Reggie Bradford is the founder and CEO of Vitrue, the leading provider of social marketing software, offering SaaS solutions to help brands and agencies harness the marketing-communications potential of social media on Facebook, Twitter and other social communities. Follow Reggie on Twitter @ReggieBradford and @Vitrue.
There is an extremely powerful demographic responsible for$5 trillion of consumer spending: the head-of-household. This is the person responsible for the majority of household purchases. She is well-informed, armed with a savvy instinct and a healthy credit card limit, eager to stock her own inventory with clothing, groceries, appliances and an expansive list of consumer packaged goods (CPGs). Clearly, this is a necessary group for marketers to tap. But, a major shift in media consumption habits over the last 60 years has greatly impacted the head-of-household marketing strategy. What may have been effective 10 years ago likely isn’t today — at least not in its original form.
The family dynamic has changed. Of course, many women are still full-time child caregivers, but there are far more women (single and married) in the workforce today. In fact, the number of women participating in the workforce since the ’70s has increased by 40%, and many households now operate with two incomes. However, women still constitute the vast majority of consumer spending. Marketers must understand that females are still the primary decision makers for the majority of household purchases.
Given all this, what’s actually changed since the days of afternoon TV spots and soap opera product placements? Answer: the entire media landscape. The best practices for reaching the modern day head-of-household have to be completely redefined. And it’s not easy. Magazines like McCalls are no longer in print, and soap operas are circling the drain. We live in a multichannel world, and marketers need to penetrate the media these women are engaging with on a daily basis.
Get Social With Consumers
Traditional tactics like email marketing and search ads are certainly relevant tools, but marketers must embrace the social web. Of the 65% of online adults who use social networking sites, 69% are female. Women not only spend 30% more time on these sites than men, but they also have larger networks. Comparatively speaking, women have 8% more Facebook friends on average than men, and spend more time on the site. But as we all know, marketing goes a simple social web presence — it’s about the content marketers push. Clearly, what works on the social web is a call to action.
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