Member Article

How to reach out to new female customers and keep them happy

To build your business you need to reach out to new customers – that’s something we’re all well aware of.

Approximately 50 percent of your potential customers are female, though they influence over 80 percent of buying decisions which makes reaching out to potential female customers essential.

However, seeing that females are fundamentally different to males in many ways, how should male business owners go about reaching out to female customers, and just as importantly, how can they confidently retain them as customers?

Five Ways to Reach Out to Potential Female Customers

Reaching out to potential female customers has long posed a problem for male business owners because they’re different in many ways.

Understand your target audience

‘How am I meant to understand women?’ you might ask, which is likely the first thing any male business owner would scream at the top of his lungs when told he needs to understand female audiences, and rightly so.

This doesn’t entail trying to ‘think like a woman’, but rather thinking about your current female customer-base and the purchasing behaviour they exhibit, how they respond to your current marketing strategies and understanding the value proposition your business offers.

Hire or work with female marketing staff

Women are in a much better position to reach out to other women than males are, so hire female marketing staff or work with a marketing agency employing female marketers.

Women speak a language that’s often incredibly foreign to males. Therefore, if your business is to successfully reach out to potential female customers, your marketing materials and efforts need to be in their language.

Understand the difference between family orientated and female only

Women tend to be more family orientated than males, not always, but it’s an identifiable trend. However, a common mistake many marketers are guilty of is failing to understand the difference between family orientated and female only.

This distinction needs to be reflected in your marketing efforts and to understand which audience you should be reaching out to, i.e. mums or singles, you need to understand your current customer-base and value proposition.

Market using the right social media channels

Social media is a powerful marketing tool and although everyone seems to be on Facebook, most people use other social media networks also.

When you understand your target female audience you’re empowered to use social media more constructively in your efforts to expand your female customer-base by targeting certain female demographics.

For instance, women between the ages of 18-29 and 30-49 use Pinterest equally; however, twice as many women aged 18-29 age use Instagram than do those aged 30-49.

Female focused events, promotions and giveaways

Everyone loves free stuff – especially women! No seriously, to reach out to women with your marketing and promotional efforts you need to find a means of attracting them and that entails making the events you hold, the promotions you offer and the items you give away more female orientated.

There are many ways to reach out to potential female customers, and when your efforts are successful, you then need to work at retaining them.

How to Retain Female Customers

Some of the points made above will empower businesses to better retain their female customers, most notably hiring women and working with women, albeit in customer service roles rather than marketing roles.

People tend to identify with others whom they share similarities with, so having female customer service reps on hand to speak to female customers definitely goes a long way because similarities and a connection exist between females that don’t exist between opposite sexes.

Make women feel comfortable on your business premises

This is a particularly pertinent point to make about male dominated workplaces, of which auto repair shops are a prominent example. Providing female customers with a female only toilet, comfortable seating in a well-lit area and ensuring male staff refrain from sexist comments really does go a long way.

Send your female customers female specific materials

As with all marketing materials, women respond to different incentives differently, so make your customer retention efforts more enticing for your female customers.

Use customer satisfaction surveys to understand their wants

If you want to know what women really want, why not ask them? Customer satisfaction surveys are an excellent way to find out what your female customers think about your business. Understanding what they want empowers you to make changes to help you retain them as loyal customers.

According to Jennifer Gilhool writing in Forbes, “Globally, they (women) control $20 trillion in annual consumer spending. In the next five years, it is expected that this number will rise to $28 trillion.”

If that doesn’t provide you with the impetus to reach out to female customers and work hard at retaining their business, what possibly could?

Author bio:

Juliet Martin is writing in a freelance basis for Message Direct, a professional telephone answering services who has build a strong reputation with their friendly and highly trained staff that are based in the U.K.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Lauren Downey .