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Use Your Advertising Dollars to Reach the Female Demographic
The facts are amazing: Even though women still earn less money than
their male counterparts (78 cents for every dollar a man gets), women
make more than 80 percent of the buying decision in all homes. No
wonder advertisers strive to capture the attention of females. But what
complicates matters for marketers is how women shop. Unlike men, women
research items more extensively and are less likely to be influenced by
ads. This means marketers need to fine-tune their advertising messages
and be seen in marketing venues that women deem credible.
Today, companies are paying more attention to the style and form of
their products in an effort to appeal to women, and marketers are
shifting away from only running television ads in favor of promotional
efforts in venues women trust, such as reviews in women’s magazines and
spots on TV shows like Oprah and Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.
Such activities prove that marketing today is getting more fragmented.
What used to work in the past won’t necessarily work today. So in order
to have your product or service reach the female market—even if it’s
not a female-oriented product—you need to view marketing a bit
differently than you did a few years ago.
A recent article in Advertising Age magazine details how women spend
their leisure time. In it, columnist Mike Vorhaus asked women of all
ages to identify from a list of activities their favorite leisure
activity. What he found in the female category impacts all advertisers
who have a product that targets women—or who simply want to get a piece
of the buying power that women possess.
General Trends
According to Vorhaus’s research, in general, women ranked watching
television as their number one leisure activity (23%), followed by
using the Internet (16%) and playing free web-based games (10%).
Reading magazines (one of the top advertising mediums used by many
marketers targeting females) only ranked in at 4%. So if you’re an
advertiser trying to reach women, you need to consider supplementing
your television, radio, and print ads with new advertising vehicles,
such as online advertising, product placements on television shows, and
banner ads on free gaming web sites.
While women do tend to watch more television than men, they watch more
daytime TV, which is a very cost efficient time period to reach women
since rates are lower during the day versus primetime. Additionally,
some networks offer “female cluster” advertising packages, meaning your
ad runs on multiple networks that are geared for women, such as Oxygen,
WE, Style, etc. This is a very targeted and cost efficient media
vehicle for reaching females and one you need to consider employing in
your TV media buys...
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