What is gender marketing?

Gender based marketing: the division of target groups into men and women, has to be thought of quite dif­fer­ently these days. Those who base their marketing strategy on outdated role clichés will have little success with it but will certainly reap plenty of criticism. Nev­er­the­less, gender marketing can be suc­cess­ful if in­di­vidu­al­ity and diversity are taken into con­sid­er­a­tion.

Gender has a very specific meaning, which differs to ‘sex’; when we refer to a person’s ‘sex’ we are speaking of their bio­lo­gic­al sex (i.e. male or female). This is strictly physiolo­gic­al, whereas the term ‘gender’ refers to a so­ciocul­tur­al construct. Their gender is de­term­ined by the different gender roles and be­ha­vi­our­al dif­fer­ences between men and women, which are strongly in­flu­enced by society and culture. Gender marketing is based on the various prop­er­ties assigned to men and women, both physical char­ac­ter­ist­ics and interests. 

Be­ha­vi­our­al and psy­cho­lo­gic­al dif­fer­ences between men and women are the central focus of gender studies. In addition to being a fas­cin­at­ing area of sociology or psy­cho­logy, gender studies can produce in­ter­est­ing insights for marketing purposes. Many marketing strategies now use gender marketing tech­niques, tailoring ad­vert­ising content and tech­niques to the different con­sump­tion and pur­chas­ing behaviour of the genders.

From this point of view, gender is un­der­stood as a target group in which different buyer personas, i.e. pro­to­types of buyers - can be iden­ti­fied.

Gender marketing en­com­passes every aspect of sales, in­cor­por­at­ing the gender-specific demands of consumers in the pro­duc­tion process, dis­tri­bu­tion, as well as com­mu­nic­a­tions strategies. A suc­cess­ful marketing mix usually uses the following seven marketing tools: product (product policy), price (price policy), place (dis­tri­bu­tion policy), promotion (com­mu­nic­a­tion policy), personnel (personnel policy), process (equipment policy), and physical fa­cil­it­ies.

Product, place, promotion, and personnel are par­tic­u­larly in­ter­est­ing factors when it comes to gender marketing, as ad­vert­isers can tailor these areas to the different demands and pref­er­ences of men and women. In the following, we explain how you can use gender marketing to advertise and sell your goods and services suc­cess­fully.

En­com­passing the entire process of designing a product, the product policy is the heart of any marketing campaign and in­flu­ences all further stages in the marketing process. This initial stage in the de­vel­op­ment process is often crucial in deciding whether a product is suc­cess­ful.

From the outset, it’s integral for you as a company to consider the target group you want to address and the demands specific to in­di­vidu­al consumers within this group. There are several factors to con­tem­plate when selecting your target group, e.g. age group, social status, and lifestyle. It is during this stage that you should consider whether gender marketing is an ap­pro­pri­ate method for you. Is your customer base made up of mostly men, women, or both? Do all members of your target audience require your product in the same way, or do their needs depend on their gender?

Gender marketing not only takes the physical uses of the product into account, but also the different as­so­ci­ations that women and men have about the product. Many (extremely suc­cess­ful) goods and service are marketed in com­pletely different ways to appeal to men and women, although strictly speaking, both sexes could use them. Think of razors, for example, despite being es­sen­tially the same, they are designed and marketed dif­fer­ently for men and women.

There are several other products that can be divided into gendered cat­egor­ies. Ad­vert­isers often develop entire product ranges separated into female and male interest areas. It’s therefore possible for marketers to develop gender-specific sales strategies.

‘Place’ refers to the sales en­vir­on­ment in which consumers go shopping. No matter whether they’re phys­ic­ally entering a store or browsing online shops, the sales en­vir­on­ment plays a decisive role in making a purchase. If you have a brick-and-mortar store, your need to consider factors such as light con­di­tions, storage and present­a­tion, clean­li­ness, etc., while website owners have to create an appealing virtual en­vir­on­ment. For this, you have to keep in mind factors such as web design, present­a­tion, and in­form­at­ive content, as well as website nav­ig­a­tion. But if you want to offer gender-specific products, what should you look out for when creating the sales en­vir­on­ment?

While one group (tending to be female) pays more attention to clean­li­ness and order, colourful walls and warm lighting con­di­tions, the other side (tending to be male) is concerned with quick pur­chas­ing success: men want to be guided quickly to the desired product and then also complete the purchase just as quickly. That’s why many elec­tron­ics stores, for example, aim for a struc­tured and simple sales en­vir­on­ment.

