Last week I covered off the latest comScore report which revealed that social networking sites reach a higher percentage of women than men globally, with 75.8% of all women online visiting a social networking site in May 2010 versus 69.7% of men.

This has been further re-enforced this week by the release of the State of the Mobile Web Report archive: http://www.opera.com/smw/archive/ by Opera. The results from this survey are remarkable: In just two years, the percentage of women on the mobile web has risen 575%. South Africa leads the world’s push for gender equality on the mobile web, with women accounting for nearly 44% of mobile web users.

Combine this with the fact that it is women who are either primary purchasers or influencers of your brand and you have just been offered a set of compelling figures to reach her.

But despite the continual release of data which reveal the almost addictive use of mobile technology by women, the message just doesn’t seem to be registering with many corporate executives. Many seem to waiting for an epiphany to make the leap or I suspect, just hope the trend might dissolve. I can understand this. It is the rare office I visit in the CE industry where the female sits in the CEO’s seat. And this flows down to the senior executive team who are usually male, even in traditional female centric categories such as kitchen, laundry and floorcare.
 
It means that the resistance to hearing these extraordinary growth trends about 50% of the population is strong and that the will to implement strategies to capitalise on them is weak.
 
If an executive doesn’t have any day-to-day contact with women in powerful positions, it can lead them to believe that they don’t actually exist, except in Canberra.
 
 This means that the leap to embrace a gender intelligent strategy is almost impossible if not overwhelming. So, here is a checklist from Krishna De that may help the process to be less daunting:

1. Don’t just look to connect and reach women on women’s magazines, celebrity gossip and baby sites – the report comments that “women are more engaged than men on the Internet -you just have to know where to look”. Think beyond the obvious suspects when looking for online communities where you can reach the female consumer.

2. If you want to connect with women you need to understand how they interact in social networks – the report states “social networking is central to women’s Internet experience”. Women of all ages connect on social networks sharing photo’s, playing games, and watching online video. Globally, women spent an average of 16.3 percent of their online time on social networks in April 2010, compared to only 11.7 percent for the men.

3. Women (in the US) control the cash – more women than men get engaged with online transactions and collectively spend more. What does this mean then when it comes to the tone and content of your online marketing?

 4. Act global but understand local influences – we need to deep our understanding of regional and cultural differences impact in Internet behaviour. The report goes into some depth about differences they have found across the globe.

 5. Stop making the excuse that Social Networking is only relevant if you are marketing to a youth audience – the 45+ female segment is driving the greatest proportion of growth for Social Networking sites, in terms of both visitation and time spent. Yes the 15-24 may use these sites more frequently and use them more however the 45+ age group visit and use Social Networking sites just as much as the 25-34 and 35-44 age groups.In fact older women are using Social Networks significantly more than men do. In North America, with 9 out of 10 female Internet users visiting a social network site in April 2010.

6. Men and Women use Twitter differently – the report comments that in an April 2010 comScore survey, men were found to be more likely to post their own Tweets than women; women on the other hand used Twitter more to find deals and promotions, as a place for conversing online and to follow celebrities. How does that change your content strategy for Twitter?

Let me know if you are able to implement any of these suggestions to begin connecting to women.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 27th, 2010 at 11:07 am and is filed under My Updates. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.