By Elizabeth L. Boineau

Women are wielding a lot of economic power these days, and smart companies are taking the time to know how they think and how they buy and using that information to refine their marketing strategy to better reach the female mind.

Though women in the U.S. today make about $1 trillion a year (and their income has grown 63% faster in the past three decades than men’s), on average they earn only ¾ of what their male counterparts do, yet they make 83% of buying decisions, including purchasing 84% of home products, booking 89% of vacations, proceeding with 75% of  choices linked to a new home purchase and making 63% of personal computer buys. Estimates indicate that women are spending between $3.3 trillion and $7 trillion annually on consumer purchases alone.

Also of note is IRS data that reveal that women comprise 39% of the top wealth holders, defined as adults with total assets over $625,000. That adds up to 2.5 million women with assets totaling $4.2 trillion dollars. Of that group, 42% are estimated to be single, divorced or widowed in the year 2050, fostering even more independent buying decisions. Add to these figures the fact that women outlive men by five to seven years, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, and more wealth will be concentrated in female hands. As it is now, women control over 50% of private wealth in the United States.

Some 30% of working women earn more than their husbands, notes Martha Barletta, author of “Marketing to Women: How to Understand, Reach and Increase Your Share of the World’s Largest Market Segment.” In addition, 75% of women with the title of vice-president or higher at Fortune 500 companies bring home bigger paychecks than their husbands do, averaging about 68% of household income, according to Barletta.

Further evidence of women’s ability to ring up the cash register ever louder is the Employment Policy Foundation’s statistic that the number of women earning $100,000 or more has tripled in the last 10 years. Considering the power they’re now carrying in their purse, it’s clear that companies planning to be successful in today’s marketplace can’t ignore this market segment (and the specific way in which women think and buy).

Savvy companies, including male-dominated ones, have known for some time that marketing specifically to women is smart business, and that it’s simply not the same as marketing to men. The big picture is that women absorb more information, are more inquisitive and verbal, incorporate values into their buying decisions and want relationships based on mutual values and interests that influence their purchases.

Reaching Ms. Shopper is not without a challenge. The female consumer is busier than ever and has a complex web of duties that make her relatively unavailable and easily distracted.

Women today have taken multi-tasking to a new level and are “multi-minding,” a recently coined buzz phrase that describes the process of simultaneously thinking about many things at once.

So how to best reach this busy multi-minded, highly engaged and increasingly powerful consumer? Ask what she wants, give her information across many channels and offer details on how it meets her needs. Be sure to show and tell her about others who also believe in you in order to validate your position in her mind. If you don’t clearly establish your case, build a solid rapport and give her the real and vital information she needs and deserves; there are plenty of other places she can go.

At all costs, avoid that fate, since now more than ever, the female consumer would be a terrible (and affluent) mind to waste.

Elizabeth L. Boineau runs E. Boineau & Co., a strategic marketing communications and public relations firm based in Charleston. You may reach her at eboineau@eboineauandco.com.

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