Marketing to affluent women
Four tips for successfully marketing to affluent women buyersTo most successfully appeal to affluent women buyers, start with a focused and solid foundation: addressing the affluent woman's primary motivators in your marketing. The motivator you choose may vary from product to product, but they should all share the same mission: a determination to meet your affluent female customer's core needs and desires. The mass affluent and the affluent together make up 28% of US households... but they have more discretionary income than 68% of US households. From here on, we'll refer to this target market simply as affluent, as distinguished from the nation's few very wealthy households. What motivates the typical affluent woman? An excellent start is to realize that for many affluent women, the well-lived life is a wonderful experience surrounded by friends and family, where she's strong, capable, and free to live as she most likes. Breaking out individual motivators for affluent households, we find:
Note: the list and statistics above are courtesy of Pamela Danziger, founder of a firm specializing in research on the affluent market There are several others. Respect is important to affluent women but often scarce, both in terms of self-respect and respect from others. The typical affluent woman goes out of her way to excel in meeting the needs of others, often at the expense of her own needs, and she doesn't appreciate being taken for granted. This is true in both her business and family life… at the office she can feel far less respected than her contributions to her employer or her clients deserve. How can your brand acknowledge her excellence and show genuine respect for all that she does without resorting to stereotypes? Aspiration is also a motivational factor for affluent women, not just in terms of money but time. She may aspire to a more beautiful home or she may aspire to more time in her schedule. But in using aspiration as a motivator in your marketing, take care to stay away from communicating an underlying message that says, “You can have it, but they can't.” Affluent women are far more democratic, believing luxury is for everyone and that every individual defines luxury for themselves; a message of exclusivity will quickly turn off many affluent women. Rounding up the list of buying motivations for affluent women are social responsibility, simplicity, and addressing one's own needs rather than the needs of others. Vibrant Nation authors Stephen Reily and Carol Orsborn, PhD, modified Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs to describe the purchase motivations of affluent women over 50. They estimate that 14% of affluent boomer women are motivated to purchase brands that satisfy their interest in making the world a better place, 20% of affluent boomer women seek value and simplicity when choosing one brand over another, and 48% of affluent boomer women now make buying decisions based on whether brands acknowledge their specific needs rather than those of others, even family members. Marketing to affluent women: best practiceReal Simple, a magazine whose readers have the highest average income of any other women's magazine, stands out as an example of a brand appealing directly to affluent women's primary motivators. The magazine is built on the premise of simplification, and carries that message impeccably across various media, from its logo and slogan to the pages of its magazine, its book covers, email newsletters, website, and more. Real Simple's "Daily Thought" desktop wallpaper for its affluent female fans, 2008:
(For more examples of best practices in marketing to affluent women, see our expanded report.) Real Simple's philosophy? Less is more… and organize what there is so you'll have more time to enjoy a fulfilling life. It's motto? Spend less time doing the things you have to do and more time doing what you want to do. The brand is hitting on nearly every cylinder in terms of our list of affluent female motivators: simplicity, enjoyment, quality of life, personal enrichment, reducing stress, allowing time for the important things in life, expressions of personal style and identity, time aspiration, and meeting one's own needs.
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We help companies successfully market to America's most profitable consumer group: women living in households earning $75,000 to $200,000 per year. We have helped firms achieve sales growth, command high prices, increase competitive differentiation, and improve their reputations in the marketplace.
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