More women marketers needed - Building Gender Balanced Business

“When we overlay men’s more linear, compartmentalized approach to marketing with the female consumers’ complex, non-linear, web-based thinking (and consuming) patterns, things don’t quite match up, do they?”

Why indeed! This leads me to the heart of this article, to explain why industry needs more women to think about and plan and execute its marketing.

Women marketers approach marketing differently. Men tend to think in linear, hierarchical terms. They want the facts, the numbers and the statistics. And the same goes for male marketers. Women (and women marketers), on the other hand, tend to approach topics more contextually, interconnecting knowledge, experiences, facts, opinions, relationships, goals and dreams in a non-linear, web-like manner.

When we overlay men’s more linear, compartmentalized approach to marketing with the female consumers’ complex, non-linear, web-based thinking (and consuming) patterns, things don’t quite match up, do they?

Now, I am in no way saying that products for women can only be promoted by women. What I am saying is that a product for women marketed only by men is going to be lacking in something. As in business, the exclusion of either gender in the marketing process is never a good idea.

To market a product well to either gender, women need to be included in the process. Women marketers, by the sheer fact that they are, well…women, will approach marketing a little differently than men do. They will tend to approach it the way they approach life: in a holistically, interconnected “everything matters” kind of way.

That does not mean women don’t crunch numbers too. Women marketers do demand statistics, facts and numbers just as much as their male counterparts. But they don’t use the number-crunched outcomes as an all defining influence on their marketing approach. Women marketers will often pay attention to their gut feeling, or react to something that is not reflected in the statistics, because they know – the way women do – that it holds an important element of truth that shouldn’t be ignored.

So do we need more female marketers? Yes, absolutely we do. They must be marketed to differently than men. And who better to understand the audience than someone who is part of it? The cardinal rule: really understand your audience. And when possible, BE your audience.

Sabine Clappaert is founder and Managing Director of Muse Communication, a marketing agency specialising in smart marketing to women.