Marketing to Women

Earlier this month, I attended an all-women event at a local outdoor gear store. Held on a Sunday evening, the event was called SWEET — short for Sporty Women’s Empowering Evening of Tips and advice — and included inspirational speakers, a fashion show, food and giveaways.

Marketing for the event was rather low key. I first learned about it from a simple sign on the door as I left the store a week or so before the event. Later, I saw an ad in the city’s larger newspaper that reminded me to RSVP. Based on what little I heard about it, I didn’t expect attendance to be very high. I was amazed when I approached the store and had a hard time finding a place to park. Later, I was blown away when organizers announced that attendance estimated at around 450 people.

As a “Sporty Woman”, the event appealed to me. I found it refreshing to have marketing efforts targeting me directly on this particular topic since the outdoor industry is filled with images of men hanging from cliffs and other improbable locations. Despite the fact that women buy or influence the purchases of 81% of athletic apparel, category marketing directed specifically towards women is rather limited.

I applaud the store’s focus on the women’s market and I applaud their execution of the event. The evening used real women to inspire other women from a variety of aspects, including:

• A fashion show which featured store staff of all shapes and sizes
• Advice from experts who were female small business owners
• Words of wisdom from three inspirational speakers: an Olympian (who ran the first women’s marathon in 1984), a breast cancer survivor (who climbed Mount Kilimanjaro) and a road cyclist turned mountain biker and B&B owner.

More companies should be paying attention to meeting the needs of the women’s market. In the sports industry, it represents a significant, and growing, opportunity. According to She’s Got Game: Women’s Interest in Sports Grows Significantly (SVP, 2004.), from 1997 to 2000, “sales of women’s athletic sports apparel rose 20% to $15.9 billion, while men’s spending inched up just one percent, to $15.1 billion”.

Interestingly, shortly after the SWEET event, a friend forwarded another example of marketing directed at women by a company that doesn’t traditionally target them. It was for a HOG (Harley Owners’ Group) event, called a Garage Party:

Do you know a woman who has always dreamed of riding a motorcycle?
Tell her now’s the time to shift into first gear! We are hosting a garage party event to introduce women to the fun of riding and give them inside info on how to enter the sport. We will be holding interactive sessions on topics of interest for women who dream of riding and would like to turn their dream into reality. We will answer any questions to get her started on her own Harley-Davidson or Buell adventure.

Maybe times are changing!

Signage as a Marketing Tactic

Signage is a key marketing tool that many people overlook. Most businesses benefit from identifying their location or promoting a local presence. For retail and service businesses, it is imperative that customers are able to find you. Signage plays a key role in this, along with having your location clearly numbered. For other businesses, signage can express messages about your brand. For example, building signage can convey your size or importance by virtue of the size and/or location on the building.

In addition, way-finding signage within buildings or business parks can influence the impression customers have of your company. If they are confused as to where to go or can’t find you at all, their frustration could adversely affect your business regardless of their opinion of your product offering or customer service.

Street-level advertising, such as transit shelters, sandwich boards or billboards, can be used to provide directional messaging or to supplement branding efforts. If your location is off the beaten path, off-building signage can generate traffic by indicating where you are. In addition, this type of advertising can help build awareness with pedestrians and motorists traveling near your geographic location. This is also useful if you are unable to install the building signage that you desire.

Regardless of the type of signage and its location, the key to success is that your signage is both legible and clearly expresses your brand. Legibility is one of my pet peeves. If a customer can’t make sense of what something says — whether it is a sign or other marketing material — how can you expect them to take the action you want them to. Therefore, it is important not only to choose fonts and colors that are easy to read, but also to think carefully about what you say. Too much text will clutter a sign, but consider whether it is important to include some key descriptors to ensure people know what your business does.

Color will also create an impression about your brand, so you should consider choices carefully. For example, the combination of black and yellow is highly legible, but it is also a color combination used for caution (police) tape as well as the labels on some “no name” (generic) products. This may not convey an appropriate message for some businesses.

