Women: your new target audience

According to general statistics, women tend to make a large percentage of household decisions in comparison to men. Have you thought about how you’re marketing to this demographic?

In the February 2004 issue of Entrepreneur magazine, Joanne Cleaver wrote an article titled “What Women Want.” As a woman, I found what they said interesting and true. Then I began to wonder how the information applied to the propane industry.

This has a lot more to do with your propane business than you may think. According to the article, what women want right now is:

• Attention to detail in product design and service;
• The right choices, not endless choices; and
• A nuanced, longer selling process that respects the desire to understand
  what they’re buying before they take it home.

What does this mean for the propane marketer? Women want the right choices, attention to detail, and they want to be afforded the time to make sure they clearly understand the services they’re buying. After all, propane is the same regardless who sells it to them. It’s service that sets you apart.

Statistics from the 2002 Bureau of Labor found:

• Women control 80 percent of all household purchases.
• 37 percent live in households with annual incomes of $50,000 – $100,000.
• 12 percent live in households with annual incomes over $100,000.
• Women are primary shoppers in nearly two-thirds of households.
• 72 percent of women who work full time are the primary shoppers.

The last point speaks volumes. What can your company do to make the decision process easier for the women who are working full-time? They want to get home and spend time with their family. So if you can help make their buying decision easier, you will help build trust and earn their business. So, is your company marketing to women? A few suggestions about marketing to women, according to Cleaver:

Get the little stuff right and the big stuff will take care of itself. Women develop a collage of impressions about a business from a hundred small factors. Men tend to make judgments based on first impressions and key interactions. Women never stop gathering information.

Offer better choices. “One way to get women excited is to have fewer but better choices,” says Carrie McCament, managing director of the Winston-Salem, North Carolina, consultancy Frank about Women.

Women make final purchasing decisions based on the relationship with the seller. Given a choice between nearly identical products, women are likely to choose based on customer service and the ongoing relationship with the vendor, while men focus on statistics.

Respect the customer. According to Andy Andre, owner of Prescott True Value Hardware, “Customer service is all about respect, it’s taking the time to explain things to a customer and not talk down to them.”

Creativity and care. “Entrepreneurs assume marketing to women is all about discounts and giveaways, but creativity and care are what really attract women,” says Martha Barletta, president of Winnetka, Ill., consulting firm The TrendSight Group.

It’s the little things. While men make decisions by “stripping away extraneous information, women add information to the process,” says Barletta. “We notice the small things.”

Women are the primary decision maker for the household. So how can you, the retail propane marketer, successfully market to women? Answer this: What is it about propane that women find distasteful or as some might argue, “hate?” Here are a few possibilities:

That UGLY thing in my yard. Women don’t want to see the tank, but if they have to, lets think about it from their point of view. A pleasing appearance, or something to brag on, not grumble about.

What a great opportunity to create an alliance with a local landscape company or offer a package deal when setting a tank that includes the landscape fees. Or offer a landscaping service to customers for the spring or summer.

Sticker Shock. Women hate a significant increase in the total price from one bill to another. The challenge is to create a situation that women understand and trust.

Working for the company. Women are working more and more, the last thing they want to do is take the time to read the tank gauge to see if they need gas, and then call you. What an opportunity to promote your routed, no-hassle delivery program.

Ask yourself and your staff the following questions when your customer is the woman of the household:

What are the customer’s issues?

What are the little things we can do to improve our service and customer loyalty?

What choices are the customers seeking and how do we present them so they
understand what they’re buying?

Most importantly, how do we give each customer the attention and respect they’re
requiring to continue the relationship?
Tamera Kovacs is a is a financial and business consultant for Propane Resources, which provides financial and operational consulting, merger and acquisition services, supply, transportation, training and marketing communications services for the propane industry.