japan’s economy. When marketing to women this holiday season and beyond, businesses need to keep the following in mind:

There is no “women’s market” — there’s your women’s market.

Marketers should not segment women strictly by age. Whether a woman is 28, 39, or 52, she’ll respond more to marketing messages that address her life stage, not her biological age. Unlike previous generations, today’s women are experiencing life in a less linear fashion; women are having babies in their 40s, starting new careers in their 50s, and re-entering the dating scene in their 60s. Marketers need to clearly understand the differentiation in marketing to the different life stages of women, and tailor their messages accordingly.

Pink is not a marketing strategy.

Today’s women are not looking for a watered-down version of a male offering that has been feminized with clichéd colors. Instead, they’re looking for solid information, ease of use, stellar customer service, and brands that are looking to build real relationships with them based on their interests, personal identities and problems that they need to solve. Instead of relying on outdated assumptions and stereotypes, marketers must do the hard work to be relevant to women consumers – taking the time to learn what motivates them to order to present their brands in a meaningful way.

Recognize that women think different than men.

All human brains start as female brains, until the male brain is flooded with testosterone. But there they part paths. A woman’s brain has four times as many connections between the left and right hemispheres as a man’s. All of those signals hurtle down the superhighway into her right brain – the home of emotional memory, intuition and experience. A woman not only reads – she attaches feelings to what she’s reading. A woman’s heart is in her brain – tell her a story that is filled with emotion, and explain why your brand is relevant to her. Sounds simple, but many businesses develop and market products without ever asking their female customers what is most important to them and why. Companies such as Best Buy and Volvo have made gaining women’s input a key part of their marketing process, leading to product improvements that both men and women appreciate, along with marketing messages that resonate with both.

This holiday season, Cyber Monday is expected to be the biggest online shopping day of the year, representing a $1.25 billion day. How will female consumers manage their Cyber Monday shopping?

When marketing to women, focus on mobile.

Mobile devices will continue to play a strong supporting role in the online shopping surge, with 52.9% of female Smartphone owners using their devices to do research and make purchases. In addition, social media will continue to be a huge power player in promoting brands as women interact with them across more touch points than ever before. This constant engagement makes it imperative that marketers understand women’s preferences in order to connect with them at the correct time and with the proper information.

Finally, female consumers are more likely to interact with and buy from businesses and brands that a friend has recommended. This word of mouth interaction may be harder to track than hard mobile device statistics, but it should not be ignored.

Businesses should plan their strategies for reaching the female market this holiday season by making sure all sites are optimized for mobile devices, and providing regular personalized interactions. By enabling social media sharing across all platforms, businesses can create an integrated approach to reaching women that will be successful this holiday season and beyond.

A Hockey Mom’s Thoughts From the Sidelines

Moms and Hockey

More Notes on Marketing from a Hockey Mom

Okay, I guess I have to admit it –– I’m a hockey mom. It is amazing how those words can stir such controversy. It seems that nearly everyone has their idea of what a hockey mom is –– some kind of crazy lunatic who can only communicate in screams and shouts.

As Hockey Moms, we all know how heated the competition can get on the ice, leading us to occasionally “lose it.” Ice hockey is known as the fastest team sport in the world. It’s rough, it’s intense, and we are focused on winning. And win or lose, Moms can get pretty animated if we are worried about our own kids, or kids on our team, getting hurt, or getting blown out by another team.

While I’ll admit there are a few of those moms out there, I’d like to think I’m not one of them. And I’m sure this personality type can be found in any sport, not just hockey. I’ve also met several fathers who fall into this category. So I guess what I am trying to say is that most hockey moms are just that: moms.

That said, I do understand how a hockey mom can turn crazy. The investment and time commitment are enough to make one take a huge gulp as they write out the check for yet another season, tournament, stick, pair of skates, private lessons or clinic. My son is now traveling to play outside of our home state, so additional air travel and hotels have become part of the mix. And we seem to constantly be defending ourselves against other parents who ask why we let our child play such a dangerous sport. By the way — concussions rank higher in football AND soccer, but you wouldn’t know it to hear those parents talk about our sport!

