181 – How to Market to Women with Amanda Stevens.

Now if you’re a long time listener to this show, you’ll know I have a love-hate kind of relationship with social media.  A, it’s a time suck; B, it’s a distraction to us small business owners who have work to do by the way as if you didn’t know; and C, social media is far too often a one way street.  And it’s that street I want to go down with you for the next couple of minutes.

Let me explain.  I follow the wonderfully sweet Beechworth Bakery on Facebook.  In fact, their founder Tom O’Toole was to this day one of the most revealing and entertaining interviews I’ve had the pleasure of doing on this show.  They post great stuff on Facebook, pictures of creamy snot blocks; I mean vanilla slices, entertaining activities they have going on at their different stores, photos of their staff goofing about.  It’s a brand that has loads of fun but it’s also a brand that chooses not to engage in conversation.  On a recent post, I reached out and congratulated them on what they were doing.  Their response?  Nothing.  On another post by alerted followers to the fact that they were auctioning a Hawthorne football jumper for charity, the hawks of my team, “I wanted to buy the jumper” so I asked if I could bid them online. Their response?  Nothing.

Now I could take all these personally.  However, as I scroll through their other posts where followers have posted comments and questions, I note that the Beechworth Bakery has also chosen not to respond.  Now I love the Beechworth Bakery.  After all, they do make the yummiest cakes and pastries going around, but I don’t love a brand that chooses not to engage.

Social media is a two way street, team.  It’s best to find as people having conversations online.  That’s pretty simple.  And despite my love-hate relationship with it, I do love the fact platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ give us, the business owner, an amazing opportunity to converse in real time with our prospects and our customers.  That’s amazing!  You know that’s just an amazing improvement that we’ve seen in marketing over the past few years.  Now such an honor should be respected and used wisely.  It can only lead to more loyal customers and ultimately more sales.  On the flipside, if it’s not respected, then over time, customers will find other brands to engage with.

Beechworth Bakery, I do still love you but I would love to hear from you every now and then.  Now, where is that Vanilla slice?

As I mentioned at the start of the show, we are having a chat today with Amanda Stevens all about how to market to the ladies.  It’s probably a conversation we should have had on this show episodes ago because they actually do make up over around 50% of the population so a rather important audience that as marketers need to get our heads around.  And even if your business doesn’t market to women, I think there are still loads of learnings in this fireside chat.  Now I identified Amanda as someone who I should share this conversation with because she really is an expert when it comes to marketing to women.  She’s one of the most in demand female speakers in Australia.  She even shared the stage, check this, with Donald Trump, Sir Bob Geldof, Sir Richard Branson, and Condoleezza Rice. And along the way, she’s built a million dollar marketing consultancy that she sold in 2011.  And she was awarded Young Australian of the Year for Career Achievement and she’s written 6 business books, the latest being Retail Revival.  So she is in a good position to have this conversation with.  Now let’s get stuck in.  We started off by talking about how too many marketers regard women as a niche.

Amanda:    

I like to call female consumers the 80% minority because it’s a totally well accepted worldwide statistic now that somewhere between 80% and 85% of all consumers’ purchase decisions so it’s very much a case of marketing to the majority.

Tim:

Wow!  Well, let’s actually define women because I mean rather broad term and when we talk about and when you talk too about how to market to women, like who have you got front and center?  Is it the teens, is it twenty-somethings, is it mums, is it women in the workforce?  Who are we talking about?

Amanda: 

That’s a great question and I think probably the biggest mistake that a lot of brands make, big and small, is defining their target audience as women 18+ and the fact is that within that very broad group, there are literally hundreds of subsets depending on how you define them but what we know about women that differentiates them quite significantly from men is that we change in the way that we interact with brands and our motivations and priorities change quite significantly with a change in life stage.  So I like to define women certainly in the broadest sense of having this really kind of four subsets of women and they’re based on life stage.

Adult women generally go through four key life stages and when brands, and marketers, and business owners get clear on their target audience, in the context of those life stages, it makes marketing to them more effective and certainly they get better returns for marketing dollar.

