It is no surprise that women are behind a good deal of spending dollars. Women account for more than 70% of global purchasing decisions, according to Gallup, and as of last year, women control up to $15 trillion of spending power, Nielsen reported. But while marketers are making great strides when it comes to targeting female consumers, there is still a segment of the female population that marketers are missing, especially in the consumer packaged goods space — women at work.
According to a recent report by WorkPlace Impact, nearly half of women stop at the grocery store on their way home from work or during their lunch breaks, and a whopping 84% of women edit their shopping lists while they’re at work. Because of this, many CPG marketers are not reaching out to female consumers when they are making many of their purchasing decisions, according to Tara Peters, director of marketing at WorkPlace Impact.
“This means that CPG marketers need to adjust their marketing to include staying top-of-mind in alternate locations,” she said. “They’ve done a good job being in home and in store, but so many decisions are happening in the workplace, a place where working women spend the majority of their waking hours.”
To alleviate this missed opportunity, CPG companies should find new ways to get their brand messages out in the workplace, Peters said. One way to do this is to take advantage of working women’s desire for convenience. According to the WorkPlace Impact study, working women take a very strategic and focused approach to grocery shopping, and more than 84% make purchasing decisions based on recipes they plan to make. To take advantage of this, CPG marketers should look to offer professional female consumers easy recipes and coupons for products that are on the ingredient list.
“Women in this demographic are often running in a million directions to support their families and careers; they will respond to marketing that makes their lives easier,” Peters said.
Working women also tend to talk a lot with their colleagues about recipes and meals, she said, so marketing tactics that incorporate word-of-mouth and start conversations are also a good way for CPG companies to get their brands in front of women in the office.
The study also offers insight for retailers, Peters said. Working women make several smaller trips to the grocery store, and retailers should market to those women so that they’re reaching them at the office, too, the study revealed.
“By targeting offices, workplaces and commuters in their sales footprint, grocery retailers can capture some of this workday and workweek traffic,” Peters said.
Producing ad content that shows female consumers in a positive light is also a good way for CPG companies to catch the attention of working women. More than half of women have bought products because they liked how their ads presented women, according to a survey by SheKnows Media.
“[T]he pro-female advertising movement does not go unnoticed by consumers,” said Samantha Skey, SheKnows’ chief marketing officer.
Regardless of which tactic they choose to take, CPG marketers would benefit from targeting working women at the office, Peters said.
“A purely in-home approach was good enough for advertisers looking to reach women of our mothers’ generation, but that’s less the case now,” she said.
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