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Marketing to Women

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Marketing to Women

How to Understand, Reach and Increase Your Share of the Largest Market Segment

Kaplan Publishing,

15 min read
9 take-aways
Text available

What's inside?

You can reach women consumers by understanding how they are hard-wired. In advertising, the genders may be equal, but they are very different - and so are the messages that will make them buy.

Editorial Rating

7

Qualities

  • Innovative
  • Applicable

Recommendation

As a consumer group, women represent an enormous opportunity, but chances are your company is missing out on them. Author Martha Barletta says most marketers fail to capitalize on this lucrative market. They don’t realize its potential or understand fundamental gender differences. As a result, their marketing fails to communicate with women, let alone persuade them. Barletta, a consultant specializing in marketing to women consumers, offers a book heavy on theory and long on detail. Except for a few examples of how ads are executed, the book lacks case studies that would bring these theories to life. Still, Barletta provides good advice on practical applications of these ideas about gender culture. She sheds light on the myths and realities of marketing to women, and provides essays by female experts in the field. What a pity that it all reads like a textbook. Given that, getAbstract.com targets this rather educational tome as more appropriate for people who study marketing than for people who do marketing, although thoughtful marketers might still want to take a look.

Summary

Men and Women Really Are Different

Marketing directly to women makes sense because women’s earning power and purchasing power are greater now than ever. With their status as the decision makers on household spending, plus the greater number of female-headed households and the increasing number of women who control corporate purse strings, women emerge as significant customers. They make the buying decisions on everything from toothpaste to mutual funds to business equipment.

Despite 25 years of progress in overcoming gender stereotypes in American society, a number of research studies confirm that men and women have significant differences after all. Their abilities, priorities, attitudes and preferences are different and, according to the concept of gender culture, these differences are rooted in our biological makeup.

Gender culture, which manifests in abilities and preferences, makes males and females prone to certain types of behaviors that stem from evolutionary and biological factors. In general, women tend to excel in extrasensory perception, emotional access, attention and focus, contextual thinking, people orientation and verbal acuity. Men, on the other...

About the Author

Martha Barletta, president of The TrendSight Group, specializes in gender-focused marketing strategies for women consumers. She has 20 years of ad agency experience working for such brands as Kodak, Kraft and Allstate. Barletta has worked with Northwestern University’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management, and has been featured in AdWeek, the San Francisco Examiner, the Toronto Star and DM News.

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