Marketing To Women

How to be a chick magnet

Women today are more financially independent, intelligent, fussy, savvy and information hungry as consumers. They are a diverse group and there is no single “right” way to target them.

According to Marti Barletta, author of Marketing to Women: How to Understand, Reach and Increase Your Share of the World’s Largest Market Segment, women are responsible for 80% of home improvement purchases, 66% of new car purchases and 53% of investment purchases.

As women became more involved in product purchase decisions and grew in sophistication as consumers, the traditional approach of defining them purely by gender demographics or using overly simplistic mass customisation techniques had to be set aside. Research conducted by Omnicom Media Group in 2005 showed “close to 50% of educated women in Asia (in Malaysia, 60%, in Manila, 54%, in Singapore, 58%) earned the same or more than their spouse”, says Florence Oong, director of communications insights – APAC, Omnicom Media Group.

Many women hold middle to senior management positions like their male counterparts, are well-travelled, hold a degree and are empowered to make purchase decisions in formerly male dominated categories like cars, tech gadgets, financial products and housing. Taking this into consideration, Leo Burnett in India created the HDFC Standard Life ad that went on to win the Laadli award. It shows a daughter
inducing her father to buy a bigger car in place of the small car he is planning to buy, by giving him the extra money he needs to finance the car.

Even in Asia, there can be vast differences amongst women due to different values, culture and socio-economic backgrounds. Synovate’s AsiaBus survey released in June 2008 asked women if they could afford to pay for what they wanted without asking their partner for money. A much higher percentage of women in China (Beijing 81%, Shanghai, 77%) and Hong Kong (81%) said yes compared to Singapore at 74% and Malaysia at only 42%. When asked if they were mostly equal partners in decision-making for big-ticket items, 87% of Hong Kong women said yes, in Beijing 75%, Shanghai 77%, Malaysia 68% and Singapore 60%. When it comes to shopping for clothing and accessories, over 85% of China women said it made them feel better about themselves, while 60% of women in Hong Kong said it was part of their routine, 74% women in Malaysia shopped to hunt for bargains and 63% of Singapore
women shopped on their own.

In Synovate’s PAX results, 59.13% of Singapore women said they enjoyed the fun of shopping, higher than those in Hong Kong (42.28%) and Malaysia (49.76%). Singapore women were also willing to pay more for quality (76.35%) compared to those in Hong Kong (65.73%) and Malaysia (64.13%). One of the biggest differences in results was the women’s preference to buy well-known brands; again a higher proportion of Singapore women responded positively at 56.43%, Hong Kong at 22.11%, and Malaysia, 38.14%. The PAX survey also found men to be more transactional, whilst women enjoyed the experience of browsing and shopping as a leisure activity even if they did not make a purchase.

"Because women are not homogenous, one of the biggest mistakes marketers make is basing segmentation on demographic factors alone. It would be very valuable to marketers to use segmentation for both customers and prospects to achieve differential strategies and therefore higher impact. The approach should combine elements such as needs, behaviour, attitudes and consumption patterns”, Deepika Nikhilender, regional managing partner of MindShare says.

This view is shared by OMD’s Oong who says companies should not restrict development of consumer insights to a single approach as brands, products and targets are unique. “This method became the norm in segmentation when marketers realized their consumers share more similarities in terms of their attitudes and lifestyle rather than by demographics. For example, marketing to the iPod/ Apple generation is more about targeting people who are like-minded, share similar attitudes and opinions about technology, entertainment, fun and life. It is not about belonging to a certain age group or gender – women and men are equally predisposed to the brand.”

Just because a brand appeals to millions of women doesn’t mean mass customisation is the way to go. Within a gender, brands need to adopt segmentation methodologies which address the needs of different customers. For example, skincare products not only target women as a gender, as they cater to a variety of female sub-segments based on their needs and attitudes. These products are positioned according to age group, to benefi ts they offer such as skin whitening or anti-ageing, and range from off-the-shelf products in retail shops like Kao or Olay, and those sold in department stores carrying more highly priced brands like SK-II, Lancome and Chanel. The same applies for brands like Adidas, Calvin Klein and Levi’s. For example, for Levi’s Lady Style collection, the objective is to reach out to women who want to look feminine and sexy, who are fashion-savvy and self-assured. Where the product lines are available to both genders like the Levi’s Red Tab and Levi’s Copper and consumers’ needs and attitudes are similar, the company takes a brand focused approach or focuses on the essence of the product. “The fits, a key criteria identifi ed in our research as a driver in selection of jeanswear, are gender specific”, says Agnes Tann, strategic brand planning manager, Levi’s brand APAC Division.

Getting in touch with their feelings
“If men are about action, women are about feelings. Women are hardwired to empathize and so
they care more about relationships, and they like working for the greater good and creating relationships.
Connecting is very important”, says Michelle Kristula-Green, president of Leo Burnett Asia Pacific. “Whisper has done this successfully in many of its Asian markets with the ‘Have a Happy Period’ movement, which unites women into a single network by tapping the shared feeling that periods should not be allowed to interrupt life,” she adds. The campaign in China for example, was executed using TVCs, magazine advertorials, in-store placements and the internet to build up the emotional bonding with Chinese women. In general, women typically ask for recommendations from friends and acquaintances
before they buy, and if they are happy with a product or service, they will spread the news by recommending it to others. They will not depend on advertising but instead focus on the quality of the relationship and that of the product. Synovate’s PAX research shows although women find advertising useful in learning about new products, on average only 27.17% in Asia actually trust products which have been advertised, with 26.67% in Singapore, 31.14% in Hong Kong and 26.67% in Malaysia.

