All men may have been created equal, but not all men are the same — or, all women.  When it comes to marketing, there are three types of women, according to a study conducted by Mediative.

The Three Types of Women

When studying the online behavior of women, it became clear that certain types of women use the internet in their own unique ways.  The following information is essential for any business targeting a female customer base.

The Digital Mom

The “Digital Mom” group turned out to be the most difficult to measure, and perhaps the most interesting.  First there is a difference between mothers whose have older children (12 and up) vs. younger children.  Mothers with older children are more engaged by podcasts and videos while mothers with younger children more engaged by social media (which shouldn’t be surprising, since they are usually younger too).

The Professional Woman

If you want to get a professional woman’s attention, the best time to do so is on their lunch hour.  Professional women make most of their online purchases between 12:00 and 1:00 pm.  If you want to laser target internet campaigns aimed at professional women, try sending the emails at about 12:05 in order to catch them while they are checking their personal email accounts. Probably due to their busy schedules, professional women tend to shop online often, ten times per month on average.

The Under 30 Woman

The study found that young woman are particularly active on, and influenced by, social media; a whopping 86% of young women have some kind of profile on social networking sites.  And as a result, the under 30 females were found to be particularly influenced by socially promoted information.  Things that their friends post on Twitter and Facebook, or posts on blogs, and consumer reviews were found to be a particularly influential on their online purchasing behaviors.

The young women cohort also proved to be the most “mobile” oriented of the three groups.  The study found that mobile coupons are particularly effective for attracting these young women to purchase.

More Facts from the Study

Here are a few things that women, on average, do while shopping online.

• 33% Sign up for incentive programs
• 49% when there are sales shop online
• 68% when trying to save money use coupons

Final Comment

What will be successful in the future of online marketing to women can best be predicted by the “under 30” group of women, since they are going to be the “Digital Moms” and “Professional Women” of tomorrow.  It seems that a healthy emphasis on social media marketing is a great asset for businesses now and in the future.  Additionally, pleasing customers by performing above and beyond their expectations will prove to be more and more effective due to the growing influence of peer reviews in social media.

If you want to check out the original study it can be downloaded here.

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Author’s bio:

Rachel Walker is a FastUpFront Blog contributor and business consultant. Fastupfront offers working capital to businesses in need of a loan.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 27th, 2012 at 10:55 pm and is filed under Online Marketing, Research, Small Business Marketing, Web 2.0 Marketing, women. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.