Monday, September 17, 2007

What Women Want

Women as consumers are different from men, particularly when it comes to healthcare. Here are suggestions to reach and engage women:

1. Involve women in creating your messages.
Trust is a big deal, particularly when it comes to healthcare marketing. One of the most intuitive, and most effective marketing-to-women strategies is informal, interactive research providing springboards for spontaneity helps create a more transparent, empowering and compelling message your audiences (women) want to hear and trust.

2. Marketing to women successfully requires a careful consideration of their beliefs and values.
This includes:

* Strategies that connect with the causes that are important to women
* Aligning your brand and messaging to those social and community causes
* Reinforcing the role of a total wellness and lifestyle solution

3. Target women in "life stages," not "age stages."
Examples of phases can be fitness, family-centric, discovery, and seasoned. Speak to their life experiences right now, not their ages.

4. Think mother-daughter bonding.
Winning their minds and hearts means connecting with them and their influencers. Strong intergenerational influences can be found between women and their mothers, and between women and their daughters. Information and advice, especially related to healthcare, is solicited. It flows freely from one generation to another. Reinforcing this idea, Medelia Monitor Research recently revealed that 64 percent of women surveyed talk with their mothers on a daily or weekly basis. More than 41 percent say their moms are their best friends.


2 comments:

David said...

I agree with your approach to addressing women as life stages as opposed to age stages. Would you market to the empty nest before menopause stage the same as you would the post menopause stage?

Unknown said...

Hi David,

Thanks for responding. We did a mini-focus group among friends, family, and colleagues and unanimously agree that you would market those stages differently. Many women experience psychological changes as a result of menopause, an extremely substantial and legitimate occurrence in a woman's life that deserves respect and understanding. The range of symptoms, quality of health, and overall experiences is gigantic for these women. Similar to empty nesters, there is still time to spend on yourself, rediscovery, reexamining, redefining values for post-menopausal women. The differences are like puberty, menopause has periods of awkwardness when you adapt physically and emotionally as your body blossoms into something new. It's about embracing the changes and not focusing on symptoms, but focusing on the body as a whole.