Marketing

Get Ready for Hibernation

December 7, 2016

You may not realize it but you’re starting to feel very sleepy. In a couple weeks, you’ll be in full “business hibernation” mode. Everything comes to a screeching halt as you go from full steam ahead to a sleepy stroll towards the New Year.

Even if you want to keep going at breakneck speed, everyone around you is already yawning and shifting into a very lazy gear. Between the holiday shopping, parties, travel and those long weekends that seem to start on Wednesday – productivity is doomed.

Customers don’t want to start anything new. No one’s in the office to review any proposals or contracts and even if you have work in progress, tracking anyone down to give you an approval is almost impossible.

The New Year doesn’t snap everyone back to attention either. It’s usually the middle of the month before things get cooking again. We are slow to wake from our winter solstice slumber.

But, if we know the hibernation period is coming, is it possible we could actually use it to our marketing advantage?

Here are some suggestions for some ways that you could enjoy the slow down but also feel like you’re planting some seeds for a strong new year.

Ponder and plan: You know you should already have your next year’s business plan done, right? You know why you don’t? Could it be because you haven’t had a free moment to think? Guess what – the hibernation season is the perfect time to dream, wonder and put at least a skeleton of a plan together.

If you’re looking for a system to turn your plans into accomplishments, check out the book Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business by Gino Wickman. I’m betting that you’ll have time to read it before the end of the year!

Reach out and connect: Think of a few people who are important to your business but you rarely slow down long enough to have an actual conversation. They might be a key vendor or a referral source. Make the time to invest in your connection. Grab coffee or a hot toddy and ask them how you can help their business in 2017. You’re going to like where the conversation goes.

Prune for future growth: Gardeners and arborists will tell you that pruning sparks new growth and I think there’s a lesson there for all of us. It’s time to trim. Trim your email lists, trim marketing tactics that just haven’t delivered the ROI and trim all the data that you’re buried under. This is a great time of year to get down to the essentials.

Spruce yourself up: You know that website that you keep meaning to update? Now’s the time! You need to freshen up your content, take down the bios of employees who’ve been gone for 10 months and give the whole site a fresh feel. Don’t forget to give the back end of the site some attention too. There are probably plugins, updates, and other technical aspects of the site that need your attention as well.

Build up the team: Everyone who works for you has been going all out for months too. Why not use the forced slow down to strengthen your team’s bond? Do something together that fosters team and holiday spirit. Adopt a family and go shopping for them together. Or work a shift ringing the bell for the Salvation Army or wrapping gifts for charity. Why not create a Toys for Tots drive among your employees, vendors, and customers? Let the holidays give you the perfect team building exercise.

Don’t get me wrong. I think you should enjoy the slow down. You’ve earned it. But, there’s no reason you can’t mix the holiday festivities with some business activities that will give the next twelve months a leg up.

More

Find Your Sweet Spot

November 30, 2016

Who should buy stuff from you? If you’re like most business owners or leaders that I know, your knee-jerk answer is something just slightly smaller than “everyone on the planet.”  But “everyone on the planet” can’t be your sweet spot customer.

You need to narrow it down a little. Businesses who need insurance or parents, or someone who wants to own a house or people with teeth. I didn’t ask who COULD buy stuff from you. I asked who SHOULD. That shift is a dramatic one and one that most business people don’t spend enough time thinking about.

Think of your own buying experiences. Odds are, no matter what you’re in the market to buy – there are plenty of companies that can sell it to you. Yet, you gravitate to one and if that buying experience is a good one and aligns with what you expected – you are likely to go back the next time you need to make the same purchase.

Why?

When we buy something, we don’t just buy the thing or a service; we also buy how the business that sold it to us parallels our life needs/comfort zones. We each have our own list of criteria that is based on a blend of our values, our life’s structure and our emotional connection to their brand.

If time is a more treasured commodity to you than money, you’ll pay more for something at a convenience store or 24-hour drug store.

