How to Win the Women's Revolution
Heinrich Marketing
How to Win the Women’s Revolution
Gary Becker calls women our society’s "Chief Purchasing Officers.” As a professor of economics and sociology at the University of Chicago, he knows what many marketers know: Women control 85 percent of household purchase decisions and most families’ finances.
But that statistic is so last-century.
Beyond increased economic power and financial freedom, “Women also experienced a great deal of social and psychological change in the past 50 years,” writes The Power of the Purse author Fara Warner. “Even as women gained access to more money and power, their sense of self and self-worth has been transformed.” 
That coupled with continued upticks in women’s levels of education and the age at which they become mothers are among the societal shifts making today’s women’s segments more complex than back in the “I can bring home the bacon” days.
In the Advertising Age whitepaper ‘The New Female Consumer: The Rise of the Real Mom,” NBC Universal’s women’s networks president Lauren Zalaznick points out that “It’s not enough to understand that women are the principal shoppers, that women have the ‘power of the purse.’ It’s that [marketers] need customized ways of reaching these women.”
Bravo, Oxygen, iVillage, the Today show join NBC’s Women@NBCU initiative as a collective example of how major brands are tailoring marketing to much more segmented audiences than in decades past. Each network caters to different psychographics and purchase drivers. Bravo aims for “upscale, cosmopolitan” women in their 30s and 40s with successful careers, while Oxygen goes for the 20- or 30-something woman who is closely connected with her friends and the leisure activities she shares with them. NBCU has even created a Women@NBCU advisory board — a think tank on trends and ideas about marketing to women, led by experts including Marketing to Women author Marti Barletta — to keep its female-targeted sales and marketing initiative on its toes.
Dig deeper than demographics
For many marketers, it’s time for a head check on what they think they know about marketing to women. They need insight into life stage, values and mindset, because what’s true of today’s rapidly evolving Hispanic markets in America (see our article Is Your Hispanic Message Lost in Translation?) is equally true of women’s segments: It’s all about relevance. Customer research that clearly defines your target sub-segments is paramount in connecting with women today in a way they’ll perceive as genuine and trustworthy.
Newer stereotypes are no better than the old ones
Ready to shoot some holes in your strategies for marketing to women? Think about how you can crank up relevance and ROI by making these three key shifts:
Stop targeting supermom. “For younger generations of mothers, having it all doesn’t mean doing it all,” notes the Advertising Age whitepaper. “Increasingly, Gen Xers (ages 30 to 44) and millennials (ages 18 to 29) are not beholden to perfection. Having seen their predecessors exhaust themselves trying to achieve an elusive ideal, today’s mothers aim to be pragmatic, efficient and rooted in reality. To reach this demographic, marketers need to do more than communicate that the goods and services they offer are practical and convenient; they also need to empower these female consumers to delegate to others (spouses, children, brands) so they can have more time to be who they want to be — at home, at work and on their own.”
Don’t assume mature woman = tech-averse granny. Leverage integrated multichannel marketing campaigns, including social media. The number of women over 55 using Facebook has tripled since 2008 and represents the social networking site’s fastest-growing age group.
Get up to speed with the sixty-and-fabulous mindset. “Although marketers seem to persist in their beliefs that women agonize about their advancing age,” observes Barletta, who coined the term “PrimeTime Women™” for women aged 50–70 who are in the prime of their lives and are the prime target opportunity for marketers, “PrimeTime Women love the advantages that aging brings, such as experience, wisdom, a greater appreciation for life and time, and the freedom to pursue their passions”. The terms middle-aged, mature, and senior carry all this drab, gray baggage. That’s not who the PrimeTime Woman is at all. “She keeps moving forward, living life in drive. Even overdrive! Her greatest achievements really are ahead of her.”