A hockey mom juggles her schedule to accommodate ice times and car pools that can be at six in the morning, or ten at night. She is constantly washing uniforms, sanitizing equipment, searching for mouthpieces, filling water bottles and making sure that all of the gear is accounted for. She is personal assistant, chauffeur, equipment supply officer, cheering section, travel agent and chief fundraiser.

So why do I do it? It’s simple, really — it’s good for my son. It teaches him commitment, how to play on a team, how to think strategically, work toward a goal, and to persevere. That, and his father and I love watching him play.

But another reason has emerged over the years – and that is the truly wonderful relationships we have developed and sustained with other hockey parents and coaches. We all speak in our own shorthand that can only be understood by others in the sport.

So, yes, I guess hockey moms (and dads) are intense, but we’re also extremely loyal –– sitting in freezing rinks at ridiculous hours to cheer on our teams while drinking bad coffee (or the occasional beer) and eating stale food. Today’s marketers would do well to have this kind of loyalty targeted at their brands.

Updated from a January 2010 post.

Marketing to Women: Money Talks

When the Financial Industry Markets to Women

The Financial Industry and Marketing to Women

Women control $8 trillion in assets in the U.S., and by 2020 are expected to control $22 trillion, according to TD Ameritrade. Consider these statistics:

89% of financial account openings are controlled by women
Women sign 80% of all checks, business and personal
Women take care of 75% of all family finances
66% of women maintain separate investment accounts from their spouses
27% of all millionaires are women

But while women like and need financial advice, they’re not so keen on the financial industry – having expressed that they find this industry the least responsive to their needs out of 32 industry sectors. So how can financial marketers get a piece of this lucrative market?

When marketing to women, the industry needs to understand that they view money and wealth in a different way than men. While men are much more competitive about money management, a woman’s end goal isn’t typically to accumulate money, but to improve her life and those of her family. Financial professionals who want to attract and retain female clients need to speak to women in the language that most appeals to them. For example:

Women like to connect and learn in communities, whether it’s in a casual home environment, or on social media channels
Women want to establish relationships with their advisors, and seek referrals from other women
While men address their finances in a more transactional way, women want to talk through their financial decisions

What have been your experiences with the financial industry? And marketers, are you communicating effectively to this important audience?

Why Market to “PrimeTime Women”

Marketing to PrimeTime Women

The Importance of Marketing to PrimeTime Women

We’ve all heard about the seniors, the middle-aged, and the mature market. Cultural convention says youth is fun; maturity is not. But women ages 50-70 are the healthiest, wealthiest generation in history, and over the next two decades they will control the majority of the purchasing power in the United States.

These “PrimeTime Women,” as coined by gender expert Marti Barletta, are not gray, passive women, but energetic, vibrant women who consider themselves to be in the prime of their lives.

According to Barletta, PrimeTime is a life stage, not a generation. Currently it’s the baby boomers that are moving through the PrimeTime window – and as we know, the boomer generation is unlike any other generation to date. Boomer women are the first generation to go to college and into the work force in equal numbers as men. They’re definitely not our grandmother’s generation.

Consider this: Adults ages 50+ control 79 percent of all the financial assets in this country; and women in those households control 85 percent of all household spending. From 2006-2016, 96 percent of the growth of the U.S. adult population will be made up of people over 50. So do the math. Though conventional Madison Avenue wisdom is to target the young 18-34 demographic, these PrimeTime Women simply have more purchasing power.

If marketers don’t make their brand relevant to PrimeTime Women and boost the effectiveness of their marketing communications, they can kiss their bottom line goodbye. And in order to be truly relevant, they need to take the time and effort to understand who this influential target really is.

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