Bcadgroup's Weblog » SURVEY

Have You Lost Business This Year? Want Us to Show You How to Get it Back?

nicolem — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 14:23:35 +0000

I have a one word answer. Women. The Economist suggests that women in the West are responsible for more than 80% of purchase decisons. That means they are purchasing in every product category—regardless of what many stereotypes suggest. That means not just great bags and shoes, but consumer electronics, cars and their maintenance and parts. That means the “traditional boy toys” are now the domain of the woman purchaser or decision maker that will decide what “boy toy” to buy!

This isn’t about pink ribbons and bows. There is a science to the differences in how women and men think. And by making some changes in how you market, you now position your business to gain back any business that you have lost—potentially gaining oodles of new customers in the process! I am talking about this daily to new customers who are still trying to understand how all of this relates to their business.

So I have an answer. I came across a blog that provides a clear outline of both the scientific differences and the implications of marketing to women. It comes from a blog called “There is More to Life Than Shoes” in the UK. Their post called “How to Market Your Business to Women” gives you the facts both scientific and the tools to get started.

Creating a value proposition—that speaks to this most important target market by taking action NOW—means that you are poised to grow your business. Women love value and are bargin shoppers. In this new economy, they are clammering for businesses like yours that have finally taken them into account: thinking about who they are, addressing their needs, giving them what they want and letting them know that YOU understand the benefit of having their business.

How easy can it be! Gazillions of sales await for your business, products and services.

Best Nicole

Women are now the most important target audience in the world, and yet many of us feel traditional marketing ignores and patronises us. How can you market your business successfully to the girls with the power? The experts at marketing consultancy PrettyLittleHead are on the case.

WE’RE IMPORTANT BUT NEGLECTED
Women are now the most important target audience on earth. Figures published recently by The Economist suggest that women in the West are now responsible for almost 80% of purchase decisions. Even when it comes to choosing traditional boys’ toys like cars and electronics, women are fast becoming the dominant purchase-makers, and many of the most substantial areas of business growth are those driven by us girls.

Yet despite the huge opportunities presented by women who are ready to spend, we are often patronized, misjudged or simply ignored by traditional marketing. In a YouGov survey conducted at the end of 2006, over two thirds of women questioned felt they couldn’t identify with women featured in advertising. One in two said they felt people try to sell them things by making them feel bad about themselves, and over 70% said they thought marketers believe they are only interested in household items and beauty products.

So how can you improve your marketing strategy to reach that huge female audience out there?

WHAT CAN WE DO ABOUT IT?
Two significant developments have occurred over the last decade that mean we are now in a better position than ever before to market effectively to women. Firstly, we know loads more than ever before about the scientific differences between male and female brains – mental preferences, stress responses, biological instincts and strategies for surviving.

Secondly, we are beginning to recognise that acknowledging differences between the sexes is realistic, not sexist. Men and women aren’t the same: in fact, they’re profoundly, uniquely, interestingly and helpfully different from each other.

WHAT WE CAN LEARN FROM SCIENCE
What can science teach us about the differences between men and women and the way they approach the world, and what do those differences mean for marketing?

Masculine = analytical, linear and focussed. Feminine = whole-brained
Scientific tests have shown that there are hard-wired differences between the way male and female brains are constructed. Evidence suggests that women have a greater ability to connect between the left-hemisphere of the brain where the centres of logical, linear and analytical thinking reside, and the right-hemisphere where more emotional and intuitive thinking takes place. This may mean that when it comes to problem solving or assessing a situation may use more emotional and intuitive parts of the brain alongside more reasoned approaches.

Masculine = action. Feminine = feeling
A further area of difference appears to emerge in the more primitive inner parts of the brain – the sub-conscious areas where automatic and instinctive responses take place. When the male brain is at rest, most activity takes place in the most primitive area of the brain that deal with survival instincts and fight or flight responses; when the female brain is at rest, it appears that most activity takes place in the limbic system – the area where feeling is centred.

