Marketing to Women is Not About Using Pink

Stereo­typ­ing is long gone. 

Mar­ket­ing to Women has cer­tain­ly changed through­out time. Most women no longer dream of pink dress­es and decor as they may have in the 1950’s. The days when baby girls were iden­ti­fied sole­ly by pink is fad­ing in our rear view mir­ror.  Now pink is a love­ly col­or, with lots of great hues. And there are some very effec­tive ways to use it.

But today, women want to be treat­ed as indi­vid­u­als, not stereo­typed or gen­er­al­ized. Smart com­pa­nies have noticed and are incor­po­rat­ing that into their cam­paigns, as in the US, women hold a pur­chase pow­er of up to 15 tril­lion dol­lars! So it’s impor­tant to under­stand and apply this aware­ness to suc­cess­ful­ly engage women in your marketing.

Marketing to woman is Not about using pink

1. Pink is Not For Every Woman

There are excep­tions, of course. Per­haps your brand or prod­uct is inten­tion­al­ly using pink to align with a cause or direc­tive. An exam­ple that springs to most minds is The Susan G. Komen Foun­da­tion, proof that they’ve done an amaz­ing job rais­ing aware­ness for breast can­cer with a spe­cif­ic pink col­or val­ue. It’s been so well uti­lized through their mar­ket­ing efforts  that it con­nects to not only females but males, as many men now wear pink in support. 

This is a fan­tas­tic exam­ple of match­ing the col­or to an inten­tion and using it prop­er­ly. The col­or grabs atten­tion but push­es past gen­der speci­fici­ty to become uni­ver­sal­ly effective.

2. Avoid Negative Associations 

Be aware that there’s a bit of a stig­ma to con­sid­er when using pink, known as the “pink tax.”  

3. Create Compelling Content 

To suc­cess­ful­ly mar­ket to women, it’s impor­tant to focus on where they’re spend­ing their time online (for social media, it’s most­ly Face­book, Insta­gram and Pin­ter­est). But the key is to cre­ate effec­tive con­tent. Instead of rely­ing on pink, uti­lize ele­ments such as a mem­o­rable spokesper­son, a relat­able mes­sage and humor! A News­Cred study says that 70% of women share con­tent that makes them laugh. And that means it grabs their atten­tion to begin with, which is everything. 

Here are three great examples: 

The Har­mon Broth­ers exem­pli­fy this. Take a gan­der at one of their bril­liant mar­ket­ing cam­paigns for the com­pa­ny PooPouri.

A well dressed woman with a prop­er British accent shares the humor behind mak­ing a trip to the bath­room and the ‘fra­grance’ that can be left behind. It’s incred­i­bly clever, hit­ting just the right note for the top­ic and prod­uct. It was wild­ly suc­cess­ful, cre­at­ing prod­uct recog­ni­tion and get­ting peo­ple to share, talk about and BUY it!

Here’s how the Har­mon Broth­ers tack­led per­son­al odors by pro­duc­ing a hilar­i­ous musi­cal about mak­ing woman — and men — smell extra fresh in a nat­ur­al way thanks to the prod­uct,  Lume deodor­ant.

To date, this gen­er­at­ed 7 mil­lion views, 30k shares and sales were up by 526%! In both videos, women were tar­get­ed, with­out stereo­typ­ing and lev­i­ty was brought to a very rec­og­niz­able but some­what taboo sub­ject. Espe­cial­ly where females are con­cerned — and sold mil­lions! Bravo!

This clever ad is for Chat­books, an app cre­at­ed for busy moth­ers. They show how real moth­er­hood is, through fun­ny scenes where moms can com­plete­ly relate. The com­ments were flood­ed by women say­ing: “How did you know!” and “This is my life!

Stel­lar! While the prod­uct cer­tain­ly fills a need — a sim­ple, afford­able solu­tion that moms would wel­come — the cam­paign also solves the inher­ent obsta­cle of moms being too busy to have ever found it if not for the atten­tion-grab­bing ads on social media. And bonus — they are so val­i­dat­ing and fun­ny that they were shared like hot­cakes, and that led to BIG sales!

4. Don’t Generalize 

So we see how impor­tant it is to under­stand your audi­ence when mar­ket­ing to women. Their cur­rent wants, needs and chal­lenges, what makes them tick, and what makes them buy. Using pink is not always the answer. There are too many fac­tors that can influ­ence how col­or is per­ceived and it’s affect on your view­er, whether it’s per­son­al, cul­tur­al, social, or emotional.

These great exam­ples make it seem almost a lit­tle sil­ly to think that mak­ing pink prod­ucts or pack­ag­ing is the fall­back to when mar­ket­ing to women, espe­cial­ly with all their buy­ing and shar­ing pow­er. You don’t need to always think pink to las­so their atten­tion. Instead, cre­ate cam­paigns that tap into the right com­bi­na­tion of ele­ments that make peo­ple want to share — which fur­ther spreads the word… and sells! 

To learn how you can har­ness the pow­er of col­or, down­load our FREE Col­or Trends Guide and max­i­mize col­or to lever­age your brand, prod­uct or service!