Learned quoted from The First Sex: The Natural Habits of Women and How They Are Changing the World, by socioanthropologist Helen Fisher:

“Both men and women have some ability for planning long term. I have found no concrete evidence that either sex is more skilled at this essential task. However, a few business analysts believe that women are apt to think long term more regularly, while men are more likely to focus on the here and now.”

Then, she went on to explore women’s homebuying behavior – especially during market crises – in light of this inclination to think over the long term.

Click here to read Andrea Learned’s full post.

WCR Mid-Year Education Session (Saturday, May 15th – 12:45pm – 2:00pm) – Washington DC

Register Here

Tara-Nicholle Nelson, MA, Esq.

From intensive regulation, to lending guidelines and the mortgage climate, to consumers’ basic belief in the value of homeownership – the world of real estate has evolved into an entirely different marketplace than it was just five years ago, and it continues to evolve at breakneck speed. The REALTORS® who survive and thrive will be those who embrace this challenge and change their own games to stay in front of the new desires, demands, guidelines and expectations of critical real estate constituents: buyers, sellers and lenders.

In this intensive Education Session, REALTOR®, syndicated Inman Columnist, author and real estate attorney Tara-Nicholle Nelson will inspire and illuminate you to become a game-changer in your own business, office and market area.

Drawing on data and wisdom from an amazing array of disciplines and industries (from psychology to marketing to magazines!), Tara will explore the five key mindset shifts, power-tweaks and intensely impactful business model remodels you can, no, must make for your business to flourish in this next-gen real estate world order.

Tara will also provide REALTORS® with the necessary next steps and tools to execute these 5 essential transformations in their individual practices.

WCR Mid-Year Learning Lab session on Saturday, May 15th – 9:15-10:15 [Washington DC]: Register Here

Presenter: Tara-Nicholle Nelson, MA, Esq., REALTOR® of REThinkRealEstate.com and WRELDA.com

‘Social Media’: the mere words strike the fear of the unknown and visions of time-sucking screen staring into many REALTORS’® heads. Other brokers and agents see how they can communicate with colleagues via blogging, Facebook, Twitter and the like, but are clueless about how to use these web 2.0 tools to make the link with actual prospective clients.

Here’s the mythbuster: in reality, social media are simply a set of high-tech tools that empower REALTORS® to intensify and do on a larger scale what they already do well: build relationships with past and prospective clients, and convert those relationships into closed deals. In this potent Learning Lab, REALTOR®, syndicated Inman News columnist/author and social media savant Tara-Nicholle Nelson demystifies key social media and networks, then presents a simple, time-efficient system brokers and agents can use to transform their time-wasting social media efforts into a laser-beam focused tool for attracting and connecting with real life real estate clients.

Attendees will receive a soup-to-nuts system of tips, tricks, tools and resources to generate qualified real estate leads and referral business via social media in 30 minutes a day – or less!

Well, Learned is still wising us all up to how we can fuel our targeted M2W efforts by understanding a new, nuanced but powerful psychographic subgroup of women:

Green Moms

With her latest release, The Green Mom Eco-cosm: A Social Study Into Their Motivations, Convictions and Influence, Learned partnered with The Social Studies Group “to study the women who are really influencing “green mom” consumer behavior online.   As with so many other issues, women exploring more sustainable consumer practices each begin an engagement with ‘green’ for their own unique reasons.

[Their] research found that these women have a definite hunger for products and solutions to help their families live more sustainably, and they are enthusiastically pursuing ‘green products’ that fit the lifestyles they want to achieve.”

Want to power your own efforts to attract and retain Green Moms in your business?  Download the study, here.

If you want to attract smart women consumers, and advise and coach them successfully through the lifestyle design ‘experience’ that is buying or selling a home, a smart social media strategy is the ticket.

The 2009 Women and Social Media study by BlogHer, iVillage and Compass Partners reveals that

42 million U.S. women
are online weekly doing
some form of social
media activity

and then goes on to illuminate which social media they use, for what, and more – lots of insights to inspire and fuel an effective social media plan.

Download the study, here.

]]> http://www.wrelda.com/blog/2010/03/09/blogher-study-reveals-how-women-consumers-use-social-media/feed/ 0 http://www.wrelda.com/blog/2010/02/18/panks/ http://www.wrelda.com/blog/2010/02/18/panks/#comments Thu, 18 Feb 2010 17:36:02 +0000 admin http://www.wrelda.com/?p=269 In this era of the Mommy blogger, marketing to women is often confused as synonymous with marketing products and features for children. Obviously, family-friendly features are important to women, but you might be surprised at the sheer numbers of women who don’t have kids. This group is trending way upwards in attention from marketers, and like their sister subgroups Alpha Moms and Light Green women, has a catchy nickname bestowed by marketer Melanie Notkin: PANK – Professional Aunt with No Kids.

On her site, SavvyAuntie.com, Notkin provides the following data, which compels the conclusion that PANKs wield a weighty chunk of change in the American economy.  In real estate, PANKS are part of the single woman demographic that buys 21 percent of all homes, but also a significant chunk of the married and unmarried couples demographics, too.  The latest NAR Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers (available for free to Realtors online) revealed that a whopping 61 percent of homebuyers had no kids under 18 living at home!

For 2010, in addition to our marketing mantra Don’t Think Pink, we might have to add: Do Think PANK!