Masculine = fight or flight. Feminine = tend and befriend
The male response to stress is the release of a cascade of hormones (testosterone, adrenalin and so on) that encourage a flight-or-fight response. In women, stress responses induce the production of oxytocin. This kicks off the ‘tend and befriend’ response; whereas testosterone drives men to physical action, oxytocin encourages behaviour that is nurturing, calming and conciliatory.

Masculine = interest in things. Feminine = interest in people
It may sound like a cliché, but there is scientific evidence that women tend to be interested in people while men are more interested in things. Female babies have been shown to respond with more interest to a picture of a face; female toddlers are less likely to engage in mechanical play and are more likely to initiate social interaction for fun; little boys are more interested in mobile and mechanical objects than they are in natural or people-based play things; little girls are much more likely to draw pictures containing people whereas little boys are much more likely to draw cars, buildings and other mechanical objects.

Masculine = power and competition. Feminine = relationships and empathy
Anthropological studies show that women and men have different approaches to survival. Male primates, men included, need to create mating opportunities. This leads them to focus on the hierarchy of the pack and their position within it. By contrast, females focus on the survival of their off-spring. They choose a mate to make sure they are getting good genes, they nurture their off-spring intensively and they develop relationships with others to provide further protection from external threats. All of which means that women are motivated to achieve a peaceful, safe and harmonious environment, building bonds of shared interest and support, whereas men are motivated by much more self-interested strategies, asserting dominance and competing successfully in the hierarchy.

Masculine = systemising. Feminine = empathising
All this adds up to men and women having fundamentally different views of the world. Scientist Simon Baron Cohen says, “the female brain is predominantly hard-wired for empathy. The male brain is predominantly hard-wired for understanding and building systems”. In other words, men understand the world by breaking things down in to their component parts, women understand the world by putting themselves in other people’s shoes.

THE IMPLICATIONS FOR MARKETING TO WOMEN:
Men and women are wired differently and therefore need to be approached differently by marketing campaigns.

There are four key areas that determine the success of a brand when it comes to targeting the female audience. By combining the study of sex and gender difference with the study of those brands that have successfully appealed to the female consumer, we have arrived at Four Feminine Codes: the four areas of influence and activity that appeal to female motivation and operation.

The Altruism Code
How and why women respond to altruistic motives and behaviour in brands
Women tend to focus on the group and the wellbeing of others rather than on their own individual success or achievement. This is borne out of the female ability to empathise, to put oneself in another’s shoes.

The Body Shop, Fairtrade and Red are strong examples of brands built on overt altruistic positionings. But there are others that are less overt but equally consonant with the positive, altruistic sentiment to which women respond.

Among telecom networks, Orange stands out as the most developed and powerful brand. It has an inspiring brand positioning, encapsulated in the endline ‘The future’s bright, the future’s Orange’. This thought resonates positively with the Altruism Code, because in the world of drab, grey, unwelcoming Telecom brands, Orange offers you the opportunity to be excited about what is to come.

The Aesthetic Code
Why appearance matters to women and what that means for marketing. Women want to make the world a more attractive place: a more attractive environment is a safer, more harmonious and more pleasant place to be for everyone.

The creators of the iMac understood the Aesthetic Code and responded wholeheartedly. Until the 1990s, computers were cumbersome grey boxes, designed entirely for function.

The iMac changed all that, bringing in an appreciation that as a computer was something you live and work with all the time, its aesthetics are important. The way a computer looks can also generate a sense of friendliness and approachability and so encourage experimentation. The look and feel of the iMac changed the face of computer design.

The Ordering Code
The importance of enhanced order and elimination of risk to women
Women run on the assumption that order creates harmony. The desire to take on responsibilities like running a home and family and the meticulous planning of events are evidence of the Ordering Code.

The way women have embraced the Internet is a reflection of ordering behaviour. Women now outnumber and spend more money than men online. The internet allows women to carry out their responsibilities and duties (most of which are self appointed) with ease, and it provides information to give women confidence in their decision-making. This is empowering! Where once women had to trudge around car showrooms being ignored or patronised, they can now get the information they need online and buy the car they want quickly and painlessly.