Creating a gender-specific sales en­vir­on­ment can drastic­ally increase sales, and website operators have been quick to pick up on this trend. While of course, the sales tech­niques are different from tra­di­tion­al retail, the different needs of women and men are also important in the digital world. This applies not only to web design, which can be adapted to the genders, but also to the texts and product present­a­tions. Research has shown that women tend to prefer static images, while men are able to better process videos about services or the product.

In ac­cord­ance with their aim of making purchases quickly and ef­fi­ciently, men prefer product de­scrip­tions that are brief and to the point, listing the product’s most important prop­er­ties and, where possible, giving specific numbers, data, and facts. Women, on the other hand, are generally willing to read longer, more de­script­ive texts, because they tend to want to be as informed as much as possible about the range of products on offer. These should clarify the possible ap­plic­a­tions and the benefits of the ad­vert­ised product as precisely as possible.

‘Promotion’ en­com­passes all internal and external com­mu­nic­a­tions methods used to advertise a product. These include, but are not limited to, tele­vi­sion com­mer­cials, online com­mu­nic­a­tions carried out on social media platforms, and e-mail marketing, all of which, when correctly im­ple­men­ted, can po­ten­tially reach many new customers. One unique example of com­mer­cial emails is that, with suf­fi­cient user data, it’s possible to per­son­al­ise and tailor the emails to the receiver, making them an ideal resource for gender marketing.

‘Personnel’ includes all in­di­vidu­als who provide services to (potential) customers on behalf of a company. This area covers those who are actively involved in executing the sales, as well as those providing a service, such as taking care of dis­patch­ing, giving advice, or receiving customer com­plaints. Having pro­fes­sion­al personnel in all areas con­trib­utes sig­ni­fic­antly to customer loyalty. And in the context of gender marketing, staff members should be trained to take into account men and women’s different interests and re­quire­ments. This can lead to com­pletely different sales pitches and drastic­ally different exchanges between the sales­per­son and the consumer. Well-trained employees then also quickly notice if the coun­ter­part does not respond to gender-ste­reo­typ­ic­al sales ideas and can adjust the strategy.

With our de­vel­op­ing ideas of what it means to be a man or a woman, and with further progress between gender equality, we are seeing fewer and fewer people stick to tra­di­tion­al gender roles. Women are no longer re­stric­ted to striving for an existence as a housewife; they are in­creas­ingly prominent in the workplace and fin­an­cially in­de­pend­ent.

Men’s life­styles are also changing: An ever-in­creas­ing number of people are now living alone, meaning that tra­di­tion­ally gendered household tasks such as DIY and cooking are now being taken on by both sexes – something that would have been prac­tic­ally un­think­able 50 years ago. Therefore, if you want to develop an effective gender marketing strategy, you need to visualise the current social situation and the con­tem­por­ary needs of both sexes. Recycling tired ideals and obsolete gender roles is ir­rel­ev­ant and ir­rit­at­ing for consumers.

What used to belong to the masculine domain is now becoming relevant to women too – this is es­pe­cially true of DIY and technical activ­it­ies. In contrast, an in­creas­ing number of men now take on work that is tra­di­tion­ally as­so­ci­ated with women, such as cooking, main­tain­ing a household, and staying at home to raise children. This social change has also led to a shift in gender-specific interests. Suc­cess­ful gender marketing campaigns take note of these patterns and recognise and respond to changes in attitudes to promote sales.

Of course, using a gender-oriented marketing strategy is not always an advantage. Ad­vert­ising in this way is not useful or relevant for every product, es­pe­cially if the product is so simple that a dis­tinc­tion between men’s and women’s versions is un­ne­ces­sary (this concerns many basic food products such as fruit and ve­get­ables, as well as func­tion­al, everyday products such as copying paper, printer cart­ridges, etc.). In cases such as these, targeting the product towards a par­tic­u­lar audience carries a risk of a decrease in sales. If a product is marketed as typically female or typically male, it can lose its appeal to the opposite sex.

The use of too many gender ste­reo­types or a negative portrayal of these ste­reo­types can also lead to a backlash and po­ten­tially harm a company’s repu­ta­tion. If consumers perceive the present­a­tion of the product as too over­whelm­ing or even offensive, they will dis­so­ci­ate them­selves from it. Many products geared towards women have failed because the company has overdone its ‘girly’ ad­vert­ising, and many products aimed at men have failed to sell because the ad­vert­ising was too sexist.