Tim:

Yeah, I remember from all my years working in advertising, one of the things about defining—in fact, we kind of got drowned into this too, the notion of a target audience that these people actually sitting somewhere waiting for us to target them is all a bit weird but it’s actually getting beyond the demographic and understanding like the insights into them.  So obviously, those four different life stages, the insights into them are going to be different.  What’s keeping a teenage girl up at night versus a 30-year-old woman in the workforce up at night versus a 45-year-old mum of teenagers up at night going to be three different things that we kind of need to understand.

Amanda:

Yeah, absolutely right.  And the other interesting thing is that if you look at how women are changing so significantly from a social trend perspective, your average 35-year-old woman is very different today to what she was even one generation ago.  We used to define the average Australian household as Mum, Dad, and two kids, and that now makes up less than 15% of all Australian households.  And from a female perspective, interestingly, right now, the shift that’s happened is that there’s currently more single female households in Australia than non-single female households which is in itself quite extraordinary but it’s also an incredible opportunity for marketers to better connect with women and really recognize that women are spending a much longer proportion of their life single both at the beginning of their life because we’re getting married later, and also at the end of life because women are outliving men, we’re obviously living longer, and also, women are more likely to be single post fifty because that’s the only age group where the divorce rate in Australia is currently on the increase and 68% of those divorces are instigated by the female.

Tim:   

A very depressing conversation we’re having here.

Amanda: 

It depends on how you look at it.  If you thought your husband had all your marketer had on.

Tim: 

Yeah, yeah, correct.  Well, there in too lies the challenge you know putting one head on and taking the other one off.  I mean I find this particularly interesting even for my brand which is the small business big marketing brand, Amanda, I think I’ve got more of a male listening audience than a female listening audience and that’s kind of shown up in my forum membership.  I had a meet up the other night in Melbourne where there were more blokes than women.  So I’m really taking notes here and figuring how on Earth I identify those life stages and target them.  Does a business or brand need to create separate marketing messages for the women versus the men?  So let’s for example think about a vet, your local vet.  I was saying before we hit record, this conversation would be easy to have and we will talk about some bigger brands that are getting it right, getting it wrong later on but how does the local vet do it where he or she has got clientele of both men and women.  Do they have to have the female brochure and the male brochure?

Amanda: 

Yeah, great question and I think, obviously, there’s a lot of people listening to this too thinking that very thing.  “I’m marketing to men and women.  How do I target both audiences without alienating the other?”  And the short answer to that is if you get the marketing to women paced right, you actually by default market to men better.

Tim:   

Oh that makes us look stupid!

Amanda:

No, not at all, not at all.  There’s a great saying that if you meet the expectations of women, you often exceed the expectations of men.  We are much more difficult customers.  We factor in a much broader set of criteria in making purchase decisions.  So if you’re marketing to men and women, it’s about recognizing that men and women will take completely different aspects out of the same pace of communication.  So for example, men are more likely to recall exact facts and data whereas women are more drawn to and are more likely to recall more emotive based communication.

Tim: 

I’ve heard and read you say this.  Can I challenge you on that a little bit?

Amanda: 

Please do.

Tim:

Because I’m here to support the blokes, you know.  And in all my marketing speak, all us marketers talk about the need to build emotion.  And first and foremost, before being male or female, we’re an emotional being.  We do respond to emotion both men and women more than we do the rational, I think.  I’m no psychologist and I know you’ve done work with neuroscientists and all that but I’ll give you an example like the Jeep campaign, right, like that hits me so emotionally.  It’s all about freedom.  Every Jeep ad I see, I just go, “Gee, I think I probably should get a Jeep because they’re just so emotionally engaging.”  The other one, Corona Beer, that wonderful outdoor campaign “from where you’d rather be,” you know.  Again, clearly, I love freedom because that campaign’s all about freedom.  I don’t see myself responding pre-purchase—I do post-purchase—but I don’t see myself responding pre-purchase in a rational way.  You’re saying that women respond emotionally and men don’t.

Amanda:  

Well no, I’m not saying that.  I’m saying that women are more predisposed to responding emotionally and this isn’t finite by any chance.  And when I talk about men and women, it’s most men most of the time and most women most of the time.  There are certainly no absolutes in any of these.

Tim:   

Yeah.

