4 Marketing Tips for Targeting Women via Social Networks

A well-knitted marketing campaign that successfully targets the heavy female presence on social networking platforms (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+) is one of the best ways to radically improve ROI, drive traffic to your site and increase your conversion rate. The truth is, it's not always easy.

The most difficult thing to conquer when it comes to marketing for women via the popular social networking platforms is how to outwit and outperform the competition, particularly when that competition is a large brand with a loyal following of female consumers.

The following tips will help you to work your best social networking magic on your potential female client and help you to keep that female client for life. Men and women are very different. Venus versus Mars, as they say, complicates the online advertising world; this is why it is important to target your male and female clients through separate online marketing campaigns.

What does it mean to “market” female?

Create an Emotional Connection

Perhaps one of the main and most important differences between marketing to men and women via social media is the need for an emotional connection between the brand and the potential client.

Women, generally speaking, need to feel emotionally connected to products or services before going ahead with the transaction. One of the most well-known brands that has managed to find and capitalize on this emotional connection via social networking sites is Dove.

Dove uses images of “real women” instead of the classic, stick-thin model image that we have become accustomed to accepting as the icon of “beauty.” By using images which reach out to the majority of the female market, Dove is able to connect to its potential female consumer on an emotional level.

Female consumers who visit the Dove social networking sites recognize themselves in the images shared. The connection encourages them to respond to the posts and updates that the brand posts regularly. As the female community responds and connects, the marketing campaigns that Dove wants to promote are sent flying around the social networking pages of interested women and their friends.

This emotional connection is the best way of getting women to connect with your brand, to promote your products and services and perhaps even invest in those products and services first hand.

Be Useful

Women, more than men, love tips, advice and useful information. If you own a fashion site, posting real tips on how to wear the latest style of belt, for example, with explanatory photographs to match is one of the best ways of getting your potential female consumer to buy your product or invest time checking in with your brand on a regular basis.

Putting new ideas into practice is a real joy for women. They love to learn, they love finding ways to make things better, more practical or more beautiful. The more useful you can make the posts on your social networking profile, the more interest you will generate and hopefully the more sales you will eventually secure.

Female fans love checking in and receiving information on time. If they know that your brand will publish a useful tip every single Monday morning and that tip will be worth looking into, they will connect with you. Therefore, usefulness and regular updates are the keys to promoting to a female audience.

Complement Her Life, Don’t Complicate It

In general, nature creates a man who loves a challenge: a problem to get his teeth stuck into. The bigger the problem, the more fascinating it is. However, even though women deal with challenges incredibly well and even though they are often better equipped to deal with the emotional turmoil that challenges can bring, women want solutions. Women want to have things all straightened out.

“Pick up your socks,” “This house needs to be organized and tidy.” Women need a certain degree of order in their lives and problems brought to them by others are not healthy challenges, they are annoying situations that women could really do without. Women want products and services that make things easier, smoother and far less turbulent in general.

Therefore, when putting together a social networking campaign for women, make sure that you are offering your potential female client something that is going to complement her life and not something that will complicate it further. A simple “10% off of everything” works much better with women than “10% off During July on Maybelline Products”, for example. Too much detail is a real turnoff for women. Keep it simple and get women on board.

Remember: Women Talk

One of the essential lessons of life, let alone for social networking marketing campaigns targeting female consumers, is that women talk.

Never cheat on your woman, because she will find out. She is connected to the world. She speaks with everyone and she will come into contact with vital information without having to do very much. Someone will send her the information if she doesn’t actually go looking for it in advance. Women talk. It’s a fact.

Therefore, the final social networking tip for online advertisers who want to target women is to treat your female client community with the utmost respect at all times. If a woman has a bad experience with a company, she will share her disgust. She will talk, offline and online, about the terrible problems that she had and this conversation could go on for weeks or months and even make a reappearance years later over a dinner party with friends.

If you make an enemy of a female consumer, without little effort on her part, she will be able to destroy your company’s reputation. Never take advantage of your female fans. Never promise them something that you cannot deliver and never abuse their trust. Women trust women more than they trust brands. If other women are bad-mouthing your company, you will find it difficult to compete against them.

Keep your offers clear and keep your processes honest. Make sure that you provide feedback and respond to comments and requests super quickly and take criticism on board. Women know what they want. Let them guide you to target them better.

About the Author

David Chapman is Director of Marketing at Webrageous and a specialist in pay per click management.