Women without children: 45%*
*This fertility data does not include women over 45 whose fertility is greatly diminished. We surmise therefore that the total number of women without children is well over 50%, and over 25% of the entire adult population.

Childlessness is a fast growing factor among American women:
2004: 45%
2003: 44%
2001: 43%

Women are getting married later, if ever:
Median age for marriage for a woman in 1980: 20.8
Median age for marriage for a woman in 2005: 25.8
Single Women, Never Married in 2006: 26%

Even marriage does not ensure a family:
Married couples without children in 2006: 43%

All above sources U.S. Census
From: SavvyAuntie.com

If you watch Real Housewives of Orange County, you saw the ladies modeling $1700 bras and panties during their private party at La Perla.

While that might be an earnest money deposit on a condo in some parts, there’s a deeper relationship between real estate and this pricey private party.

WRELDA members are pioneering marketing to women to the real estate industry. But we can minimize our trial and error (and take a shortcut to high returns-on-investment to learning from what other industries who market to women do right and wrong.

The retail apparel industry has probably invested more time and money into strategizing what works to attract and connect with women cnonsumers than any other. While you might think that clothes and homes are too different for apparel marketing strategies to apply, I beg to differ.

The star of this prime, in-the-field case study of event marketing magnetically attracting women, is – da da da DAAAAA – my Mom!

My mother – an avid and super well-connected clotheshorse and career shopper – was at the checkout counter at DressBarn when the manager came up and asked her if she would host a private VIP shopping party at the store. {At DressBarn, VIP stands for Very Indulgent Party.}

Of course she would.

The Setup:

* The party was on a Friday night at 7 – management closed the store down 2 hours early for my Mom and her BFFs.
* The store provided invitations and very light refreshments (cookies, punch and coffee).
* My Mom provided the guest list.
* During the party, Mom got 25% off of her purchase, and her friends got 15% off
* 10 women attended – my Mom said she’d have probably been more aggressive about turnout if she was offered more of a discount incentive for an increased number of attendees (she just handed out paper invites to a couple of her Bible study cronies and called a couple of close friends).

The Rundown {i.e, the ROI, i.e., the take!}

* From memory, my Mom calculated that she and her friends spent a little over $2,000 at the party.
* But that doesn’t include the memories and “insider” connection the attendees will always have for the store, which could very well increase their future store visits and spending.
* The store spent no more than $20 on party supplies, and because they held it during normal store hours, spent no more on overhead than they otherwise would have.
* 2 non-party shoppers were turned away during the event. But the opportunity costs were very likely negligible. Chances are almost nil that those two folks would have spent over $200, much less $2,000. Plus, chances are that they’ll come back, so whatever they would have spent was not actually lost! The would-be shoppers who were turned away were so curious and interested in why the store was closed, they might even come back and want to throw their own party!

The Verdict: Brilliant!

I’m sure the store made much more than they would have during those very slow shopping hours (my Mom lives in a town where everyone goes to Friday night high school football games) with virtually no additional overhead.

This event demonstrates a number of the truths about marketing to women that are explored in the WRELDA curriculum, including the CR OPing phenomenon (which explains why word-of-mouth is essential in the smart woman demographic), why event marketing done well has an explosively high ROI, and more.

Have you ever been invited to a VIP or private event by a brand or vendor? Have you thrown one? What were your observations?

So it behooves the real estate pros who want to attract women to be EVERYWHERE on the web, providing those answers and painting the picture of how working with them will be a fun, orderly experience that transforms your clients’ lives – for the better. Social media outlets provide brokers, agents and others who counsel real estate consumers to connect directly with women by answering questions they care about.

The glitch is that we professionals are busy folks, too! And social media participation can seem overwhelming, like there’s no good place to start, and disconnected from true ROI (return on investment).

If that’s been your feeling on social media, but you know you must get on the stick, I have a solution for you! Stefan Swanepoel at RealSure has created a top-notch, 10 day social media plan that will jumpstart your 2010 in all the right ways. For free.  Uh-huh – it’s pretty stinking awesome.

Download it here, and then follow it. You can do anything for 10 days, right? Then, in Swanepoel’s words, wash, rinse and repeat – indefinitely. That’s all it takes, folks. If you want even more shortcuts on what to blog or Tweet about, make sure you follow me on Twitter (I’m @taranicholle) and take the members-only webinar on using social media to increase your close rate, here.

But the catchiness of the title belies the seriousness of the mandate it expresses – this is a command.  Today’s smart woman consumer wants to be taken seriously, and will ditch service providers who don’t get this quick, fast and in a hurry.

As you know, I’m a syndicated columnist with Inman News. One of my columns is a book review.  Lately, I’ve been inundated with publisher requests to review women-and-money books. Fabulous – or so you would think.

I just so happened to end up with a stack of four such books on my reading table the other day when I noticed the bizarre similarity that ALL of them had pink as the predominant color in the cover design!

And two had pink purses as the primary images.  Need I say more?

{Well, I’ve got one more thing to say. One of these books is called Bitches on a Budget. Note to WRELDA members – should you ever be tempted to insert the word “bitches” into your marketing, please climb down off that professional suicide ledge and email me first. End of aside.}

A couple of the books contained enough substance to vindicate the stereotypically uber-femme covers.  A couple didn’t.  But let my gut “ugh” knee-jerk reaction be a lesson to all of us women-centered marketers:

Don’t. Think. Pink.