Home Depot. Best Buy. Charles Schwab.

Each of these once testosterone-driven brands has recently shifted their marketing strategies to engage the world’s most influential consumer: women.

Should you follow their lead? Absolutely. If you are in business today, and are not actively marketing to women, you’re overlooking purchasing power that can deliver profits. Women consumers are no longer a niche market.

Consider these stats:

• Women make and influence a whopping 85% of total consumer purchases.

• American women spend $5 trillion each year.

• Women will control 66% of consumer wealth in the U.S. over the next decade.

• Women spend 30% more time on social networking sites than men.

• Facebook boasts more than 600 million users. Over 25 billion tweets flew from Twitter last year. Tumblr has 1 billion page views a week. And 55% of these social media users are women.

There’s no doubt that women consumers can help make you an iconic brand while substantially boosting your business bottom line. The question is how do you successfully engage these influencers?

Brands need a deep understanding of women consumers — what, when, where and why they buy. Thankfully, exploring the minds of women consumers does not require extensive research. PixInk has created a Womanifesto, a to-do list for marketing to women.

Enchant.

The ability to influence or incite a response by creating exceptional brand experiences for consumers. Exceed women consumers’ expectations and they will happily tell everyone they know about your business.

Midas repaired its image with the Midas Way, a program that provides appointments, regular checkups and a pledge to explain services to customers like they are family.

Give her more.

Surprise her by over-delivering. Anticipate her next need, and give it to her before she asks for it.

Nordstrom is shifting to on-staff fragrance advisers and doing away with aggressive fragrance spritzers. Advisers will proactively consult based on consumers’ smell preferences.

Make her do less.

Lighten her load by making her transaction with you easy and effortless. Craft your brand experience as a pleasure, a ritual or place of escape.

Home improvement stores actively market to women with do-it-yourself workshops. A True Value in Omaha is going one step further by designing and stocking its store with women in mind.   

Amazon frees grateful consumers from “wrap rage” with “Frustration-Free Packaging ” The smaller, recyclable packaging is a breeze to open and easier on the environment. 

Assume nothing.

Dig deep to understand your customer. Allow for her multi-faceted life and phases. Discover how she prioritizes her wants and needs and what makes her user experience a great one.

Dell launched Della, a website that offered pastel-colored laptops and tips for managing recipes. Instead of sales, Dell received complaints and revamped the now-defunct site in days.

Talk.

This one holds true on a number of levels – Give her a chance to engage with your brand. She wants to buy from someone she knows. Give her the opportunity to know you by allowing platforms/spaces she can engage on. 

On a more practical level, invest in customer support over the phone or 24/7 live chat. (At PixInk we have a rule to not do business with anyone we cannot talk to when needed!) The contact number on the top right corner of your webpage is one of your best tools in connecting with women consumers.

Fiskars engages women with Fiskateers, women who blog about using the orange handled-scissors in their arts and craft projects.

image courtesy – fiskateers.com/blog/

Many brands lack insight into women’s purchasing power and behavior or fail to translate that insight into persuasive design that incites successful response. At PixInk, we’re students of the female psyche and make it our business to observe the presets and preferences of our clients’ most influential consumers. Our Womanifesto is the distillation of our approach and solutions.

Women consumers’ dollars are doing a lot of talking if businesses are ready to listen. Listening is one of our favorite disciplines at PixInk. Come talk to us.