Amanda:

But the research shows that women respond and recall are more likely to recall information that is emotive-based storytelling and human based communication.  Now the point you make is really an interesting one because it’s not an either or proposition.  If you’re marketing to women, it doesn’t mean you’re not marketing to men but we know that if you get the marketing to women paced right, you are likely to appeal to men as well.

Tim:

Interesting.  So back to our vet example, what you’re suggesting is a vet is a good example of someone would have very much a split clientele, I guess depends on their geographical location but generally speaking split clientele so they should focus on what are the emotional triggers for the women to decide whether they’re going to use that vet or not and build their marketing messages around that knowing that they’re going to pick up us blokes in the net as well.

Amanda: 

That’s right.  And a vet is a good example.  It’s a very emotive attending, a very emotive purchase interaction if you like.  I had my dog at the vet recently and he needed $3,000 surgery.  I mean it was not a question for me because it’s an emotional purchase and so the price elasticity doesn’t really come into it.  And a good example there where my husband was asking all the questions how this operation was going to work technically and what the process was, whereas I was just so focused on the emotion of making sure that he was going to be okay.

Tim:

I reckon your hubby—here I go, I’m going against what I said before—he’s probably working out whether he could do the operation himself.

Amanda:  

That will be kind of problem solved.

Tim:

Yeah, yeah.

Amanda: 

Yeah, that’s the mistake of other people make in the sales perspective.  It’s somewhere in the male DNA, I haven’t located it yet. It’s somewhere.  It’s called the problem solving gene.  You guys love solving problems and in fact scientists have recently discovered that when a guy finds the solution to a problem, dopamine levels which is your happy hormone rise so you actually scientifically kind of get off in solving problems and so we see this happening in retail sense where a woman will be wanting something or asking to purchase something and if the problem is solved too quickly by the person he’s serving, she feels as though she’s not being listened to even if it’s the right product or service for her.

Tim:  

Yeah, right.  Problem solving’s actually a big one.  It came up with a recent talk I did where been talking about the notion of a helpful business and just being helpful which problem solving is by nature being helpful, it does release dopamine and it’s actually a really good staff retention strategy because if you become a helpful business by creating marketing and sales processes that actually just unbelievably helpful to the customers, your staff feel really good about themselves.

Amanda:

Yeah, absolutely.

Tim: 

I love that.

Amanda:  

The danger is not being too helpful to the point where you’re solving problems for customers too quickly and the danger in that is not losing the opportunity to take a step back and ask small questions about that customer, not just why they are purchasing that product or service but who they are and what they’re all about, and building those relationship-building opportunities that often exist in a customer interaction.

Tim:  

Yeah, okay.  By the way, listeners, I’m talking to Amanda Stevens who is a speaker, author, and marketer specializing in how to market to women, a conversation that we should have had on this show long ago.  Amanda, you say that 80% of women say marketers don’t get them and 80% make the purchase decision.  That’s a pretty big disconnect.

Amanda: 

Isn’t it?  Isn’t it indeed?  Yeah, the research shows that ironically, even though most marketers understand that their core audience is women, and yet it’s that very audience that sometimes particularly pick a brand they’re still not connecting with.  And I think there are lots of reasons to that.  I think the advertising industry’s kind of dirty little secret is that although women are making the majority of purchase decisions, the majority of ads are created by men.

Tim:

Is that still the case?  Like is that a fact?

Amanda:

Yeah, yeah.  Less than 10% of senior creators in ad agencies are female.

Tim:

Wow!  I thought that would have changed.  It certainly was the case when I was around that space but I thought—It’s funny you know the advertising industry as much as they sort of pretend to be leaders are quite often they’re followers, they’re behind because they don’t want to do anything that’s kind of risky, quite a conservative industry. What do you think then into that point, I was kind of thinking about ads because I want to have the sex sells conversation because again, we may share different views there but there’s an ad that was on over summer on TV for Bonds women undies.  So I guess Bonds is like a Hanes for oversees listeners, American listeners.  Hanes would be the Bonds equivalent and there was a TV commercial.   I don’t know if you’ve seen it but it had an attractive young girl I’d put her at 19 or 20 in her undies and singlet skipping outside and her undies were changing color across the 30 seconds.  Now, for a young bloke, that was a very appealing TV commercial but how does that appeal to women or doesn’t it?