Some color choices can reveal information about the product. Ethnic restaurants often use colors that identify with the kind of food they serve: Greek restaurants typically use blue and white, while an Irish pub may include green and orange. Recently, I learned that the colors of the New York Knicks — orange and blue — are symbolic of the Dutch origins of Manhattan.

Lastly, the quality of the signage can also make an impression. Generally, a hand-printed sign does not project an image of a very professional business and may cause some people to simply ignore it. However, a hand-written chalkboard sign highlighting today’s specials, creates an immediacy that could generate the incentive for customers to act more quickly.

Good signage will take into consideration all four elements: location, message, design and quality, but the greatest impact will come from signage that also fully expresses the company’s brand.

Further thoughts on recruiting marketing

Most people realize that promoting your organization at the local level is essential if your company does business primarily in the local market. But if your market is elsewhere, how much effort do you need to put into marketing at the local level? At least some, since your employee pool will be local.

In the heyday of the dot.com era, competition for employees was fierce. Salaries skyrocketed, signing bonuses were commonplace and companies offered all kinds of extras to entice potential employees: pool and ping pong tables, gym memberships, flex hours, beer on Friday afternoons, you name it. The key message seemed to be: you will be well compensated and we are a fun place to work.

Today, most companies do not operate in such a hyper-competitive market. Companies still need to create awareness with potential employees and they need to create a favourable impression with those individuals. How you create that awareness and what your message is will vary with the type of organization and your location.

Regardless of your tactics and messaging, whatever you do to build awareness locally must complement the corporate branding used in customer-focused communications. This is one reason why HR and Marketing must work together. Not only is it important that recruiting messages are consistent with corporate messaging, but it may be possible to leverage marketing opportunities that address both department’s objectives. Consistency creates credibility.

Tactics:
When choosing marketing tactics, consider the following:

• Signage — signage on the building where your office is says “we are here” and “we’re big enough to put a sign on the building”. Building signage can be a gentle reminder of your name and will help reinforce your corporate identity.


• Transits ads — transit shelter ads and billboards can supplement building signage to highlight your physical location while bus ads can target particular geographic-based audiences, such as students on routes heading to a university.


• Career ads — display ads in the career section should include a blurb about the company and what it does in addition to a clear description of the open position.


• Event sponsorships — consider sponsoring both business and charitable events. Either can involve speaking opportunities, company descriptions, employee involvement, logo placement, co-op advertising, product placements, etc. Keep in mind that donations are different from sponsorship, both from what recognition you can ask for as well as how it is dealt from a business and tax perspective.


• PR — don’t forget to include local media when getting the word out about corporate or product news. Consider what messages you want to reinforce that are specifically interesting to the talent pool when working with the local press.


• Business awards — leverage any recognition your organization receives from local business associations or industry associations to highlight the company’s achievements and position it as a successful organization, whether it is as an innovator, thought leader or good corporate citizen.

Messages:
Each tactic comes with an opportunity to create targeted messaging. The message should be specific for your target audience of potential employees, in addition to being appropriate for both the marketing vehicle as well as its general audience.

When creating your message, consider what is important to your audience: what language do they speak; what words resonate with them. Is “Accelerate your career” or “Secure your future” more appropriate? Do you want to focus on the quality of your product, your corporate philosophy or mission, who your customers are, or what a great place it is to work? A research organization may want to talk about cutting-edge facilities, while a non-profit may want to reinforce what a great team they have.

Even without the opportunity to include specific content, you can communicate a message by your actions. For example, you can project an image of being community minded through charitable programs. As title sponsor for an event, your company will be mentioned every time the event is mentioned. Product placement can also be an effective way to reach both customers as well as potential employees.

Built on your corporate marketing strategy, a successful recruiting marketing campaign will include the following key elements:

• Have a goal — what’s the end result you are looking for
• Create a strategy — what’s the approach and focus
• Build a plan — with HR and marketing working together on both tactics and messaging
• Execute over time — don’t try to do everything at once
• Review frequently — what’s working and what’s not; what changes can you make

Just remember that whatever activities you use to recruit employees will reflect on your overall brand.

