How Brands Can Engage Young Female Audiences

Segmenting audiences helps a brand craft strategy and construct messaging. Different groups, whether based on demographics or purchase behavior (or something else entirely), identify with and respond to different types of communication. For this example, let’s focus on young women.

Women make up just over half of the adult population, and control 60% of personal wealth in the US and drive 85% of all consumer purchases. Those significant statistics beg an even bigger question: How can brands best engage with women?

While the answer isn’t simple, below are a few tips to make it more manageable.

Understand That Not All Women Are The Same

Although they are sometimes lumped together, GenZers and Millennials are completely different generations.

Members of GenZ care about most about “feeling like they know the brand or the person behind the camera. They don’t want to feel marketed to — they want to feel like they’re part of something.”

Millennials are harder to reach and less trusting, with only 1% noting being influenced by ads. They’re “naturally skeptical of advertising. They think it’s all spin, so they don’t bother paying attention.”

That said, there are similarities between the two groups:

• Both demand authenticity and are digitally-savvy
• Both appreciate quality and report personal influences on spending habits
• Both value self-empowerment, identifying beauty and fashion as categories for investment purchases

So how can brands act on this? Simply put: Embrace transparency. Empower women and celebrate what makes them unique.

Talk The Talk AND Walk The Walk

It’s important for brands to communicate with women rather than talk at them. In other words, ask questions and encourage input. How? Get visual. Get conversational. Get personal. Get real.

“For so many decades, the conventional wisdom was advertising is about myth-making… [but] the world is rapidly evolving to the place where great stories are about truth telling instead of myth-making.”

– Andréa Mallard, Athleta CMO

Pay Attention To The Details

Most women shop around before making a purchase. They want to know what separates one brand’s product from another’s and care about information related to warranties, etc. These details are important and influence decision making.

So how do brands know when and where to reach women with these details?

The BEM approach helps brands act on the softer data points that often inform decision making by looking at the following:

• Behaviors that demonstrate an interest in a product
• Emotions that express openness to a brand’s message
• Moments that spark relevance of a brand and its products

Women have great buying, spending, and influencing power. While they aren’t all the same, most want the truth and care about the details. It’s essential that brands that are aiming to reach women understand what women care about and how they communicate.

Originally published at www.pmg.com on July 24, 2018.