If money is more important than a relaxing shopping experience, you’ll be the one in line for a couple hours for a door buster sale.

If reliability and fast service are vital to you, you’ll pay the service charge to always have your HVAC repair jumped to the front of the line because you belong to the insider’s club.

If a particular brand (like Harley) makes you feel a certain way or, in your mind, makes others see you in a certain way – you’ll wait for months and pay extra just to get one of their offerings.

When a business connects with a customer who not only likes what they sell but how/why they sell it – the transaction is faster, easier and more frequent. The word of mouth referrals are higher, and the level of satisfaction for both the customer and the employee is higher.

Who doesn’t want that? Well, guess what – you can’t have that if you think that everyone under the sun is your customer. You need to figure out who are your sweet spot customers and how can you serve them and only them.

Business gurus always talk about the 80/20 rule – that 80% of your revenue comes from 20% of your customers. That’s because the 20% are your sweet spot customers. So what happens when you increase that 20% to 50% or 75%?

Each time you work with someone outside your sweet spot, it:

Distracts you from the zone: Part of what makes your sweet spot so sweet is that it’s easier, faster and more satisfying for you to serve those customers. They want exactly what you have to offer, and they value it and how you deliver it.

Costs you money: When you stray from your sweet spot, you have to spend extra time and money to make them happy. You might have to modify what you sell or how it’s delivered. But it doesn’t come easy or cheap.

There’s friction: When someone who is not aligned with your brand/values wants to do business with you, it feels a little off. The fit just isn’t quite right, and you and your employees will notice it. Worst of all – you customer will notice it too.

The work you do is tough enough. Don’t make it harder by chasing after clients who aren’t in your sweet spot.

More

Narrow your focus

November 16, 2016

As you begin to look to at your marketing plan for the coming year, I’d like to suggest you adopt a theme of “narrow and deep” for your marketing and even your business model.   In other words, narrow your focus.

What do I mean by that? For some reason, business owners and leaders struggle with the idea of specializing. We get the concept in our own lives – if you had a heart problem would you go see a cardiac specialist or your general practice doctor? If you wanted to update your bathroom, would you choose a company with years of experience in updating bathrooms or a general plumber? If you were flying, would you prefer your pilot have logged most of his hours in your specific kind of plane or be a generalist?

When we are choosing professionals to work with – we tend to gravitate to specialists and we justify that choice by saying:

• They have experience in exactly what I need.
• They can better anticipate and solve problems along the way.
• They’ve built up resources and partnerships to help them be successful.
• They will be faster and more efficient because of their depth of experience.
• They are more likely to get it exactly how I need it to be.

And we acknowledge that they may appear to be more expensive but because of all of the reasons we just listed, in the end, they will probably save us time and money and if not, it’s because something went wrong and then we will be glad we invested the extra money.

I get why it’s harder to narrow your focus and choose to specialize rather than be a generalist. There’s money on the table and someone wants to hire you. You have a payroll to meet, financial goals to hit and you’re hoping for a little bonus at the end of the year. So why would you turn down anyone who is ready to hire you?

It’s a challenge to say no when someone is offering to hire you or buy something from you. But let’s be honest – your company is not equally good at everything. When you make a sale and it’s tied to delivering something that is outside your sweet spot – it’s difficult to get it done on time and on budget.

It’s often the project that requires you to do more legwork for the same price because you aren’t as familiar with the specifics. Even if you’ve done it a few times, it doesn’t come as naturally, so you slow down to make sure you do it well.

I’m betting that if you took the time to identify the deliverables that you have the most expertise in and have done the most and compared the profitability to the one-offs you do – the difference will be striking.

Let’s add to all that – when you are a specialist, you can charge more for your expertise. Why? For the same reason, bathroom makeover specialists can charge more than the handyman. Look at your own buying choices. People will pay more for the reassurance that you’re very good at what you do and if something goes wrong, you will know how to quickly fix it.

