Her Voice Blog

Facebook COO, Sheryl Sandberg, is a genius when it comes to marketing to women, and she’s has been all over the news after her recent interview on 60 Minutes. Sandberg’s book, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, is a topic of controversy among both men and women. I was captivated by her interview and immediately ordered the book. She believes we are our own worst enemies when it comes to climbing the corporate ladder and accessing positions of leadership and power. Sandberg cites a number of reasons.

No one likes to think they are being sold, and women are hyper sensitive to fast sales talk. A genuine approach is more likely to resonate, but what does that mean? And how do you market to women?

We’ve spoken before on the facts that men fill up a large part of the tech bubble. Women aren’t seen as the coders and engineers; they are seen as, well, the publicists and fashion designers. Frankly, we are over this stereotype and want to shed some light on tech companies that are marketing to women.

Venture to Silicon Valley or CES and we’ll bet you can count the number of women working for these male-dominated tech companies on both hands. Why is this? The Mark Zuckerberg’s of this generation have taken all desirable jobs, and that is the quintessential employee/entrepreneur right now.

According to a Kauffman Foundation analysis, women are actually more capital-efficient than men, and have lower failure rates than those led by men. If that doesn’t convince you, in the U.S., 140 women enroll in higher education for every 100 men, they earn more than 50 percent of all bachelor’s and master’s degree and the increase in the number of engineering degrees granted to women has grown almost tenfold.

We hope that this educates, inspires and empowers you to take on the world! After all, you’re a woman.

FletcherPR is a national communications firm that specializes in reaching women through the power of media. Headquartered in Knoxville, TN with staff in Nashville & Los Angeles, we are a full-service agency providing strategic public relations, social media and marketing communications services to our clients throughout the U.S

We are working hard to overcome the stereotypes for working women. Men dominate the workforce, and have done so for many years, making it difficult to reverse the mindset that many people already have. Many traditional male-dominated fields are now marketing to women, such as finance, engineering and technology.

Are you a woman starting a career in one of these fields? Or do you just work mostly with men? We have some tips for working women:

• Find a mentor – it can be intimidating starting a new job, so find someone who has the experience to help you.
• Be confident – regardless of gender, people who carry themselves with confidence get noticed more.
• Have an edge – your edge gives you strength, sets you apart and shows the men that you mean business.
• Learn from successful male counterparts – we hesitate to say this, but if you are going into a male-dominated field then that is the way of it. Heed their advice.
• Want it – nothing in this world comes easy, but if you want it, go for it.

Many women just need a little boost of confidence and power to tackle male-dominated companies. More power to you, sister!

FletcherPR is a national communications firm that specializes in reaching women through the power of media. Headquartered in Knoxville, TN with staff in Nashville & Los Angeles, we are a full-service agency providing strategic public relations, social media and marketing communications services to our clients throughout the U.S.

Sometimes science can unveil new worlds we never knew existed before. Other times, it simply provides statistical proof that affirms what we already know.

In a case of the latter, a new study by the Warwick Business School finds that women are “turned off by products placed next to ‘attractive’ images of female models.” The study found that women don’t like to look at other, more-attractive women when making their shopping decisions. Instead it had a negative, sub-conscious effect on the consumers’ perception of the product. According to the researchers, blatant display of sexy models activates a coping mechanism in which the shoppers belittle the display model in their minds.

On the flip side, it turns out that using an attractive model in a more subtle manner produced a much different marketing to women effect. The example given in the article about the study is, given a magazine ad, a beautiful model appearing in the ad with the product produced a negative perception. However, if the model weren’t in the ad, but on the opposite page, then a positive connotation was produced.

So the lesson here might be that it’s okay to use attractive models in advertising, but keep them at bay.