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Trends in Marketing to Women in the U.S. and Beyond

Marketers realized awhile back that women buy nearly everything. And for almost everything else, we heavily influence the purchases. As a result, the marketing industry in the U.S. has developed numerous conferences focused on reaching women, multiple books offering advice, and a wealth of statistics on this important target. Clearly, marketers are getting smarter. But many still are asking how to best win the attention of women who already have many other responsibilities and interests vying for their time.

Here are four marketing trends that are driving effective programs to reach women in the U.S. and beyond:

Using women to reach more women. Women are finding more solutions from each other than from marketers, and marketers know it. Terms like “alpha moms” and “influential consumers,” though relatively new, are now a regular part of our marketing lexicon, and savvy marketers are going after these influential women to reach the rest. When Nintendo introduced Wii, influential moms were the first target audience and were invited to demos in the homes of their friends. That tactic proved to be a successful platform for reaching the primary purchaser of family game systems: mom.

Public relations has a strong role here because it can deliver credibility, and credibility is one of the four cornerstones of reaching female consumers – along with messages that connect quickly, “surround-sound” communications (involving multiple venues and sources that women interact with) and consistent confirmation. Female consumers see “friends and family” as the most credible source of information, so public relations programs aimed at women should consider ways to deliver messages through women – such as word-of-mouth tactics.

Local is driving national. Things that happen on a grass-roots level – that is, local events – often are more relevant to women's daily lives than national events. A number of companies and brands are conducting local-market efforts in targeted cities before evolving their efforts nationally. Those in-person friends and family interactions serve to help brands build real relationships with women because they are relationship-based. If a friend recommends a product or solution and she has no commercial reason to do so, it's authentic. Interestingly, the friends and family dynamic is now growing to include online friends – encompassing women who have never physically met. This makes it easier to spread an effort from a local level to a broader one.

Events must be dual- or multi-purposed. Women are multi-tasking and multi-minding more than ever before. In some ways, that has made it harder to draw them to a single-purpose marketing event. So some marketers have figured out that an event will have greater appeal for their targets if it is something that can be done with a mother, a daughter or a girlfriend. For instance, one bank provides a “bring a girlfriend” invitation to an informational session on preparing for college tuition. Spending time with a girlfriend is an added incentive to go out and learn something.

This tactic is smarter still when marketers enable women to do such double duty in a path that they would already cross. That could mean holding an event in a location that is on the way to work or home – if not directly in someone's house. All are ways that prevent busy women from having to go out of their way.

Moms want marketing to reflect their whole lives, not just motherhood. Information about how best to address a scraped knee or manage a teen's after-school activities almost always will appeal to moms. But being a mom is just one part of a woman's life. Companies looking for ways to appeal to women beyond their roles as mothers should consider partnerships with Web sites and social networking sites where women are flocking in droves. One such site is Mommy Track'd, which is all about the interplay between the two parts of moms – the working side (whether inside or outside of the home) and the kids' side. Besides information about great children's books or how to sustain breastfeeding after going back to work, there is great content about things that are important to women as women, such as great spas and girlfriend getaways.