The advantages to specializing are pretty dramatic:

• It’s easier to market yourself and help people understand what you offer.
• Because you’re very good at it – you deliver a superior customer experience that leads to more word of mouth and repeat business.
• You can charge more per deliverable.
• You differentiate yourself from all the companies who are generalists and also do what you do best.

As you think about what’s next for your marketing and your business – rather than adding to all the ways you communicate and all the things you talk about – why not narrow your focus and consider pruning down to what you do best?

More

Personal equals professional – we are one

November 9, 2016

One of the downsides of our digitally driven lives is that the dotted line is no more. What I mean by that is that you used to be able to artificially draw a dotted line in between your personal life and your professional life and to a great extent, you could control whether something would cross from one side to the other.   Not anymore.  Personal equals professional.

That dotted line was probably never as real or protective as we thought it was, but in today’s world, it no longer exists.

I just read a friend’s Facebook status and he said something to the effect of “I don’t like to blend my personal Facebook account with business, but we’re hosting a workshop that I am really proud of — so I’d like to invite all of you.”

This guy owns the company that is putting on the workshop. So in theory, his personal Facebook friends all know what he does for a living and some of them are probably even clients. But most of them are probably not fans of his official company page on Facebook. If he’d only announced it there, most of his Facebook connections would have missed it entirely.

And no one is going to unfriend him for mentioning his work alter ego on a site that some might deem for personal use only.

The truth is – there is no “personal use only” anymore. I actually think that’s better – don’t you want to know who you’re doing business with? Don’t you actually work better with someone when you know that they love rescue dogs, take an annual trip to the Tetons and hate the Yankees?

By the way, talking about your work/business is different from constantly hawking one’s wares. You shouldn’t be doing that at all – but especially not where people expect you to be social.

But the time of hiding your personal side from your professional side and visa versa is over. You aren’t two separate people and what you do outside of work and what you believe actually influences the work you do.

In fact, your personal brand – what you are all about, stand for, believe in, etc. is part of your professional brand. Personal equals professional.  And just like a company’s brand should inform and influence consumers – so should your personal one.

Regardless of which side of the Chick-fil-A fence you landed on, when the CEO, Dan Kathy, came out and talked about his personal beliefs and where he invests his company’s charitable dollars, I’m betting you suddenly had an opinion about that business. Even if you’d never eaten there before.

Did they lose customers over the controversy? Absolutely. But did they gain brand zealots who now go out of their way to support Chick-fil-A and spend even more money there? Absolutely.

The goal of branding is to locate your sweet spot customers. Those who are best aligned with you. Who you are – as a company, an employee of a company, and as a person can all help in that endeavor.

I’m not suggesting you can’t or shouldn’t have a private life that is actually private. But if you don’t want your prospective customers knowing your stance on a political issue, a family situation you’re facing or take offense at your secret love of all things Hello Kitty – then never, ever post about it online. Anywhere.

But stop artificially separating the two halves of you. It was probably never a good idea but in today’s world, it’s not only impossible but it feels very inauthentic. People want to do business with people they know, like and trust and that isn’t just about 50% of you.

Whether you are a geek freak, a Greek freak or a chic freak – let your flag fly and let it draw like-minded people to you and your business.

More

Five Ways to Get it Done

October 12, 2016

How do you get it done?  If I ask any marketing pro, business leader or entrepreneur what they need more of (and I take money out of the list of possible answers) 99% of them will give me the same response.

Time.

Whether it’s the pace of life, the vast variety of channels, information overload or that most companies are getting by with fewer people – everyone is time starved. I believe that the popularity of many of our modern conveniences is simply a result of our never-ending hunger for just a little bit more time.

The alternate title of this column could have been “live every day like you’re going on vacation tomorrow.” I marvel at how much I get done in the 48 hours before I leave for vacation. It’s practically magical how the To Do list relinquishes itself to me. I’ve learned to harness some of that pre-vacation magic to get it done and here’s how you can too.

One list, one focus: I’m not so sure Post-it Notes are our friend. It’s so easy to jot something down as a reminder to get it done and next thing you know, you’ve got a Post-It Note panorama on your desk, monitor or taped into a few notebooks.