Amanda:

Look I think that particular commercial does appeal to women in that demographic because it’s young, it’s fun, you know.  The message is kind of fun, freedom, expressing yourself, and those are certainly key messages that appeal to that demographic.

Tim:

Right.

Amanda: 

The fact that it also appeals to men, I think just met perhaps the fortunate by-product to that particular commercial.

Tim: 

So that’s a good example then of life stages.  So that younger life stage key inside into them, freedom, expressing who they are, being a little bit wacky, so then that gives you permission as a marketer to create marketing that is a little bit more, it’s not really on edge, but to me it was like I wonder whether it’s the right thing or not.  You’d think Bonds would know, big brand, lots of research.

Amanda:

Absolutely.  I think possibly if I was to recreate that commercial, the other element I would focus on creatively would be friends because friendship is the thing that we know drives that particular demographic.  It’s all about fun and friends.

Tim: 

Yeah.

Amanda:

And freedom.  So those insights, if you are marketing to that demographic as an example, they are the kind of messages and feelings that you need to invoke to connect with them.

Tim:

Well that’s interesting.

Amanda:

It’s quite different obviously to other last stages.

Tim:

Yeah, yeah, totally.  The next Bonds commercial—clearly I’m following the Bonds commercials, funny that—is that it is three women actually on bikes and they’re sort of in front of a green screen and on the green screen are all these kind of things happening like Olympic games moments and all sorts of stuff, and they’re just riding, I don’t know, weird, but it is a group of friends.  Maybe they knew what you were thinking.

Amanda: 

Maybe, maybe.  I mean that’s some interesting dynamic that is a little bit of insight for your listeners, is that the really great opportunity when you’re marketing to women is that dynamics which we call the inner circle.

Tim: 

Oh here we go.

Amanda:

Because women are getting married later and having children later.  What we’re finding is that throughout their 20s and 30s, they’re surrounding themselves with, I guess it’s almost a pseudo family, it’s usually two or three other women.  And the interesting thing that more and more research is showing is that it’s that inner circle that women are relying on for advice, recommendation, and information about new products and services.  So particularly for small businesses, this is such a great opportunity because it means that when you’re marketing and selling to women, you’re often not just marketing and selling to them.  You’re also marketing and selling to their inner circle so it becomes an emotion-laid sales opportunity.

Tim:

Yeah, that’s great insight, great insight.  That’s the sisterhood right there isn’t it?

Amanda:              .

Absolutely.  And you know, the research shows that if women have a good customer experience, they’re 5 to 10 times more likely to engage in positive word of mouth than the average man so women are the ones, even if to those businesses listening that are marketing to men and women, just make no mistake that it’s your female customers who are far more likely, given the right experience, to become walking unpaid advertisements and brand ambassadors for you if you like.

Tim:

Yeah, they love a chat.

Amanda:

Yup.  We speak on average about 10,000 to 12,000 more words in any given day so you might as well be using out some of those conversations about your brand.

Tim: 

Absolutely.  In fact, I met a man, he’s a professor of marketing at a university, and he did tell me a number of years ago clearly that quota has gone up but he used to say that you use 7,000 words a day and men use 4,000 but the quote is that you’re saying 10,000 to 12,000.  Whatever it is, it’s significantly different.  And I’m not sure grunting counts within that which is what us, blokes, can do a lot of.  So that’s a great tip that inner circle theme.  I love that.

Talking to that and that whole experience because a brand experience is something that does get talked about and does build that emotional attachment, and I know you’re a strong believer on that whole customer experience approach to marketing.  Can you give me an example of maybe a brand that you’ve seen or that you love that does offer a great experience and as a result, does get talked about?