Brand Awareness for Recruiting

Recently, I was asked about generating local brand recognition for a company — to help with recruiting. I hadn’t expected the question and I don’t think my answer was as good as it should have been, so I’d like to consider this a do-over…

The first question you need to ask is: who are you trying to recruit? To answer this question, you need to define your target audience (potential employees). To start with, are you looking for recent grads or seasoned professionals? Also, what type of position(s) do you need to fill — is there a key functional area such as technology, finance/administration or sales/marketing.

Depending on the organization and the positions they are trying to fill, it might be helpful to create a detailed profile of potential candidates. Are there specific demographics and psychographics that apply? Also, is there anything you can identify that these people are not?

From this information, you will get a better idea of how to reach your audience. Two common tactics for generating local brand recognition are: getting involved in local events and advertising. Knowing something about your potential candidates will help you determine which events are most appropriate to reach your target audience.

Getting involved at an event can mean many different things: sponsoring a sporting event, participating as a speaker at a business or industry event, or having a booth at a job fair or tradeshow, to name a few. There are also a number of advertising channels to be considered — building signage, transit ads, advertorials, career ads, radio spots, etc.

Before choosing how you will reach your audience, you need to consider what you want to accomplish. Are you just looking to get your name out or do you want to engage with people? Do you need to explain what you do or do you want to position your company as an industry leader or innovation-focused organization? Which will best serve your recruiting goals?

This step will lead you to developing messaging. What do you want to say about the company? How much will you be able to say given the situation? And, how open in your audience to what you have to say? If you are sponsoring a business luncheon and get to introduce the speaker, you might have the opportunity to mention your organization, but a blatant sales pitch will be frowned upon. As the title sponsor of a sporting event, you may get your logo plastered everywhere, but you likely won’t have the opportunity to explain much about your organization.

To key to success is an integrated approach that includes a variety of activities, planned to build on each other. If possible, different campaigns focused on specific types of candidates will improve your chances for success. In addition, including a public relations element will further strengthen your message.

Brand Personality

Many years ago, early in my marketing career, I worked for a small marketing agency. One service we offered was a management session that helped define the company and objectives for its growth. As part of this exercise, we would create a personality for the company that would enable us to ensure we were on brand with the messaging and creative that was developed. At the time (10+ years ago), this was a fairly distinct approach, and different from the customer personas that many companies use these days.

The light bulb went on for me when, while sitting in traffic, I noticed a white station wagon with the Budweiser logo. Something felt wrong and it took me a minute to put my finger on it. A station wagon is NOT the type of vehicle that would be associated with the Budweiser brand. It isn’t as bad as driving a Hummer while promoting an environmental brand, but it certainly doesn’t build brand credibility for Budweiser. For me, it is an illustration of the need to think about every aspect of how and what you communicate about your company. Even the smallest things can affect the perception of your brand.

I expect that the car I saw was a sales rep’s vehicle and perhaps he (or she) needed the cargo space and fuel economy that the small station wagon provided. However, I believe a more suitable vehicle — one that would have met those needs while projecting the Budweiser brand — would a Jeep or SUV.

While I still believe creating a brand personality will help evaluate the brand marketing you do, I think that customer personas are more helpful when anticipating how prospective customers will act in reaction to targeted marketing strategies and tactics.

What to know more about personas? There is tons of information online, but I liked these:

• “Persona-lizing a site”, November 2007 article from Internet Retailer: http://www.internetretailer.com/article.asp?id=24243
• “Get In Your Customers' Heads: Creating Great Personas”, September 24, 2007 blog entry by Ian Lurie of Conversation Marketing: http://www.conversationmarketing.com/2007/09/get_in_your_customers_heads_cr.htm
• Also, check out Marketing Profs for more articles: www.marketingprofs.com

Welcome!

Congratulations! You found my blog. Since this is one of many million blogs out there, I appreciate the visit.

My focus in this blog is marketing in the real world. When I look around my day-to-day life, I see so many things that marketing could help — from bad signage to mixed messages to poor customer service. I believe that every little thing a company does affects its business. So why not build your brand and your business with things that will improve your relationship with your customers?

Stay tuned for specific examples of what I see out there, along with my thoughts on how marketing could help.