To truly get more done – capture everything you need to accomplish in one place. Whether it’s a smartphone app or old-fashioned pen and paper – have a master list that you can trust is complete.

Once you have your master list, chunk like chores together. It’s much more efficient to make five phone calls in a row than piecemeal them out throughout the day. You get in a groove and shifting in and out of the groove takes time and energy you don’t want to waste.

Declare a deadline: The reason the pre-vacation thing works is because you have a hard and fast deadline. You can use that psychology to your advantage on a regular basis. You need to create your own deadlines and build in accountability by telling co-workers, friends or whoever is going to hold you to it. If you have to – create a consequence for missing the deadline. The more public the deadline/consequence, the more effective it will be.

Know your rhythm: Odds are the things on your To Do list aren’t new experiences. You’ve done most of them before, and you know what they require of you. If you write better in the morning, make sure you get all the writing tasks done before noon. If you get a little sleepy/lazy mid-afternoon, do something that revs you up in that time slot. Everyone has their own rhythm, so cater to yours to maximize each minute.

Protect your time: When you’re going on vacation, it’s so much easier to say to that chatty co-worker “Sorry but I have to get this report done before vacation.” You need to learn how to do that every day. Depending on how and where you work, – that might mean closing the door, coming in early, or working from home for a couple hours. But do it every week, and you will be amazed at how much more you get done.

Block the shiny objects: Email, Facebook, the conversation in the hallway, or that junk drawer that is begging to be cleaned. When you’re feeling overwhelmed, it’s easy to give in to whatever shiny object is in front of you. You need to outsmart the shiny objects by blocking their access. Turn off that email ping, that Facebook stream and anything else that tempts your attention.

Imagine it – if you treated every week like it was your pre-vacation week, you’d tear through your tasks. You might even get enough done that you could actually not work on your real vacation … once you take it!

More

How is showcasing changing your business?

October 5, 2016

Showcasing is yet another new wrinkle that the internet and mobile technology has brought to our culture. If you’re not familiar with the term, it’s when someone goes to a brick and mortar store to look at an item but fully intends to make their purchase online. This isn’t a new behavior but it’s certainly been on the increase for the past decade.

Smartphones have really contributed to the increase of this practice. Now shoppers can compare prices on the go, right there in the store. In fact, “showroomers” as they’re called, use their phones in retail establishments 50-60% of the time.

They might be comparing prices, checking product reviews or even creating a shopping list for later.

Whether you own a retail establishment or not, you can see the rub. The retailer goes to the expense and time to stock the item, the person actually is in their store and yet – they still don’t buy it there. There’s no reward to the retailer at all for helping the shopper get exactly what they want.

When asked, the number one reason cited for showcasing is price. Almost 3/4ths of showroomers checked and discovered that they could get a better price online. Interestingly – very few of them had ever asked the retailer to match the lower price.

Almost 50% of the time, the shopper walked into the store fully intending to actually purchase it later but they wanted to see the item before they made the purchase or do a little legwork before they went home and made the buy.

One of the main reasons for not making the purchase? They did not want to carry the item home. Many showroomers have gotten very used to the convenience of home delivery and as we know – in most cases, they are not paying extra for that service.

Interestingly – these shoppers are different from the “I like to shop at 2 am shoppers” who rate the 24/7 access as the primary reason they shop online.

The retailers own some of this trend too. If 50% of the showroomers walked into the store intending to buy online, that means the other 50% intended to make their purchase right there in the store. So why didn’t they?

About half of them discovered that the store didn’t actually have the product they were interested in on their shelves. The store was out of stock or didn’t offer some of the conveniences (like free home delivery) that could swing the decision.

But this isn’t all gloomy news for retailers. There are also plenty of shoppers who are reverse showroomers. They do their research online but want to buy locally, for a variety of reasons.

So what should a retailer do, to encourage the showroomers to buy immediately rather than going online to shop and at the same time, to keep the reverse showroomers happy?