A woman’s trust is harder to win and she will go to greater lengths to understand a product’s features and benefits before parting with her money. “When purchasing beauty products for instance, women will rely heavily on magazines, the internet, companies’ websites, word-of-mouth (WOM) and sales promoters for information,” Oong says.

“Women today are less likely to be convinced by hard-sell tactics or unproven claims. They possess substantial spending power, but they tend to spend wisely as they also take care of some of their family expenses. Therefore, the challenge is for advertisers to prove that their products and services work – and that there’s value for money for women,” says Penelope Chan, Editor of Simply Her.

The magazine offers its readers monthly “Me Retreats” where they can come together to experience advertisers’ products and services in a non-threatening setting. “The Simply Her team understands that it’s not enough to just write about the products and services; we have to show our readers how they work, and more importantly, include editorial testimony on how well they work. We do this in our ‘Road Test’
section, where we test and review different types of products – and also wherever we can in our magazine,” Chan says.

“With the plethora of media options available to consumers, cut through and engagement is increasingly challenging. ACP works with an advertiser to understand their objectives and then recommend an appropriate environment from its portfolio of titles to service those objectives”, says Charlotte Goh, corporate communications director, ACP Magazines.

Through its magazines, Cleo, The Singapore Women’s Weekly and Harper’s Bazaar – advertisers can target attentive and loyal audiences, through one title or through cross title or even cross-country campaigns. “Increasingly we see advertisers targeting women with more coherent messages, from international beauty companies using Asian faces to banks and cars skewing campaigns more to women,” she says. Research shows women are more regular visitors and heavier users of social networking services and advertisers keeping in step with these trends have started using such sites for retail and product advertising. Beyond online advertising, eDMs and search engine marketing, media planning agencies are seeing a larger number of clients include social media in their communications mix and agencies like MindShare are helping clients to identify the right types of social media platforms to “seed” their messages.

“We have a number of clients seeking out such platforms as a way to propagate news about their brand or products and such sites provide a new way to reach target audiences, engage them and promote discussion about the brand,” says Nikhilender. Not surprisingly, major brands are leading the way.

The Web 2.0 effect
Most social networks provide a variety of ways for users to interact through email, instant messaging,
blogs and video logs. Consumers are using these services to share information and their views about brands and products to hundreds and thousands of people in a matter of minutes. The reach is global. The viral effect is tremendous, as it continues to grow and become an enduring part of everyday life. Recently, I decided to pay a visit to the site of one of Singapore’s most famous bloggers’. Yes, it is a she. Xiaxue as she is popularly known, receives about 20,000 visits to her site each day and writes about everything and anything. There are personal blogs mentioning brand names like Victoria Secret, Forever 21 and Guess. I also found paid advertorials by Kimberly Clark promoting Kotex pads and Kawaii Tokyo, a brand of skincare products from Japan. There was also a blog promoting the Great Singapore Sale
featuring Fendi.

“The Kotex campaign was targeted at females between the ages of 15 to 29 and we used traditional media and online in the communications mix. Our target consumers are spending a lot more time online compared to before, so over the last few years, we have started to shift away from using just traditional media like TVCs. To cut through the clutter and build stronger brand association, we have to go where our
audiences go,” says Jenny Foo, brand manager, Kotex of Kimberly Clark.

“A variety of online executions are used to reach our audiences, including social media sites where we have used banner ads and advertorials. The sites are selected based on the traffic and profile of females who go there, for example which blogs they read the most. Online platforms enable us to collect information about our consumers for customer relationship management purposes, enabling us to maintain the relationship and interact with them,” Foo said.

Experts in the industry say the advocate’s voice is more powerful today than ever, particularly with women for whom WOM is popular. “People, not marketers, control the conversation and they can quickly control what other people think about a brand or a company. If you bore, overpromise or don’t deliver people can make that known to a lot of other people at the speed of light,” Kristula-Green says. “In the people’s era, marketers who win will be those who listen to what people want, entertain, are absolutely honest and transparent and capable of helping their brands navigate in the new world, rather than trying to control the forces which are uncontrollable.”

“The brand strength against the identifi ed target segment is one that we build over time. Once built, there is always an inherent need to sustain given the competitive environment. It is a continuous and relentless effort and we have seen the brand equity ratings improve signifi cantly, through our tracking study over time with the female consumer,” says Levi’s Tann.

“Many marketers tend to believe that segmentation would end up increasing budgets or slicing budgets thin. Both can be avoided if we use the analysis smartly. Ultimately it will be about strategic prioritisation and focusing on those segments that are most valuable to the brand’s business,” Nikhilender says.

Marketers are beginning to shift their mindsets, but many still lag in understanding the female consumer and what drives their purchasing behaviour. Outdated marketing tactics are still used and budgets are not
always directed thru the right channels. They need to keep up with the evolving needs of female consumers and grow with them through different life stages. Women actively seek out brands which “know” them and deepening relationships with customers will only happen if marketers get it right.