September 25th, 2008 by Richard Lee
How to Market to Women – BlogWorld Expo 2008
Women: The Ultimate…
Where They Are & How to Reach Them
Speakers:
Jennifer Openshaw
Spike Jones
Women are the most active groups within the Blogosphere accounting for 51% of all activity on the Internet.
Other stats:
36.2 million women participate in blogs weekly
15.1 million post content each week
21.1 million read and/or comment weekly
74% of “paying” gamers are women
What does she want:
To participate, to express herself, to be heard, to connect with others like her
Wants you to help her get excited about her life
Credibility:
Give then knowledge
Open the kimono (to share your faults, and to be up front and honest with them)
Content created by women (by women for women)
Create a Movement:
90%+ of communication with women are offline
You need to create a movement to drive your company’s message
People are a medium for your message
Driving Force/Emotion for your Movement:
Passion, Inspiration, Kindrid Spirits, Fans, Organic, Grass Roots, Spreading the word, Evangelists
Women want to be a part of something bigger than ourselves
Engage them:
Focus a headline, less journalistic v.s more conversational
Make them experts
Identify the top and make them evangelists for you
Example:
SparkPeople:
Top 3 in the health and wellness area online
Personalize recipes and connect with people
Example:
Nike’s runners website helps runners talk to each other (many of women runners connect with Nike’s help)
Example / Detailed Case Study:
Fiskars Scissors
150 year old company (orange handle scissors, very recognizable)
You need to reframe your conversation
In this case “crafters” were a big user group
Crafters were using Fiskars scissors as a conduit
Fiskars turn women crafters into “Brand Ambassadors”
Brand Ambassadors who are passionate about a category and evangelize for you, in this case, for free
In this case, these Brand Ambassadors were not online influencers to begin with. They were regular women who were passionate about their hobby. Fiskars brought them in and educated and provided them with guidelines about communicating online and representing the brand.
Fiskars also created a barrier to entry for people joining to ensure the current membership is active and to avoid a large list of non-participating sign ups. Each sign-up would get an automated email which then asks for detail information about that person. Once approved, they then are mailed a membership kit which includes a personalized Fiskar scissor with their ID#. This was a unique product given just to their elite members. So that when they go to craft shows or meet others in the community they will show off their personalized Fiskar scissor. With 5000 active members promoting Fiskars brand, out of which 1000 are volunteers to train others in their community (including coming to retail stores).
MISC Notes:
Some of the top women portals include:
iVillage.com
Glam media
AOL Living
Other website mentioned:
Girlfriends.com (women community)