Amanda:

Yeah.   I think we’re definitely right now heading into an experience economy and the shift that’s going on right now is that switch from word of mouth to web of mouth.  So going from word of mouth to web of mouth, all conversations now or the majority of conversations are going online.  So again, timely opportunity particularly for small businesses to create a competitive advantage by having brand advocates.  And I think it’s that difference between delivering experiences to your customers that are satisfactory versus those that are over and above expectations and that are so out of the box and extraordinary that you just can’t help yourself but talk about them.  And we’ve all had customer experiences that are extraordinary, and unexpected, and do well, and surely go over and above satisfactory, and they’re the brand experiences that we talk about.  I’ve just written a new book on retails and what I wanted to do with this book is identify what are the common characteristics of great retailers because retail industry, we’ve lost some iconic brands globally and certainly here in Australia in the last few years and even just last year, 3,000 retailers in Australia shut their doors.  So I think it’s a pretty tough climate within that same economic climate and the same consumer confidence, we’ve had retail brands that have achieved double digit growth.  And in identifying what the common characteristics of those brands, what are they doing differently, creating customer experiences that are worthy of a Friday night dinner party conversation was the standout factor.  And even for brands that charge a premium for their products and services, they create customer experiences and have such high customer advocacy that they’re able to grow their once small business into a big business by using and leveraging their existing customer base.

Tim:

Two questions:  that book, was that through the eyes—through your eyes and you’re a woman—but was it looking at it from a marketing to women perspective or just retail in general?

Amanda: 

It’s retail in general.  There’s clearly a slightly female skew to it.

Tim: 

Yup.

Amanda:

Predominantly because women do make the majority of the decisions.  And there were some brands that I studied as part of writing the book that were really interesting.  A brand in Australia here that I know launched into the US now called Lorna Jane, brilliant Australian success story.  Now Lorna Jane, for the listeners who aren’t aware, basically they sell women’s exercise fashion.  If you break it down, what they’re selling really is really expensive lycra.

Tim: 

They are, aren’t they?

Amanda:  

And the garments that you can purchase in Lorna Jane you can get at much less prices in other stores but Lorna Jane as a brand has such high customer advocacy that women flock to them and happily pay the premium.

Tim:

Can we talk about that?  That’s a great example.  Although you had four knockbacks on this show from interviews, Lorna Jane was one of them so I’ve got Rebecca and she didn’t want to reveal her marketing secrets, I was told but I’ve been into that store. I’ve been in there with my wife and I’ve gone in there as a marketer, I felt a little weird like a bit of a perv being in there by myself but where’s the experience because I couldn’t pick it up.  They’ve got a cool website, they’ve got a cool brochure but as a store, I was struggling to see anything particularly special.

Amanda:

Okay, that surprises me because their in-store experience I think is extraordinary.

Tim:   

Okay.  You’d say.  And I’ve only been into two different shops and maybe they weren’t their kind of flagship shops.  So what are they doing there, Amanda?

Amanda:

I think what immediately stands out when you go into a Lorna Jane store is their staff have obviously been trained in a certain way to make customers feel gorgeous.  For a woman, there’s only one of the most hideous things in the world is to actually have to try on anything with lycra, whether it be swimwear or exercise gear or whatever.

Tim:

For a man too, by the way.

Amanda:

So I think their staff makes you feel gorgeous, they can connect with you on an emotional level, and they make it a nice, fun, positive experience.  And when you have a customer in store who is in that mindset, particularly women, we will spend.  That’s as simple as it gets.

Tim: 

Yeah, okay.  So what you’ve identified is not that experience is not necessarily something physical or visual for Lorna Jane.  It’s in the way they go about conversing with their customers.

Amanda:

That’s right.  And here’s the opportunity for small business because big brands right now unfortunately are cutting staff and cutting staff training.  So as we’re heading into an experience economy, I think right now we’re at a real tipping point of small businesses having an opportunity to create a competitive advantage over even their biggest competitors by creating a customer experience that completely and utterly puts them on the map.  You know, I went into a big department store just last week—I won’t say which one—and I literally could not find someone, a staff member to take my money.  I had four items worth spending about $200.  I walked the store for 10, 15 minutes and I eventually got so frustrated that I went to the door and set off the security alarm thinking, “Well someone would surely come then.”  No one did.

Tim:

No one did?

Amanda: 

No one did.

Tim:

I’ve experienced that myself.  I haven’t had the courage to set off the security alarm but that’s a great idea.  I’ll try that next time.  What’s the opportunity then for small businesses?  It’s in the customer services is actually providing almost that tender loving care, isn’t it?

Amanda:

Absolutely.  Creating relationships and, as I said, delivering experiences that get your business talked about at dinner parties on Friday nights.

