Her Voice Blog

Women play the games and use the gadgets to transform their lives, so why is the technology industry still marketing to them as if they slept with fuchsia-clad, faux-diamond-studded Barbie dolls tucked under their arms?

The above question was posed by Belinda Parmar, founder of Lady Geek TV. In her recent blog entry over at the Huffington Post, Parmar examines the tech industry and how it’s missing the mark in its efforts to reach women.

Research from Forrester has shown that over half of women attempting to make technological purchases end up walking out of shops because they can’t find what they are looking for. This equals about $1 million lost sales opportunities each year.

In today’s often sluggish economy and the increasingly competitive tech market, can any company really afford to miss out on that amount of profit?

As Parmar states, “women are smart, economically powerful and increasingly active in the way they look to technology to enhance their lives.” Out of every 10 gadgets purchased, four of these are bought by women. And we already know that women ages 25 to 34 outnumber men in the category of online gaming.

Yet the tech industry offers up products like HTC’s Bliss phone (with its calorie counting apps and a dangling charm message indicator) as being best suited for women while men get the Motorola Droid 3 with the tagline “it’s not a princess, it’s a robot.”

Instead of marketing to women as the complex, informed and fundamentally varied customers they really are, the battle lines have been set out from a 1970s template, with Android ‘dudes’ on one side and glitz-fed bauble babes on the other.

We agree with Parmar when she states that “women want smart devices that enhance their lives.” She goes on to say that while women don’t want to be “bamboozled by jargon” they also don’t respond favorably to being “marketed to like pre-teens cooing at the latest Justin Bieber add-on.”

There's clearly a sweet spot when it comes to marketing technology to women. As with reaching any group of people, it's important to first understand what they want. If the tech industry doesn't take the time to investigate what it is that women desire from their devices, even the best marketing efforts will not yield the desired results. To reach women, you first have to know women and understand them. Here at FletcherPR, we most certainly do.

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.