April 30 2004

Marketing Trends

 

I received a great book from a friend this past month. It’s called Re-imagine! by Tom Peters. In each chapter, Tom lists out ways of redefining the way we think about business, and ways of re-inventing the way we do business. The funny thing about business these days is it changes constantly. What you used to be able to rely upon as gospel for the life of a business now changes in a matter of weeks, thanks to technology.

 

One of my favorite chapters dives into the two biggest marketing trends of the coming decade; two trends that, according to Tom, have gone virtually unnoticed by the marketing world. Those populations are women and the aging. I have read a lot of information published by trend setters, and if you simply use your own reasoning its easy to conclude that these two populations are bigger and stronger than ever before, and will continue to grow well into the future.

 

However, the funny thing is these two markets continually are being targeted by marketing techniques that existed a dozen years ago. Change is sweeping through the marketing world. How are you handling it?

 

Women love to talk; men take the get-in-and-get-out approach. Women think aloud; men feel nagged the more women talk. Women cooperate; men compete. When you’re targeting women, they enjoy going through experiences. They like to bond with those they are doing business with, and create emotional attachments to the person they buy from. They enjoy going through the process, while men want to get straight to the point. (Have you ever sat in a meeting with a couple, where the woman wants all the information on your product and wants to see herself living with your product, and the man simply wants to know the price?)

Your goal is to create the process. Make your sales pitch an event. Create an experience within your own business, and benefit from the profits of a referral base of the strongest target market ever.

I leave you with a statistic from Tom’s book. A friend of Tom’s reports that his average male client recommends him to 2.6 others. His women clients recommend him to an average of 21 other people. Yep, two-point-six versus twenty-one! Guess whom he’s marketing to?