Marketing to Women Online
A new study has found that the increase in women users on the web
is faster than their male counterparts. According to PC Data Online's
research, this summer women between the ages of 35 and 44 were a dominant
e-retail force. More and more e-commerce sites now cater specifically
to women. Well-known examples include Women.com, Oxygen.com and Omnimedia.
Online marketers are reacting to women's Internet surfing habits by
targeting sites with specific ad campaigns. Online stores with female
buyer demographics, such as JCPenney.com, took over the Net's top
20 sales rankings for July 2000.
So, how can your business successfully market to women online? Here
are my three top strategizing tips:
1. Keep Strong Ties with Offline Brands
It used to be that every offline company wanted a cool new name for
their online presence. But if you're trying to appeal to women the
last thing you should do is change your name when you add a dot-com
to it.
Women like brands they already know and trust. Plus, by keeping your
offline name you have a better chance at fighting your way through
the noise generated by too many dot-com start-ups in the same space.
And chances are, your current customers are already looking for you
under your own name online.
If some other company has already grabbed your name online, you can
either buy it from them or get them to run a banner ad on their home
page redirecting people to your site. How much should you pay? Ask
them for a copy of their traffic logs to find out. If a lot of visitors
dive in for a few seconds and leave quickly, they were probably looking
for you instead of what they found. Decide for yourself how much that
traffic is worth.
If you don't have a well-known brand name, you should consider partnering
with someone who does. It's smarter to set up a boutique within a
major site that a lot of women already traffic than it is to try to
get traffic to your own little store by the side of the road. Luckily,
a lot of sites are interested in deals of this type.
There are two main types of partnerships:
· The first is a "microsite media buy." Instead of
buying a regular banner ad on someone's site, you pay them to construct
a special site section of which you are the sole sponsor.
· The second type of partnership deal is a "co-branding"
arrangement whereby your boutique store or small site appears within
the bigger site as though it's an organic part of it. You'd be surprised
at how many sites you already visit that are made up of sections all
from very different owners! Sometimes your logo will appear somewhere
on the page, and sometimes the main site will just visually pretend
the section belongs to them 100%. Usually you share the revenues that
are generated.
2. Create a special site section just for women
A lot of general interest or general consumer sites don't think to
create special sections for women. "Why should we?" they
ask. "Both men and women visit this site!" OK, let's step
back and think about it. You know that men and women are different.
You also know the more targeted your marketing message is to a particular
audience, the better your results will be. That's why many general-interest
sites such as Hollywood.com and iWin.com are launching special sections
of their sites just to appeal to women.
iWin.com
saw a 30% increase in their traffic just a single month after they
launched their special section for women. Hollywood.com's special
Women in Film section helped advertisers such as iVillage get up to
a 52% click-though rate.
3. Maximize your use of email newsletters
A survey
conducted recently, revealed that 91% of women online like opt-in
email newsletters. 91%! Another study revealed that 65% of women really
like email -- as opposed to 55% of men.
So, to maximize this opportunity your company should be doing three
things:
a. Offer your customers and site visitors a free opt-in email newsletter.
Make sure the sign-up form is in a highly visible place on every main
page of your site. Make sure the tone is friendly and personal instead
of corporate. Women prefer newsletters with practical information
written in a personal tone.
b. Divert some of your regular advertising budget into placing space
ads in other company's email newsletters. More than 50,000 email newsletters
are published right now that accept some form of advertising or sponsorship.
Usability tests show people are often more likely to read a text ad
than they are a banner ad!
c. Make sure your public relations and corporate communications team
have added the editors and writers of email newsletters to their press
lists. A story about you appearing in another email newsletter may
do your sales even more good than if you just advertised. Remember,
the subscribers have opted in because they want information on this
topic!
Most companies should have a strategy for specifically reaching the
female demographic online as they will soon be a large audience in
the Middle East as well.