Tim:

Yeah.  It’s funny, you know, like marketed or marketer, I still don’t see a lot of this stuff happening, these one percenters, these little moments of truth that you can really make a difference and it’s not as if what you’re suggesting is it’s not big budget stuff, it’s not about spending loads of money.  It’s just that Lorna Jane example is a great one where they’ve realized that “Hey, for women coming into our store and trying on lycra, that is a very confronting thing because they’re going to see every bump and curve,” and you know, well known to man literally but to actually just understand that as an insight and address it, that’s going to get talked about.

Amanda:

Yeah, and as I said, it’s about using your existing customers to grow your market share because if they have a good experience, they’ll tell their friends, and getting talked about is I think the litmus test for a successful small business.

Tim:

Yeah, totally.  I said we’d talk about whether the sex sells or not and we currently touched on that Bonds TV commercial.  You’re of the opinion sex doesn’t sell, aren’t you?

Amanda: 

Well, it’s not a finite answer, I don’t think.  I think as human beings, we are drawn to images and messages that are aspirational but if it’s using sex for the sake of it, I don’t think that that does work particularly when you’re marketing to women.  Does sex sell?  It might give you short term sales spike but where the real value and the real opportunity in marketing to women lies is building a long term profitable relationship.  And small business owners who are listening to this would know that it’s the lifetime value of the customer that really matters, not the response you might be getting from an ad that’s sexy.

Tim:   

What do you think about those—I only see it when it appears on the pages of marketing magazine or marketing website –but those like for example again, it’s an underwear brand I think or a bra brand that uses different shaped women?  You know, not going for the supermodel look but using all shapes and sizes.  In fact, I think Target did it of most recent times with that campaign.  As I said, I only ever see it in the marketing pages as something that’s “Oh, this is a bit wacky.  They’re not using real models.”

Amanda: 

[Inaudible 34:24].

Tim:  

Yeah, yeah.  To me, it just seems like a bit of a—I don’t know—it’s a one off and they’ll go back next year to using real models or we’re not saying real models, skinny models like Guess.

Amanda: 

Yeah, yeah.

Tim: 

I’m sitting on eggshells here, Amanda, help me.

Amanda:   

No, no.  It’s a great question and I think we’ve seen a lot of brands in the last decade certainly make great strides to using more diverse women both in shape and in age as well.  Dove, I mean the Dove real beauty campaign I think globally really put that strategy on the map and now we’re seeing as you say brands like Target doing it.  I would hope to think that they will continue to do it because research shows that women do respond positively to it.

Tim: 

Does it?

Amanda:    

The fact that we are not all size 8 with flawless skin and aren’t able to Photoshop ourselves before we walk out the door each morning so I think that fine line between creating a brand image and advertising messages that are aspirational but are also real and reflect the realities of women and how they feel and what keeps them up at night.  And diversity not just in terms of shape but also age.  I mean 50+ women in Australia are the biggest untapped market and ironically, they’re the ones who over the next few decades will have the money, they want to spend but I’ve seen in research groups we’ve made week after week and they just say the same thing, they say to me like, “Amanda, the businesses think that when we turn 50, we drop dead.”  They just feel completely ignored.  They feel either ignored or they feel even worse, stereotyped as frail old ladies.  As I say to my clients, 50 is the new 37.

Tim: 

The new 37.  It used to be the new 40.

Amanda:

Yup.

Tim:  

Getting younger.

Amanda:

Exactly.  Yeah.  The average 50 or even 60 year old woman is not what she was a generation ago.  The number of women starting businesses over the age of 50 for example has tripled in the last five years.  So when a woman turns 50 or even 60, her mindset isn’t slowing down.  It’s often she’s…we call it primetime.

Tim:

Man, this has been a fascinating discussion.  It’s a can of worms and it deserves much longer than the time we’re giving it but at least the discussion at least within the realms of small business big marketing has been started.  I just want to finish off.  You’ve given us some great insights.  That inner circle tip is a great one; the notion of getting clear on the different life stages and which life stage your target audience is within so you can create messaging around them.  Any last little nugget that you can leave small business owners listening with in regards to marketing to their female audience?

