Are Traditional Industries Marketing to Women or Men (or Both)?
There’s a fear that often comes up within traditional industries when they begin to consider delving into marketing to women: how will our male customers, who we greatly value, respond? It’s a valid hesitation, but one a lot more companies need to get over. Take jewelry site, Blue Nile, for example. They didn’t make their new site pink, but they made it more sophisticated. It speaks most to a particular gender, perhaps, but it serves everyone.
As Geoffrey A. Fowler wrote in the Wall Street Journal of their effort, rather than go with a design firm’s idea to use a “pinkified” [note: my word, not Fowler's] palette, the Blue Nile team…
“…decided to emphasize an upscale, rather than effeminate, look. It removed a left-hand navigation bar (still standard on many e-commerce sites), leaving space on the screen for much larger — and more artistically cropped — photos of products. The changes are intended to make the experience more akin to window shopping.”
The specifics include an easier way to customize ring designs and the fact that much of the shopping can be contained on a single page, without a lot of clicking back and forth. Blue Nile, like so many other jewelery retailers, knows that its core customer is men buying engagement rings, but what they also know is that women are still tremendously influential in where/how their rings are purchased/selected (they are a “shadow consumer” as it were).
Will Blue Nile’s choice to revise their site in these ways alienate men? It shouldn’t. Their approach was smart – in identifying and serving the qualities and functionality that women tend to expect from high-end fashion or retail sites. What they’ve done is go much further than a patronizing palette switch. Their re-design seems to have been guided and inspired by the women who are the end-wearer of the ring, but in a way that also serves the typical buyer very well – and usually better.
Engagement rings are an interesting product because they are very uniquely and visibly purchased by a male (for the most part) under MUCH influence by – and to the delight of – a female. That makes this an extreme case from which other traditional brands in traditional industries can learn. Your products may long have been perceived as for men alone, but these days you must acknowledge that women are in that picture too – either as direct consumers or as heavy influencers of the purchase.
Your response to the challenge could be one of two: 1) to tackle the problem superficially, with the wave of a pink wand, OR, 2) to dig deep below that surface and identify/leverage the characteristics of the most demanding customer (who is often a woman). For her, as well as your long-established male market, a waving wand will have no power.
Most brands today are marketing to both men and women simultaneously, but to varying degrees. Even for the more traditional categories, like engagement rings (or cars, or tools or finances) – the goal should be to serve the high expectations of your female customers transparently. Your core male customer, who has been there forever and is your biggest fan, will also notice and positively respond to those changes – as long as they don’t have a lingering “marketing to women” essence.
Marketing to women is not a gender exclusive pursuit. Rather, it guides even the most traditional industries, to serve the highest customer standard – and that should include and heighten the experience for men.
