Women Enjoying Beer

Marketing Beer To Women, Part 2: Know Your Market

Sep 14, 2011 Education & Training, Something To Think About, Women and Beer

Yesterday we launched what will surely be a long series about Marketing Beer To Women. Yes, it’s different than marketing to ‘everyone’ or marketing to men. You don’t market tampons to men and you don’t market elder care to teenagers. While beer is universal, marketing is not.

Today’s topic is Knowing Your Market. Marketing isn’t a difficult concept to understand, yet you do in fact need to understand it to market effectively. Marketing is marketing. Marketing ISN’T advertising, sales or anything else. Just as brewing isn’t distributing or reselling beer.

Know Your Market

One of the resources that helped me understand that marketing isn’t advertising is Sam’s book, Brewing Up A Business. I’d highly recommend this read. Sam is straight forward and on target.

Another primary resource I’d absolutely recommend reading, if not require for all marketers, is Marti Barletta’s Marketing to Women. Anyone selling anything that does not yet understand that women make 80% of all purchasing decisions across category lines needs to get up to speed.

Here are some of WEB’s research based guidelines for you to follow in marketing beer to women:

KNOW YOUR MARKET

• If you don’t know your market, get to know it First – THEN market to it
• All this applies to both genders
• Assume nothing
• It’s an equal and different playing field
• No sexism is ever necessary or appropriate (any -ism for that matter)

Market research to me used to be an “out there” term. Now I totally understand it and can help any business, particularly the beer community, in properly marketing to women based in research.

Let me put it another way, if you’re not researching your market before opening your doors, you’re setting yourself up to go backwards. Building it assuming they will come is naive and short sighted. And it’s not only disrespectful to the market you think you’re trying to encourage, it could be fatal.

Set yourself up for success: Know Your Market. Market research does just that.

Tomorrow – Part 3: General Guidelines to help you Market Beer To Women

Yesterday – Part 1: Three Universal Truths

Tags: Brewing Up A Business, know your market, market research, marketing is not advertising, Marketing to Women Book, Marti Barletta, Sam Calagione

Worth Repeating: No Such Thing As A "Woman's Beer"

Jul 22, 2011 Assumptions & Myth Busting, Education & Training, Unbelievable, Women and Beer

KPAM radio in Portland Oregon called me yesterday to be part of the show because they were discussing “women’s beers”. There’s been some coverage lately of companies doing campaigns with products they think are geared towards women. Beer ‘made’ for them.

Hogwash.

While I’d agree with Kristy on this point: “Women are an essential part of future growth for the beer industry and can no longer be ignored.” I’d totally disagree on this one: “We need to repair the reputation of beer among women by launching products that meet their needs.” [Caveat: this is all in the UK.]

Photo by Kate K Parks

Needs? Really – what are womens’ needs for beer? How about this: Fresh, quality, variety.

WEB can tell the American brewers: DON’T DO THIS!!!

Making quality beer is the right thing to do. American brewers: keep brewing what you’re brewing.

The problem that almost all beer professionals still have is that they don’t see that focused female education is the answer to getting women into beer.

It most certainly isn’t making a special batch of something. Start by asking them what flavor they like (then matching what beers are available), then talk to them about why they drink beer AND why they don’t drink beer. Therein lies the answer.

Psychographics will give you all the answers you need to help properly market beer to women.

It incenses and insults women when you pander to them by making a beer especially for them. Seriously, this is not the point at all. In fact if you think this, you’re so far off that you may as well close shop.

You’ve got to know the market your pursuing before you try to sell any product, good, or service. Read Marti Barletta’s book Marketing to Women. It’ll give you all the ammo you need to ‘get it’. Then when you’re ready to hone in on marketing craft/beer to women, call me.

Think about the converse: there isn’t a “man’s beer” being marketed just to men. That’d be ridiculous. To know what people want is important, yes. First you have to find out why they do (and don’t do).

Remember:

• Women influence 80% of purchases, across all categories.
• Females comprise over half the global population.

If you’re not understanding this, you’ve got a huge problem.

FYI: I’ve posted on Molson-Coors before. Every time I do Kristy chimes in. They’ve yet to invite WEB to help them in this arena.

Tags: beer for women, Marti Barletta, Molson-Coors

Here's a Lot Of What Matters Now

Dec 8, 2010 Education & Training, Good People, Something To Think About

Hats off to Seth (again). Marti (Barletta), as usual, it’s a productive inspiration to read your thoughts. Thanks. Here’s Marti’s piece on Strengths.

“Forget about working on your weaknesses —> Focus on supporting your strengths.

I worked on my weaknesses for 40 years to little avail. Still “needs improvement,” as they say. Why? Easy. We hate doing things we’re not good at, so we avoid them. No practice makes perfect hard to attain.

But my strengths – ah, I love my strengths. I’ll work on them till the purple cows come home. When we love what we do, we do more and more, and pretty soon we’re pretty good at it.

The beautiful thing about being on a team is that, believe it or not, lots of people love doing the things you hate. And hate doing the things you love. So quit diligently developing your weaknesses. Instead, partner with someone very UNlike you, share the work and share the wealth and everyone’s happy.

Relatedly, women are rather UNlike men and often approach problems and opportunities with a different outlook. Yet books and coaches often encourage us to adopt male strengths and, lacking understanding, to relinquish our own. Thee irony is, studies show that more women in leadership translates unequivocally into better business results.

Wouldn’t it make more sense for both men and women to appreciate each other’s strengths so we all work on what comes naturally?

