As Social Media Week Toronto comes to an end, I want to again say how great it was for me to be able to attend some of the events that took place.  SMW takes place is several cities such as NYC, San Paulo, San Fransisco, Toronto, London and Berlin. The aim of each event is to advance the usage of social media in the corporate, public and non-profit sectors. For those who are unfamiliar, or did not attend this past week, I urge you to add it to your calendars in the future. For more info, check out socialmediaweek.org.

On the eve of Super Bowl weekend, Pepsi (one of the big past advertisers) decided to opt out of the traditional Super Bowl TV commercial debut. Instead, they’re focussing their resources on social media campaigns. This kind of commitment from big corporations such as Pepsi, demonstrates the importance of social media as a key  marketing tool. On the website Customer Think, there is a great post written by Harish Kotadia that features video’s by the CEO’s of Pepsico and Cisco—discussing the value proposition and their commitment to, and for, social media as a marketing channel. Better yet, Pepsico is one of the few big corporations that is being led by a woman: Indra Nooyi.

One of the great reasons for women focussed marketing in 2010—a target market who weilds 80% of both the decision making as well as buying power—is that women are online and using social networks. The nature of engagement is a good fit to how women connect naturally offline and have been engaging for centuries. Check out these stats on the female economy (stats from 2009 book, Why She Buys, by Bridget Brennan).

• Apparel – 65% of purchases are made by women
• Automotive - 52% of all new vehicle purchases, including trucks, made by women (80% of purchases influenced by women)
• Consumer Electronics -45% percent of purchases made by women (61% of purchases influenced by women)
• Health Care- 80% if family health care decisons are made by women
• Travel - 70% of the decisions are made by women
• Insurance, Investments,and Retirement Accounts - 90% of women participate in the decisions that affect their houshold’s retirement & investment accounts
• Homes – 20% of purchases are made by single women; 91% of all purchases are influenced by women
• Wine – 55% of all purchases are made by women
• Gaming – 40% of players are women

Some convincing reasons to start reaching out to women today, if you haven’t already. Being aware and dedicated to finding ways to target and engage women via social media is sure to be a winning return on your investment for years to come!

Best Nicole

Go New Orleans Saints!

Watch this video for what three visionary CEOs have to say about Social Networking:

• John Chambers, Chairman and CEO, Cisco: “Social Networking is transforming companies. Is is the future of Business Productivity, Health Care, Education and Entertainment.”
• Indra Nooyi, CEO, Pepsico: “Global company with global brands and reputation can use it as a force for good.”
• Jeffrey Joerres, President and CEO, Manpower: “When it comes to Social Networking, it is a major trend towards what will be a very standard everyday stuff.”

This very clearly highlights the fact that Social Media and Social Networking are not a fad, but for real, are here to stay and will become mainstream in near future. Social Business is not just another way of doing business, it is THE way business will be conducted.

I strongly recommend that all senior executives (and especially the CMOs) start taking Social Media initiatives seriously, and lead from the front when it comes to use of Social Media, as survival and growth of their business rests on how effectively they leverage emerging tech tools.

Social Networking has far reaching implications for the marketing department and I recommend that CMOs setup a Social Media Task force that will advise them on how to quickly adapt and integrate their marketing operations into emerging Social Networking tools and applications. Sooner marketing department(s) adopt and start using Social Networking for engaging their customers better for their brand(s), else performance of their business will suffer.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 5th, 2010 at 9:49 pm and is filed under Marketing to Women. Tagged: CISCO, CMO'S, CUSTOMER THINK, HARISH LOTADIA, INDRA NOOYI, JOHN CHAMBERS, NICOLE MCKINNEY, PEPSI, PEPSICO, SHARE, SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING, SOCIAL MEDIA WEEK, SOCIAL NETWORKING, SUPER BOWL, WWW.BCADGROUP.COM. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.