Increase the caliber of your sales staff: Make sure they know the merchandise and also have the tools in the store to get an answer if they don’t know. They also need more sales training so they can be genuinely helpful.

Over service to keep selling: Try a mix of price matching, free home delivery, extended warranties, tech support and checking in on customers after the sale. An online store can’t offer that level of service.

Leverage their phone time: Why not send time sensitive coupons and offers to their phone using geo-targeting to get them to buy right now? Invite them to use your in store wifi and help them comparison shop.

This connection between our mobile devices and shopping isn’t going away. This is the new normal and if anything – it’s going to get more pervasive. Retailers have to find a way to leverage showcasing to their advantage.

More

Honestly – it’s about honesty.

September 28, 2016

I can remember being in one of my undergrad advertising classes and the professor told us about a recent study that measured the trustworthiness or honesty of various professions. Keep in mind, this was 30+ years ago but I can still see the slides he used to show us the results. The least trusted professional was the car salesman, he revealed. Following the car salesman were members of Congress and then he paused for effect and with a click, there was the slide that besmirched the career we’d all chosen — advertising professionals.

Ouch.

Out of curiosity, I googled the topic today and guess what — in Gallup’s 2012 poll, the bottom three were the same. (Apparently, nurses have topped the list ever since the profession was included in the annual poll, except for 2001 when firefighters got the nod right after 9/11.)

Sadly, what those three professions have in common is that people believe that they’re not always truthful. No one wants to be taken advantage of or fooled and that’s the stereotype these professions have to fight against. The upside is that people can behave themselves out of these stereotypes. We all know honest car dealers, politicians and as marketers – we can change the perception of our profession too.

Whether you work inside a company and are responsible for its marketing, or work at an agency, or own your own business – there is hope. You can actually be the one they trust and look to for honesty.

As marketing messages got more and more prevalent, the average ad/marketing effort seemed to get louder. Everything was hyperbole and bigger, better or bolder. No wonder it created fatigue and mistrust. It’s not possible for everything to be perfect for everyone.

But your marketing can break through all of that and be something different. It can be honest and still be effective. In fact, follow these best practices and you’ll be amazed at how effective.

Use real language: When you’re writing copy – be it a tweet or for a 5-minute video, be mindful of the words you choose. Make sure you sound like the people you’re talking to. Make sure there aren’t any communication barriers that get in between you and your audience. Remember that consumers are hypersensitive to boasting and spin, so be very frugal with words that exaggerate, hype or promise too much.

Don’t try to be a round hole for someone’s square peg: You can’t possibly be the right solution for everyone, so admit that. Help your prospective customer find the best fit – even if it’s not you. While they may not put money in your pocket – I promise you, someone they know will because they’ll have heard about how you put the prospect’s best interests ahead of your own.

Don’t sugar coat the truth: This isn’t easy but it’s vital. Everyone can tell someone what they want to hear. Very few will tell them what they need to hear. As a marketing professional, you can differentiate yourself by kindly but firmly speaking the truth. By doing that, you can actually begin to look for a solution. If they can’t count on us to tell them the truth, what can they count on us for?

Help, don’t sell: Create helpful marketing that educates and elevates your audience. Don’t shout at them — teach them. People are intelligent – they’ll figure out for themselves if they should do business with you. Let them see who you are, what you know and how you can help them.

Want to break the stereotype and be a marketer characterized by honesty? Don’t exaggerate, talk like a regular human being, don’t chase everyone with a dollar in their pocket, tell the truth and be helpful.

That doesn’t sound so tough, does it?

More

Insincerity is not good for your brand

September 21, 2016

I love it when employees really adopt their company’s brand and make it their own. That’s one of the ways you know that your brand has really woven itself into the culture of your organization. But it rarely happens by accident. In any brand process, part of the process should be about helping your employees understand and internalize the brand.

