Capture the Power of Women!

The shopping season is on us and I just realized that there is nothing out there in terms of brand marketing that appeals to our lady shoppers. No attractive messages, no right directions in pitch , nothing in terms of specialized products.

As a marketer and a woman , one would think by now I’d have perfected the art of how to stitch the two seamlessly and present it as a package . But Nah.. unfortunately that didn’t happen either. It has actually been a never-ending quest for me to probe & understand how to connect the two.

In this post, I present some of my observations and criticism of my clan ( including me– call it self evaluation) while attempting to retrieve the underlying reasoning for this advertising stalemate.

As per the latest CIA world Factbook , the overall world population of male, is just a single percentage point ahead of female.

At the same time, studies reveal that 85% of purchasing decisions are made by women. Ideally, this should translate to major marketing efforts being geared towards this audience power center.

Well..unfortunately that’s not exactly how it works!

90% of marketer choose to ignore this segment. Some just alienate them, while others throw biased campaigns that simply do not work.

Here’s a basic question: How can seasoned marketers be so naïve as to not capture this potent revenue resource? Is it complacency or failure to foresee ramifications?

A few years back, I had the chance to spend some time in Saudi Arabia – A country not exactly well known for its outlook and integrity towards their female population. Yet, be it at the grocery store, or choosing the right school for the kids or for bigger decisions like buying a house or a car, you could feel the powerful throb of women in control. Targeted brand campaigns to this hub of power? – Almost nonexistent. Agreed, that there are serious social issues that still remain to be addressed in that country ,but we are focused on just the market paradox today.

Take for example, the two Asians giants, China & India . While basking in the glory of their increasing influence on the world economy, they have conveniently chosen to ignore and disregard the fastest growing segment in their own den. Campaigns lending  meaningful insights for the female audience are few & far between. Majority of Indian brand campaigns, apparently targeted towards women, are biased, primarily sexual, and cradles in the arms of mostly reluctant, non-engaged audience.

Here in my own backyard, we have not done a very flattering job either. CNN ran a story the other day, on how singles group made history with the first ‘cougar cruise’. It was a sold out event. Cougars are defined as older women pursuing younger men. What makes them a lucrative marketing audience? Well.. they come with no strings attached and plenty of money power. They also have certain living standards to adhere to and a younger crowd to please . How did the mature cruising industry fail to strategize the potential of this throbbing crowd? Mostly, because travel industry, in general, have been pretty sluggish in reaping the so called “women-centric” marketing benefits.

Maybe, it’s time to pitch right, think simple and scratch beyond the surface for the common traits that make up a woman. Our marketing gurus need to cover a few more basics than what they have done so far:

So.. for the first time I gave myself a hard look( just the woman me and left out the marketer) and tried to answer this question “ How can a brand communicate to me most effectively”. Here are some of the answers I have come up with:

· Cover more than just the basics. Up-sell me. Give me tons of choices

I think non-linear. My brain structure allows me to probe a wide swath of pros & cons before making decisions. While buying a car, I think of instances where my friend’s friend might want a ride and I need to show off that leather seat, or how to fit the little hamster cage so that the junior travelers stay engaged during a long haul.. You get my point.

· Never ever pitch Pink to me

( unless it’s related to the pink ribbon shop.) You categorize me with your bias. I feel ostracized.

· Even if I appear aloof & reluctant, I love attention

Give me your best personalized customer service but never, and I repeat, never, try to pressurize me.

· I love brands

It appeals to my class. Offer me the choice of brands and then step back and let me decide.

· Use the right prop to pitch

Kids & pets when used in wrong pitches can spin things out of control for you. Do your homework.

· Give me the option to “bring a friend along”

I would love my best friend to buy that dress or come along in that vacation or get that same model of mobile device, albeit, different color.. So, give me the right deal to double it up..I help you by doubling your audience , you help me back. It’s called cashing in on behavioral trends. Have you ever seen two male friends shopping together for the same brand? If yes, they are a rare breed ; Kidnap them and pack them off to an island; Invite all brand managers to poke their brain for a year.

· Be genuine

Irrespective of our formal degree, we all have a PhD in spotting fake attempts to impress. Your message should be simple, transparent and original.

Those were my lists.. How about yours’? Did I nail it down or do you think I digressed..?

Write back & let me know..

Till then,

Women rule!

