Love it or loathe it, gender based marketing is here to stay. Simply because gender marketing strategies have been tried and tested, and its results speak volumes of its efficacy. Advertisers may preach that they are gender-neutral and do not perpetuate gender stereotypes in their commercials. But truth be told, baby products and household cleaner advertisements continue to be a mainstay targeting women exclusively.
According to the Kantar Link Ad Test conducted in 2018, an astounding 98 percent of baby and laundry cleaner advertisements are targeted at the fairer sex, along with 71 percent and 60 percent for food and retail products. This statistic suggests that communicating to a specific gender that is likely to buy a brand’s products historically work, and continue to do so.
Brands must know how to use gender based marketing strategies effectively to reach out to a wide target audience. As a marketer, the end goal and desired response is to trigger a purchase. Without realizing it, viewers are bombarded with a whopping 5000 ads per day online and offline (Hootsuite, 2019). With such intensity for attention, a generic piece of communication will not work. Viewers will not click on the electronic direct email (EDM). They will ignore the SMS and in fact, non-differentiated messaging will infuriate them. Many marketers trivialize the importance of gender based marketing without realizing its full impact.
To be a successful marketer, we must adopt a gender approach to marketing. Gender segmentation campaigns must appeal to the targeted gender. By using a gender-reversed append tool, like NameGenderPro.com, gender based marketing becomes easier and more efficient. NameGenderPro.com provides businesses with access to over 174K unique first names, consolidated from reputable census data from the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia. NameGenderPro is extremely user-friendly. All you need to do to start utilizing this powerful consumer segmentation technique is to download the list of unique first names by gender from the website, and use the appended gender as part of the marketing communication.
Before we delve into case studies of gender marketing that work, let us review the differences between male and female loyalty.
Are Men From Mars and Women from Venus?
Male and female loyalty can be as disparate as night and day. Loyalty influences the decision-making process and determines if an individual will make repeat purchases after the first transaction.
Male loyalty is a behavior developed based on an analysis of the most preferable characteristics of goods and services.
Female loyalty, on the other hand, is an intrinsic form of loyalty, influenced by emotional factors developed through experiences and interactions with a brand.
While developing universal one-size-fits-all or (“unisex”) goods and services seem to a trend, marketers should re-focus their efforts to develop gender loyalty programs based on gender based decision-making motives.
With their growing income and independence, the latest consumption statistics indicate that women are becoming a spending force to beacon.
America’s business guru Tom Peters cited several eye-opening consumption statistics, with women being the biggest spender in the following industries:
The same trend is evident is in the service sector whereby:
Recognizing how women are no longer playing second fiddle in big-ticket purchases, companies around the world actively now adopt a gender approach to marketing. In the following sections, let’s take a look at some of the best examples of gender marketing adopted by big brands worldwide.
Gender Marketing Strategies in the Beer Industry
In many countries around the world, beer is produced and marketed to women. Chick’s beer, ladies beer or beer for girls. Whatever you call them, one thing stands out. Beers for the fairer sex is devoid of the slightly bitter aftertaste the conventional beer has. Female beer tends to be fruitier, sweeter and more refreshing with occasional subtle hints of spice.
Now, the beer boys are sitting up to women’s needs, simply because the fairer sex is a spending cohort not to be ignored. In a study conducted by Scarborough USA, females spent 9.9% more per brewery visit compared to their male counterparts.
Beer manufacturers know it’s a folly to ignore this group of customers. Hence the packaging for female beer is differentiated with shades of pink or red. Again, marketers cleverly use gender differences in advertising to connect with the fairer sex.
Gender Marketing Strategies in the Personal Care Industry
Another brand that exemplifies the importance of gender-based marketing is the world leader in shaving products, Gillette.
Feminists and protagonists of gender neutral movements may continue to lambast gender purists like Gillette. But Gillette is not putting a stop to their male-centric advertisements. In the new “We Believe” ad, Gillette aimed to blur the lines of masculinity by address issues like bullying and sexual harassment. The campaign’s tag line “Is this the best a man can get?” garnered more brickbats. Cynics criticized the man’s care giant for playing up the notion of “boys will be boys”. But taking an indifferent stand by being neutral may alienate the bulk of their audience. In short, gender segmentation and gender marketing still exist for gender-centric products.
Gillette continues to capitalize on the opportunities created by gender differences. A razor is a razor, no matter what you call it or who uses it. Whether a man or woman uses a razor, its functional purpose is universal. That is to remove unwanted hair. Gillette, however, continues to champion the idea that women need a different razor than men. Through subtle product differentiation and the creation of the women’s Venus line, Gillette solidified its winning position as the preferred razor among ladies.
Gender Marketing Strategies in Sports Apparel Industry
We cannot ignore the fact that even market leaders go through painful learning curves that reveal a need to revamp their gender bias marketing strategies. After more than 30 years of existence, the mammoth American sports brand Nike realized that the entire company’s image designed to appeal to men was flawed! Main products were aimed at men, and even the design of their stores too. Due to increased competition by Sketchers and Adidas, Nike began to lose market share rapidly. This forced Nike to go back to the drawing board and search for new solutions to regain the lost share.
The head of the company invited two famous fashion designers, Mindy Grossman and John Hawke. At that time, Mindy and John collaborated with the renowned brand Ralph Lauren. The new designers injected fresh images to the Nike collection that targeted women. The store designs were spruced up to appeal to the fairer sex. And this was how NIKE GODDESS was born.
Who would have thought that Nike’s good intention hit a snag with cynics among the sales channel. Distributors and key retailers were skeptical that the female-led marketing campaign like NIKE GODDESS, would even work. However, Nike’s bold move to re-orientate their marketing initiatives using female skewed imagery revived the company leadership in the women’s sportswear market. As anticipated, developing the range of gender targeted products helped them strengthen their foothold in men’s market share for sportswear.
Clearly, successful endeavors are a culmination of a learning process. True enough, Nike today is still the leader among all brands of clothing in the world, selling almost two times more than Adidas’ in terms of sales and capitalization.
The Importance of Gender Based Marketing
There are many successful examples of how companies find their narrow niche and differentiate their offerings through the gender segmentation of products. Inadvertently, gender based marketing plays a pivotal role in moving a customer from a consideration standpoint, to purchasing the product or service.
Communication, therefore, cannot be generalized. A one-size-fits-all marketing communication approach is futile as consumers today want to be acknowledged in a personalized way. This is where gender checking services by a credible organization like NameGenderPro.com can meet your needs. Essentially, NameGenderPro helps you make better marketing decisions by performing an effortless gender check on your existing base. Based on your client’s first name, you can now launch marketing campaigns that deliver high conversion rates of up to 30%.
Backed by years of experience, NameGenderPro’s propriety AI technology allows you to execute retargeting campaigns, email marketing initiatives, and fine-tune your ad design to appeal to the specific gender. Above it all, NameGenderPro’s unique data set of names by gender is built by scouring only trustworthy sources. And this includes the local census data in the US, UK, CA, and AU.
With all the hard work done by NameGenderPro, you can now focus your resources on refining your product or service proposition, identify need gaps in the market and deliver robust bottom-lines for the business.
Businesses that fail to acknowledge the importance of gender marketing strategies will be forced out by competition, and cease to exist over time. As the saying time waits for no man, there is no better time but now to adopt effective gender segmentation techniques. With a consistent track record of increasing conversion rates by 35%, e-mail open rates by 50%, click-through rates by 25%, NameGenderPro.com is upbeat on delivering its promise of 100% customer satisfaction guaranteed.
