Reaching the Gentler Sex: Why Marketing to Women Requires a Holistic Approach

Women are certainly considering price, square footage, school systems, and all the other more traditional elements of a home purchase. However, their buying curves give them even more to ponder. They may have checked off everything on their list, be close to a decision, and then hear that your company sponsored the run they participated in last weekend. Boom! She’s sold. Or she may be 99 percent decided on
working with you and then have a short conversation with a sales team member who was a little too hard-sell — and the deal is off.

The key to understanding how to reach women buyers is understanding how women buyers think.

‘Web’ thinking
Not surprisingly, a woman’s more typically holistic buying characteristics are founded in the extra-connectedness of her brain. In fact, in comparison to a man’s brain, a woman’s brain typically has more connecting fibers between cells and a larger connecting tissue (corpus collusum) between right and left hemispheres. (Louann Brizendine’s book, The Female Brain, is a great resource for more brain science information.)

Noted socio-anthropologist Helen Fisher wrote in her book The First Sex: “As women make decisions, they weigh more variables, consider more options and outcomes, recall more points of view, and see more ways to proceed.” Fisher refers to women’s tendency to think in terms of interrelated factors (as opposed to men’s tendency to think more in a straight line or in steps) as “web thinking.”

As a result of web thinking, she says, women have easier access to both sides of the brain in any given decision, and are better able to integrate the emotional (does the community “feel” right?) with the rational (price, square footage, amenities, layout).

In Dan Pink’s book, A Whole New Mind, the author points out that “the left hemisphere handles what is said; the right hemisphere focuses on how it’s said.” Women can tap right hemisphere concerns (nonverbal, usually more emotional) much more easily, on average, then men.

In fact, as Face Time author Dan Hill found, emotions may play a larger role in the way women think about everything. This is worth noting, as he also mentions that emotion seems to drive reason more than reason drives emotion.

The curving buying path
The simplest representation of a typical woman’s buying path in comparison to a typical man’s may be a curving line versus a straight line. The starting point for both would be the recognition of a need/want, and the end would be the same point: signing the closing documents.

Why is a woman’s path a bit curvier? With their very connected, it-all-matters brains, women may be taking in a lot more information and heeding more outside influences during their buying process. This might be especially true for higher ticket, larger commitment investments – such as housing.

What you’ll discover is that women demand to be known right on down to their needs, wants, and desires. Each woman is much more than a consumer profile in a marketing strategy. That they bought X number of times from this store, or live in such and such ZIP code, or spent $1,000 on their last television, is no real insight into their buying minds.

For instance, what your data and research numbers can’t tell you is that moms are older and live very different lives today than they did 30 years ago. Twentyfirst century moms are probably less likely to want huge formal living rooms, since family room/kitchens fit their active lifestyles so much better.

The traditional data also can’t spotlight the current significant societal trend toward solo-hood for women — a trend that is already driving new approaches to homebuilding. For example, single women may desire less square footage in kitchens and bathrooms or an entire home, but require more attention to the design and fixture details throughout.

Connecting with women
What this means in terms of capturing women homebuyers is that a more holistic, “human” approach may be needed. You can be the best builder on paper, but without tending to all the details of her full experience with your company, you won’t necessarily gain her business.

“You can be the best builder on paper, but without tending to all the details of her full experience with your company, you won’t necessarily gain her business.”

For women, the emotional side of the home-buying process may be what draws them in, while the linear facts and figures — though still important — may come into play further into the process.

For example, if a woman is browsing your Web site and sees photos of people that remind her of her friends and family, she might be drawn in for more exploration. For
a single woman, if the marketing approach focuses less on married couples or families, in terms of language as well as photos, she might be able to find more in common in even subtle ways with you.

Marketing with — rather than to — women may be a better way to put it. Women don’t do their research or make considerations in isolation. They are seeking connections with your company, sales team, and project on every level. As women work through their home-buying processes, they are doing online research, listening to what friends and acquaintances have to say, considering environmental issues, and evaluating the interior design of the models — and they are doing these things simultaneously.

Go to the source
Part of understanding a woman’s buying path involves learning to recognize and allow for how external influences and cultural changes may affect her wants and needs. The overall challenge is to understand them, respect them and show your appreciation for them, in order to achieve the powerful connection you will continue to seek and need in order to do business with women.

If you had to learn how to reach all women everywhere with your marketing strategies, the task would be beyond daunting. Instead, why not go straight to the source and focus on gathering their input? That’s where you’ll get the inside scoop about how to build for your own very specific and unique women’s market.

That’s why builders interested in capturing female buyers should consider forming a customer advisory board. Doing so could be as easy as gathering together 10 of your existing happy customers by e-mail or for the occasional personal get-together. Your only mission is to hear more about their lives and listen in for ways your homes or buildings might become more relevant.

What they will share, often without direct questioning, will help you uncover clues about:

• What exactly initiated their home purchasing decision.
• How your way of doing business may fit their lifestyles.
• How much they listen to the good and bad homebuilding and -buying stories of their friends in yoga class or in their walking group.
• Which magazines they read, and how those influence their thoughts for their own home.
• Which events they attend or causes they support (for ideas on what you should be supporting).
• Which emotions and life experiences are attached to their home buying decisions.
• How much they use the Internet for research, or for all their shopping (giving you very important input about whether the look and feel of your Website deserves a bigger budget).

Each of these questions, and so many more seemingly unrelated to the final home purchase decision, might be curves along their buying paths that are worth noting and exploring. All of those curves, of course, are not to the exclusion of the more obvious, linear, and typically bottom-line considerations of price, quality, and customer experience.

A smart investment
Don’t let the variety of women’s purchase influencers dismay you. If you tend to one new detail at a time along their buying path, they will notice and appreciate the honest effort. Part of the power in a woman’s holistic buying process is that she tends to keep the human scale in mind — the right brain, responsible for emotions, holds a bit more weight than the left. As long as she can see the people behind your corporate logo working together to improve the customer experience, she will keep your company in mind for her building needs.

But remember — only your female customers themselves, in their own words, can give you the insights that will guide your best marketing strategies. And it’s likely that they are anxious to share them with you. Chances are, your investment in a long-term interactive relationship and allowance for a woman’s more winding purchase decision-making process will pay off exponentially.

First published in CA Builder magazine, July/August 2007