Women as consumers are different from men as consumers in so many ways! Men are more direct-driven to their destination goal, while women meander and enjoy the journey.  Women are multi-taskers and jugglers trying to stay in control while working hard at many different things in their life.
 
As a healthcare and lifestyle marketer, you must first understand women as consumers. You must know why health, wellness and their lifestyle is important to them in their multi-dimensional roles as consumers, caregivers, career women and community leaders.   Gone are the days when most women were stay at home moms or at least similar in their life paths and stages.  Today’s women are interested in health for a variety of reasons that relate to their multi-dimensional lives.  
 
Here Are My Top 4 Essential Strategies to Reaching and Engaging Women as Consumers:
 
1.  Involve women in “co-parenting” or creating your messages with you.
 
Informal, interactive research providing springboards for spontaneity helps create a more transparent, empowering and compelling messages your audience (women) wants to hear and trust. This is one of the most intuitive, and most effective marketing to women strategies. Remember, women love to share ideas, spontaneous feelings, dreams, fears and most of all information. Today’s women are seeking information and readily sharing what they have read in health or self-help books, women’s magazines and on the Internet.
 
To create a dynamic exchange of information and ideas and to maximize spontaneity, host these natural “gatherings” in settings such as coffee lounges, spas and wellness centers, living rooms and restaurants. You may even want to create a mini “TV talk show” and discover salient issues that can propel your marketing efforts and build your business.
 
2.  Position your health, lifestyle or healthcare message in a woman’s “peripheral vision.”
 
Neither a full frontal attack nor splashy, expensive product or service-focused advertising will capture a woman’s attention and loyalty. Marketing to women successfully requires a careful consideration of their beliefs and values. This includes:
 
• Identifying creative approaches to connecting with the social and community causes that are important to women
• Aligning your brand’s essence and key messages to those social and community causes
• Reinforcing the role of a total wellness and lifestyle solution, rather than a product-centric or service-centric brand approach
 
3.  Target women in “life stages”, not “age stages”.
 
Identify the life stages, your targeted women prospects are living in today. For example, your targeted women prospects may be in their fitness phase, -- the phase that usually takes place early in a woman’s life when it’s all about her own healthy body. Your prospects could be in their “family-centric” stage, which normally ranges from the early 20’s to the 40’s, when family comes first and children are growing, or she could be in the discovery stage which is more about the woman refining and expressing who she is. Or, your targeted women prospects may be a seasoned woman who is experiencing a surge in vitality in her love and sex life after 50.
 
4.   Think mother-daughter bonding.
 
Strong intergenerational influences can be found between women and their daughters, and between women and their mothers. 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.
 
Final Marketing to Woman Thoughts: Spark Dialogue, Inspire Action & Profit from Women Consumers 
 
Remember, women are newly empowered decision-makers, purchasers and influencers. You can leverage that empowerment to your advantage. Building a brand, enhancing an organization or company’s reputation, and building trust takes more than sending out controlled messages that speak to women in their multiple roles. Winning their minds and hearts means connecting with them and with their influencers. This will give you greater credibility, visibility and involvement in your targeted prospects’ lives. Whether you are providing products or services that help women at home, work or play, you will be able to break through the spin to build trust and profit greatly from women consumers, if you take my advice and connect to them at all levels.
 
With an extensive background in healthcare public relations, marketing, advertising and marketing to women, , communications expert Kelley Connors can help your company or organization connect to women and their influencers. If you’re a pharmaceutical company, women’s health and lifestyle businesses or health advocacy organization looking to secure market share and influence, go to www.womenshealthpr.com

By Kelly Connors