Marti Barletta, speaker, consultant and author of Marketing to Women and PrimeTime Women; is currently working on her next book, Attracting Women: Marketing Your Company to the 21st Century’s Best Candidates”

I highly recommend you download What Matters Now - it’s chock FULL of good stuff, things to act on and ponder. Then use to go out and change the world.

Tags: Marti Barletta, Seth Godin, strengths, What Matters Now

10 Things Women Want Series: Part 1 – Address the Consumer as the Consumer

Nov 17, 2010 Assumptions & Myth Busting, Education & Training, Something To Think About

When’s the last time you intentionally educated yourselves on marketing beer to women? If you’re a business – what’s your answer? If you’re a consumer, when’s the last time you spoke up directly to a brewery or beer business about what you want?

Today we launch a 10 part series of What Women Want - 10 things women all over the USA have told Women Enjoying Beer specifically about per their relationship with beer. Let’s get to it.

Ask Women What They Want

Part 1: Address the consumer side from just that – the consumer angle.

WEB is the only group anywhere on the planet doing specific work anchored in the relationship female consumers have with beer – or why they don’t have one at all. There are other industry and recreation groups. WEB info is singular in that it comes right from the woman’s lens – not the agency or marketers lens, not from the men’s lens, not from the existing female enthusiasts lens.

In order to really understand marketing beer to women, you have to throw out any expert lens, any snob or geek glasses, any preconceived notions and thinking and see it from the fresh perspective of a consumer.

Females want to be asked then listened too per their relationships. They don’t want to have false assumptions and philosophies based on incorrect data, inaccurate stereotypes or otherwise incorrect information shoved down societies collective throat. That’s not only dangerous, it’s intentionally ignorant and lazy.

If you did that you’d be dead wrong and your business would suffer accordingly. Pay attention to what women have to say - not what you think they think or base it on a narrow slice of the female pie.

In order for your accuracy to be just that, you also need to talk to women 21 years of age to over, well, as aged as the female beer enthusiast gets. And here’s a nugget – the female baby boomers are a huge opportunity within the female market share. Numbers’ wise, it’s an incredibly large portion of all women everywhere. Bigger than a few other ‘desirable’ marketing categories – combined. Read Marti’s book for more information.

So when you are looking at addressing the 50.9% of the population who happen to be female in relation to your beer, go to them first. Make sure it is from the consumer side.

Nothing else will do. And the potential gain is huge.

Parts 2 – 10 coming soon. Sign up to get the daily scoop and be ahead of the pack.

Tags: consumer angle, marketing beer to women, marketing segments, Marti Barletta

Marketing To Women

Aug 13, 2010 Assumptions & Myth Busting, Education & Training, Good People

Marti Barletta's M2W - great resource

Yesterday I shared one of my highly recommended resources and today I want to share another.

Marti Barletta has been specializing in Marketing To women for a while now – she’s sharp, dedicated, knows her business and has been highly valuable to companies who want to truly and authentically market to women.

Women Enjoying Beer nods in her direction. I read Marti’s Book, Marketing To Women, 2nd Edition, when I started WEB. It is also one of my go-to and return-to resources.

Marketing beer to women, while not Marti’s specialty, is mine. When you can understand and acknowledge that marketing to different groups is just that – different – then you are headed in the right direction.

p.s. The Bittersweet group should read this book….

Tags: Marketing to Women, Marti Barletta, resources

Tools

Jul 27, 2010 Education & Training, Something To Think About

What tools are in your tool box?

Adage from Sullivision: Tools left in the toolbox never built anything.

And, adding to that, unless you pick up the tools to build something new or repair something in need of attention, you’re never going to get anywhere.

For those of you in the beer business community – breweries, restaurants, vendors, suppliers, retailers, distributors – you’ll never go one step farther earning female market share unless you pick up the right tool to genuinely garner the female beer consumers’ attention. You don’t deserve it if you don’t use the right tools and you’ll certainly pay for it if you use the wrong tools.

How do you know which tools to use?

Ask women what they want, gather data from them, apply it properly. As a specialist, I can tell you that there are so many ill fated attempts to market to women because the lens is all wrong.

The lens has to be from the woman’s perspective; not from yours, no matter how smart you think you are (or actually are). And regardless of if you’re a women in the industry – being of the industry is different than being the consumer.

You’re not the woman, she is. Ask her, act on that information and you’ll both come out ahead.

Like Marti Barletta says, the first rule of marketing is to understand your market. The second? Understand your consumer.

Here, here!

Tags: earning female market share, Marti Barletta, proper marketing, Sullivision

Nooze

Apr 9, 2009 Brain Stew

Marketing to Women.

Marketing to Men.

Marketing to Martians.

Good heavens – if you can’t figure out that you first have to KNOW YOUR MARKET, then you shouldn’t be pursuing the share in the first place.

When you don’t know your market, of course, your efforts may be clumsy, off the mark, inaccurate, insulting. So – back to point A. KNOW YOUR MARKET (KYM).

Any market segment is no harder than another when you know the KYM rule first.

Booze News take note. (here are a few good ideas…not all applicable)

The answer is no because the industry has traditionally, not entirely though, seen marketing to women through a male lens. Of course that won’t work. Duh.

Stupidity is insulting.

Start with Marti Barletta‘s Book, Marketing to Women. That will start anyone wanting to authentically capture womens’ market share a good start.

Tags: authenticity, beer, Marketing to Women, Marti Barletta, women