-Bibi Mukherjee

In search of benchmarks

Most of the small businesses I talk to or have worked with, have a common concern for lack of available industry trends. We depend on either inside contacts, published competitor collateral or just plain old snooping around, in order to find out the current industry trends and offerings. As a result , small business leadership is plagued by lack of actionable industry benchmarks . ..how to understand where exactly their performance stand in terms of either the brand position or established benchmarks.

Google Analytics does a pretty good job with it’s benchmarking tool. It lets the businesses assess how their website compares against some of the industry verticals. I find this tool to be one of GA’s biggest strength.More so, since, there is so little actionable benchmark data available for small accounts( read business).

There’s one catch though. You have to have your data sharing with Google & other benchmarking tools enabled. Sometimes that can be the deal breaker. However, I’ve always been in favor of data sharing when it comes to Google ,since they do this anonymously . All identifiable data from your website is removed before it’s merged with other sites in comparable industry. There is no way you identify any of yours or your competitor’s data from the aggregated result . There is a bonus factor too. With your data sharing enabled, you also gain access to Google’s Conversion Optimizer that lets you adjust your bids to maximize conversions at the minimum price in Adwords .

The initial data presented takes into account all businesses of similar size. But you might want to drill down to your specific trade. GA actually lets you do that. This way you can ensure that the data is more pertinent to your particular business. In this example, I wanted to look at not only travel but even further ; Adventure travel players.

6 top level metrics data over the given timeline is displayed against the benchmark. It’s important to note that all figures are time dependent. Daily variations are possible due to parallel marketing campaigns and other promotional efforts. But comparing similar industry rules out any skew from the seasonality of the business since the seasonal trends of these companies are mostly alike.

Visits is the most basic top level measurement for any industry follower. The fact that in this example webpage visits are over 25% down from the industry benchmark, right away tells them to get their acts together and start working on improving the web site, spending more on paid search ,improve the quality of the links , landing pages and keywords , get more affiliate partners and network better on social media. Unless, this is a new brand, in which case, a benchmark has been established for them to work on. More on that in a min.

New visits= prospects= incremental sales. This is therefore such a key metric ,especially for new products or brands that just launched. The fact that in this example the new visits are about 5% over benchmark, almost tells me that it’s a new brand working to attract prospects and is generating a lot of interest. Over time, however, they can expect this figure to travel south and as long as it stays around 72% (which is the established benchmark)there should be no concern. Expectations set..Bingo!

Bounce rate – Anyone who has worked with me is aware of my obsession with this metric. I don’t know if I am obsessed or despise it, but for sure I can’t live without it. The fact that I’ve worked so hard to get this visitor to come witness my great offering and that he/she is leaving my site right away , without even giving me a second chance, kills me. If it was possible I would recommend the whole world wide web community to solely work towards bringing all bounce rate down to zero, and ban the word bounce rate. But hey.. that’s the extremist me. Sobering down..the bounce rate should never climb above 30%.. end of discussion. Even the benchmark bounce rate( 60%) in this example is super high. But it is what it is. Let’s accept it & move on.

Average time on site – I would definitely like my visitor to stay on. But there are times when we have them land on a page where all information is provided and they choose to just not look around. I am not sure I like that but that definitely brings down the average time spent on my site. That’s why we need benchmarking. If the visitor is spending around 5 mins on competitor’s site , am I not providing the quality experience for him/her to spend that much time on mine? What else can I do in terms of value proposition or in terms of uniqueness to improve that? On the other hand, if I am above the Industry benchmark.. oh well.. what can I say.. I ‘ve stopped bragging these days.

Pageviews & Pages /Visit – Benchmarking this can be counterproductive. That’s just me. Maybe it’s due to the nature of the business I handle. I am currently establishing a brand whose web site have a lot of information on single pages. Also, the page views depends on your product mix .Similar information can be served in different combination and layouts. But you might have a different perspective on this. Why don’t you share?

There is something else about benchmarking in GA that stands out for me- Able to visualize my brand positioning. Let’s look at these two examples.

The first one exceeds the benchmarking for every possible metric.From a top level, this is a leader to me. The alfha male!

Compared to that.. here’s another brand in the same category tracked over the same period of time. Does it tell you anything?. Look carefully. Compare it’s results to the industry benchmark. To me, it’s either a weak and a struggling brand or a new brand trying to make it’s mark.More likely, the later.. looking at the new visits.

What did I miss? How are you guys benchmarking your data? What are your sources? How do you validate? Please share with us.
Till then,
Happy Benchmarking

Bibi