The Connecting Code
How and why communities are important to women
Women like to build relationships. They like to draw people together and find common ground between them. Businesses that recognise the power of female communities in building brands will benefit from free marketing and develop deeper more commercially rewarding relationships with their female audience.

Womenomics—The Emergence of A New Workforce Dynamic

nicolem — Wed, 06 May 2009 17:35:19 +0000

It has been a while since I have focused on an article about women. As a women run and owned firm we are certainly proud to be part of this new dynamic. The article I am going to share is written by Claire Shipman and Katty Kay. I think that this article says it all about where the world is going and how important it is to focus on this most important demographic from a marketing standpoint and from a business persepective. Look at your team—do you support and encourage women in your business? Are you doing business with women run and owned companies? The attached article comes from the women owned Huffington Post and the point……”Survey after survey from California to Norway shows that women are not only good for business, but that companies that employ more senior women actually make more money. Call it Pink Profits“.

Are you ready to grow your pink profits? Weigh in….we want to hear from you.

Best Nicole

The administration sees green shoots appearing in the economic data. We share that optimism. But we’re focused on the arrival of a different color – we see a pink lining in this recession.

In the midst of all the fiscal gloom, the stress over stress tests, there is a part of the population which is, in fact, benefiting from the economic environment. Women. America is on the verge of the biggest workplace revolution since the Second World War. Back then, women were ushered into the work force in vast, unprecedented numbers. And they stayed. Now a different national crisis is set to remake the labor force. In a new and dramatic fashion.

We call this seismic shift Womenomics: the emergence of a new workforce dynamic that is giving women the power to tailor their work lives to better suit their needs. It is a revolution that will allow us to live and work the way we’ve always wanted.

We have enormous professional clout today. Clout that most women don’t even know about. Survey after survey from California to Norway shows that women are not only good for business, but that companies that employ more senior women actually make more money. Call it Pink Profits. The female management style is seen as distinct–and even better. We’re more inclusive, more focused on long-term results and more risk-averse. The buzz this year at Davos? How much better off the economic world would be right now if there had been more sisters at Lehman Brothers. Women are no longer employed as a polite nod to office diversity; we get the jobs because we get the job done – and bring in the profits.

Moreover, in this downturn men are losing their jobs at a faster pace than women. Any day now we will make up a majority in the U.S. labor market. Women are also better educated than men, with more of the coveted graduate degrees that are key indicators of professional and managerial success. And we have the power of our purses. We consume more than men (in 2007, for the first time women even bought more cars than men) and those spending dollars give us huge leverage. Who knows how to cater to our tastes better than we do?

Could it be that it’s okay — finally — to state the obvious? We’re not men.

We not only don’t work the same way–we don’t want the same things or relish the climb up the corporate ladder with such testosterone-driven zeal. We have come to realize that the old career goal of “having it all” really meant “doing it all”, that doesn’t work for us. Indeed, those 60-hour work weeks, the office-meeting-to-day-care-closing dashes, the juggling and struggling – they all tend to push us out the corporate door forever. As Harvard Business School discovered a few years ago, when women are faced with the agonizing choice between career and kids, the children tend to win.

But in a Womenomics world, we don’t have to make that choice anymore. We now have so much clout in the marketplace that we’re not prepared to sit meekly at the boardroom table anymore. We’re rebuilding that table and making it more female friendly.

All across America professional women are carving out work lives that really suit them. Lives where they have time for children, elderly parents, pets, marathons or just themselves. Four out of five of us say we want more flexibility at work. More and more of us want less responsibility. We no longer see our careers as ladders but as waves. We are asking for — and for the first time, in big numbers, we are getting — the right to dial our careers down and dial them back up, according to our needs.

It’s not always easy or straightforward–but we’re choosing to negotiate, to push, for work arrangements that allow us to keep our careers rather than abandon them. And it’s working, because (who knew?) we’re valuable! The mommy-track isn’t a seldom-traveled road to nowhere anymore. It’s become a busy path, often shared by men these days, and one that can still lead to the upper eschelons. Gen Y, in fact, won’t travel any other way, and employers are rushing to accommodate.