Amanda:

Yeah.  I think the one takeaway that would be powerful for a lot of businesses out there is to really recognize what I think a bit of a dormant marketing asset and that is your existing customer base.  If you did nothing else but profiled your existing customers, perhaps took the top 20% of them and rewarded them, and gifted them, and recognized them in a way that wowed them, that alone would generate the word of mouth customer advocacy that you need to grow your business.  It’s that simple.

Tim: 

Well, you know the women got 12,000 words to use so we might as well help them use them per day.

Amanda: 

Absolutely.  Get them talking about your business.

Tim:  

I love it!  Hey, Amanda, thank you so much for sharing how to market to women gold on the show.

Amanda:

Thank you, Tim.  Thanks for having me.

Tim:

Now that whole marketing to women topic.  We could have gone on for a lot longer because obviously there’s plenty more to cover.  However, hopefully there was some marketing G-O-L-D in there for you.  My top three learnings from that chat with Amanda: #1, Get your marketing sorted for your female customers and the men will follow.  Isn’t that interesting?  Us followers, we do love following the ladies, I must admit but that’s a really interesting concept to think if you do have customers who are female and male, then getting your marketing sorted for the females is a good place to start.  #2, Give thought to the life stage your customers are in and how that impacts their purchase behavior.  I think sometimes, we don’t look beyond demographics when we’re thinking about who’s buying from us but if you can kind of get your head inside the mind of your customer and what life stage they’re in, how they think about purchasing from you, what annoys them about purchasing from you, what criteria they use to decide to purchase from you or a competitor.  These are great questions to ask.  #3, Word of mouth.  Amanda mentioned that.  Haven’t heard that for a while but it’s a ripper.  It’s a great mindset to have I guess knowing that people are talking about you in social media.  Back to my editorial from the shop of the top of the program, people are talking about you online, you might as well be there and contribute, and hopefully, they will answer you back.

If you’ve got a key learning from that episode from that chat with Amanda, then I would love to hear it.  Head over to smallbusinessbigmarketing.com and look for episode 181.  Leave your comments in the show notes.  I would love to see what you learned from that.

Alright, team.  That almost brings us to the end of another episode of Australia’s #1 marketing show.  Remember, actually I’ve got a very special guest making reappearance at the very end of this episode. El Presidente, President Obama himself decided, he tapped me on the shoulder, he said, “Timbo, do you mind if I read some more listener reviews from your iTunes listing?” so of course, I had to say yes.  So hang around for that.

And remember Net Registry are there to get your online marketing sorted.  Swiftly are there for you to get small design fixes done fast.  The Small Business Big Marketing forum is there.  I’m in there every day.  I’m answering marketing questions of members.  So head over to smallbusinessbigmarketing.com and you can register within like 2 minutes. I’ll be in there answering questions and there’s a classroom in there with a whole other marketing training that I’ve created as well.  Next week’s guest: an ex-Google employee who’s gone off and designed an app that solves a very big problem very simply.  So we haven’t had the app conversation for quite a while so I’m really looking forward to getting Troy on the show.

I reckon that’s about enough, team.  I’m Timbo Reid.  You have been listening by the way if you didn’t know already to Australia’s #1 marketing show.  May your marketing be the best marketing.  Bye for now.

You’ve been listening to the Small Business Big Marketing show with Tim Reid.  Want more marketing goodness?  Then visit smallbusinessbigmarketing.com.    

Obama:

“As a solo environmental ecology consultant, in business for 7 years, competing against some of the largest companies in the world, this podcast is more than gold.  The guest interviewed and the complete delivery is professional, fun, and more importantly genuinely applicable, and successful for sole practitioners like me.  Been listening now for a year and worked my way through the backlog.  This show is rare because it works and I work a lot with rare plants and animals so I would know.  Thanks, Timbo.”

“This podcast is truly generous with advice and ideas for small businesses.  I’ve learned so much about creative marketing, found interesting products to aide my marketing, and discovered exciting business owners who divulge their wealth of knowledge.  This show makes you excited about marketing your business.  It inspires you to become a better business person for your customers.  Tim gives it all to us for free!  I feel like I’ve stumbled upon this hidden treasure and am so grateful.”

Smallbusinessbigmarketing.com