Then, you need to work with your team by job functions, helping each type of employee figure out how the brand influences their work. For example – if you’re a bank, how the tellers bring the brand to life will be very different from how the fraud department will live the brand.

Unfortunately, most companies take a shortcut that just makes their brand feel forced and artificial.

The first time I checked out at Walgreens and the clerk said “Be well,” I thought, well that’s cool – it fits with their whole brand and bravo to the clerk for making the brand her own.

After being in about five different Walgreens in several different states, I caught on. They had all been told to use “be well” as their farewell to customers. Suddenly the only thing “be well” communicated to me was a robotic script that completely lacked even an ounce of sincerity.

Probably not what Walgreens wants us to think about their “at the corner of happy and healthy” brand position.

That’s the problem with a lot of brands. You can’t just create a brand and slap it on your marketing materials. For a brand to actually mean something to your customers or your employees – it needs to be grounded in what you actually believe. It has to be built from your corporate values and be the sword you’re willing to fall on when there’s a conflict.

Your customers and employees have a pretty accurate BS meter and if your brand promise is superficial, they’re going to figure it out pretty quickly.  Here are some things that trigger the meter.

Hyperbole: When you use loaded words that seem hyped and exaggerated, it immediately makes people suspicious. Use language that your audience can connect with and relate to, rather than words that feel artificial or impossible to achieve.

When it’s rote: Much like my experience in Walgreens, there’s a fine line between creating consistency in how your brand is communicated and it being robotic and stale. How often have you thought that a customer service rep was just reading from a script and really didn’t care if he had “met or exceeded all of your expectations today?”

One size fits all: If your brand position is so generic to your industry that your competitor could adopt and reasonably honor your brand – it’s not really a brand position at all. It’s simply a statement of what everyone in your industry should be delivering.

When it’s nothing more than marketing speak: A genuine brand isn’t just a marketing tool. It’s a divining rod that helps direct the entire company. I should feel your brand in my interactions with every single employee. But that requires commitment and investment on your part. It’s just spin if you sprinkle it in your marketing but not work to make it a part of your organization’s foundation.

When it works on the outside, but not inside: Your brand promise needs to be just as true internally as it is with your best customers. Remember – a good brand is your values in action. Values aren’t situational. You can’t expect your employees to behave according to your brand if you don’t in your dealings with them.

A brand is a promise of what it’s like to do business with you. Insincerity can kill your chances of even having a shot at delivering on that promise.

More

Disruption – Are you the next Dodo bird?

September 14, 2016

Marketing is always ripe with buzzwords that may or may not have any traction. Part of our role as marketing professionals and business leaders is to recognize when it’s hype and when it’s important. One of the words/trends that seems to be the new darling is the idea of disruption. This is one we can’t afford to dismiss as hype. It’s a huge opportunity and a huge threat.

Many people misunderstand the term. Disruptive does not mean that your marketing tactics disrupt or interrupt your audience. Instead, what it actually means is that a new technology or product is going to disrupt an existing market or industry and actually create a new market or value proposition. Often this leads to the extinction of the original product or service by replacing it with something better. It’s the ultimate in creativity and destruction, all in one.

A great example is the point and shoot camera. The smart phone crushed the demand for inexpensive cameras and today; it’s tough to even find one in a store. The camera function wasn’t the primary focus of the smart phone, it was simply a feature. But that feature, coupled with technologies that actually made it superior to the original, ended up being a product killer.

Disruption isn’t about making a better mousetrap. It’s about making the mousetrap obsolete. Just ask Blockbuster or Kodak. They’re a great example of incredibly successful and profitable businesses that are now obsolete.

Disruption is fine and dandy, if you’re the one doing the disrupting, but how do you know if a new trend or technology has you in it’s sights?

Keep your perspective broad: Odds are, the disruption won’t come from within your own industry. It’s likely a technology that’s developing in a completely different field. It’s probably an innovation within it’s own category but runs the risk of being a game changer in yours.