And here’s the really exciting thing; the companies that let us work the way we want are discovering huge benefits. Businesses like Best Buy, which have thrown out the clocks and now judge performance entirely on results rather than hours spent in the cubicle, have seen their productivity increase enormously–sometimes by as much as 40%. Why? Because if you treat women, and men, like adults, it should be little surprise their performance improves.

Hang on, you’re probably thinking. What about the big R word? Won’t the recession just put an end to all of this nutty-crunch, feel-good stuff? On the contrary. The truth is rocky economic times are speeding the change. Companies that can no longer reward employees with hefty bonuses, or even any additional cash at all, are looking for more creative ways to hang on to valuable talent. Women, the majority of whom will trade status and dollars for time, are suddenly finding their employers more receptive to alternative work schedules than they were during boom times. And so women are doubly desirable employees now, because not only is our work valued, but our values make us more flexible to strapped employers. Since time is our critical currency, since we’re often looking beyond money alone, we can help employers ride out the crises while reaping benefits ourselves.

Four-day work weeks, furloughs, working from home to save on real-estate costs–all of these once exotic arrangements have become even more commonplace in recent months. And just as with the arrival of women in factories in the 1940s–things will never be the same. Because these moves aren’t just a short-term fix. They will usher in efficiencies and productivity boosts that so far, only enlightened companies have benefited from, and that the newcomers won’t want to lose.

The world of Womenomics has arrived. Don’t let the gloomy economic headlines frighten you. It’s a terrific time to be a professional woman.

This is the start of a regular Womenomics conversation we’ll be having here, on everything from the changing nature of the workplace, to redefining success–for yourself, to how to handle confrontations with your boss.

This Time It’s Personal!

bcadgroup — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 00:32:02 +0000

Happy 2009 everyone! I thought I would start the New Year on a personal note. As many of our readers know we love technology and the many social media tools such as our blog, that grant a forum for us to speak about the things that we feel are relevant, interesting and educational.

But I do love a personal note. It is so easy to send an email. The environment tells us to save trees so this year instead of writing out holiday cards I emailed one. Thought it was a great way to let people know that I was thinking of them and save a tree at the same time. This action made me feel good but I also felt that I was missing an important part of the message. A personal note from Nicole Mckinney. Hand written – with the nearly extinct ink or a felt tip pen. Enclosed in the note is a thought that reflected the person that I was sending to. I try to always send thank you notes to my friends and family when I receive a nice gift or enjoy a great meal, a party or something that I experienced that I felt was special. The idea that I took the time to think of them, share something special about the experience that I enjoyed lets them know how much it was appreciated.

In my “Get to the Point” daily 60 second new bulletin they talk about just that. Getting personal—in the whirl of technology that surrounds us at every turn. See below to read their take.

This Time, It’s Personal

Everyone likes personalized attention, and it seems that a handwritten note might be worth the time it takes to write. A post at the Neuromarketing blog cites an interesting study discussed by Robert Cialdini in the book Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive. When researchers sent a survey to busy doctors with three different cover letters, and each produced a dramatically different result:

A printed letter generated a response rate of 36 percent.
A printed letter with a handwritten message boosted this by one third to 48 percent.
A printed letter with a handwritten message on a Post-it note pushed the response rate to 75 percent.

“It seems that what is causing the boost is a ‘reciprocity’ effect,” notes Neuromarketing. “The recipient recognizes that the sender apparently put some personal effort into the mailing, and is more likely to reciprocate with some effort of his own.”

Interestingly, the blog notes, responses to the survey with the personalized Post-it note were also more thorough and prompt.

The Po!nt: “[T]he effects of personalization and apparent effort on the part of the sender have to be weighed against the desired action,” says Neuromarketing. “[But] making even difficult requests in a more personal manner can’t hurt.”

I hope that as you begin this New Year, you will take some time to remind yourself that sometimes it is great to go back to basics and Get Personal!

Best Nicole