Listen to your best users: It’s always a good plan to listen to your customers but if you’re worried about disruption – you need to step it up to a whole different level. Watch for an erosion of their usage or loyalty. Listen to their requests for product enhancements or add-ons.

Track trends: Disruptors don’t appear out of the blue. Typically they’re born from a broader trend or cultural shift. Watch for emerging trends, especially those that impact your super users/customers. If the trend is going to alter their lives, it could well alter yours too.

Explore and innovate: The best way to avoid becoming a disruptor’s victim is to keep evolving. You have to keep experimenting and exploring new ideas for the needs your customers have today and the ones they don’t even know they’re going to have tomorrow.

Measure and monitor: Part of surviving a disruptor may mean knowing when it’s time to pivot because you’re fighting a losing battle. You can’t afford to be caught off guard so now is not the time to get lax with your key performance indicators.

It’s important that we all recognize that we won’t escape disruption forever. It isn’t new and the world has always evolved over time. Think about the impact of the first cars, TV sets, and the personal computer and what they did to carriages, radio and typewriters. Disruption has always been around. It’s just that it’s coming at a pace we’ve never seen before. Technology is accelerating the disruption and that’s not likely to stop.

Your industry might have dodged it so far, but odds are – change is coming. You can brace yourself for the impact, you can see it on the horizon but most of all – you need to be thinking like a disruptor.

How can you evolve your offerings before someone makes you obsolete?

More

The Art of Selling to Women

September 7, 2016

Last week, we talked about the science of selling to women and how our brains differ by gender and how that affects buying patterns and decision-making. So this week, I thought it would make sense to take that science and use it as a filter to think about how to create marketing that resonates with your female audience – or as I like to call it, the art of selling to women.

Don’t skimp on the details: This is a tricky one. Many marketing types go right to the bullet pointed list for the details. That works fine for your male buyers but the ladies need more. This can be where testimonials or case studies will really serve you well.

This need speaks to how you build out your website too. Think layers and details. Everyone who comes to your site will need it to be simple to navigate and find what they’re looking for. Women will need your site to go beyond that. Build in layers of information with links to more detail, photos, FAQs, and stories. You’ll get bonus points from your female website visitors if you make your content easy to share.

Be graphic: Emotions are brilliantly communicated in visuals. Shapes, colors, facial expressions and even packaging all convey emotional connections. You literally want to draw those connections out for your female audiences whenever you can – the art of selling.

Video, and its combination of visuals and sounds, can be incredibly compelling. Multimedia can capture both the facts and the underlying energy of your company or product/service in a very memorable way. This is a great example of being smart about both what you say and how you say it.

Give her a place to listen: Because of the value women place on other women’s opinions, it will also serve your brand to provide a place for these sorts of consumer-to-consumer interactions. Whether it’s a message board, a review site or even your Facebook page, invite and encourage women to share their experiences with your brand.

Women generate seven times more referrals than men, so the more you can get them to tell stories, ask questions, and find like-minded women, the better for your brand. Another benefit is that once a woman is a loyal consumer, she’s your greatest advocate. If someone starts to complain about something, it’s often your own best customers who will defend your honor.

Find the gender balance: This is another tricky one. Women are not the same as men and they appreciate when that is acknowledged. But they don’t want to be diminished in any way. Dumbing things down for them or making something seem less than (like the pink toolbox sets) what is available for men or that they’re not as capable as a man – that’s trouble.

Build a relationship with her: Above all else, women are connectors. It’s how their brain works. It’s how their hearts work. It’s how their lives work. They want to be seen, they want to matter and they want to be in relationship with the people they buy from.

Your communications strategy needs to be for the long haul. Your goal is to be a helpful resource for her. You want her to grow to rely on you and trust your input. Better yet, you want to be so helpful to her that she shares you with her family and friends. That’s the brand/marketing nirvana – when you are trusted enough that she’s willing to share you with those that matter to her.

If you want women to take an interest in what you have to offer — recognize them, respect them, listen to them, help them and above all else – connect with them.

That’s how you become relevant to them.

More