It is a well-known fact that women hold crucial purchasing power in their households, with research showing women drive 70-80% of all consumer spending decisions, through a combination of their buying power and influence. Globally, female consumer spending is estimated at around US$40 trillion.
In the media, however, women are decidedly under-represented. According to United for News, a multi-stakeholder coalition led by international non-profit Internews, only 19% of experts quoted in the news are women – a figure that has changed very little in the past two decades.
Even in the influencer landscape, the numbers are not much better. Of the most followed YouTube channels, all of the top 10 are fronted by men and only 23 of the top 100 are led by women. This shows that the digital space is currently mirroring trends we see offline.
Both women and men want to identify with the faces being used in media and advertising and it is clear that those businesses that do not adequately represent their customer base risk alienating them and hurting the bottom line.
Amplifying female voices
Positively, there are currently a number of initiatives underway to amplify female voices in the media.
United for News is currently working to increase both demand and supply of female voices in news. On the demand side, it is providing best practices and assistance for newsrooms to source more female subject matter experts, and on the supply side, it is providing women with the support and resources to step forward.
In 2019, United for News ran a pilot program in Canada, Ukraine and Iraq, with a view to rolling out its program more broadly in the coming years.
News outlets are also seizing on the opportunity to broaden the range of voices being heard in the media today.
One of these is Bloomberg, which is seeking to build a definitive global database of women newsmakers in business and finance through its New Voices initiative. The program includes media training for women and other diverse executives who are under-represented on its broadcast airwaves.
In the UK, for more than two years journalists and producers across the BBC have been tackling the gender representation issue by targeting a goal of 50:50 representation every month.
The broadcaster’s nightly prime time news program ‘Outside Source’ started the effort in 2017 and took its representation of on-air contributors from 39% women to 50% within four months. Today more than 500 BBC shows have joined the project, highlighting the difference a sustained effort can make.
Takeouts for businesses
While the efforts of news outlets to increase the representation of women in the media is making some inroads, there is still more work to do on the corporate side.
According to Kantar’s What Women Want research, despite an increased focus on equality driven by movements like #MeToo, major brands are still not effectively acknowledging women’s priorities, or communicating with women in an empowering manner.
However, those that do successfully promote gender-balanced marketing are 4% healthier than male-skewed brands and 6% healthier than strongly male-skewed brands.
The female demographic offers huge opportunity for marketers, and brands that understand what women want are in a better position to capitalise.
Businesses should therefore avoid using stereotypes and instead use data and analytics to tap into the needs of their audiences.
Women are also more likely to respond to media spokespeople they feel are like them. All businesses should therefore take steps to ensure diversity in the voices they are offering to the media. For executives who are still building their media interview skills, Honner offers tailored media training to build confidence and know-how about the process.
There is no one-size-fits-all for connecting with female audiences. However, for businesses that want to truly understand their target market, one of the best places to start is to acknowledge that there are differences between men and women, and shape PR and marketing efforts on that basis.
Month: January 2020
The 5 R’s of your new year content marketing audit: retain, refresh, retire, relaunch and repurpose
The beginning of any new year provides the opportunity to invest the time to undertake a content marketing audit. You’ve already spent a lot of time creating numerous pieces of content and now is an opportunity to step back and look at the big picture.
The Honner infographic Turning Content Marketing into Conversations details the key steps to executing a winning content marketing program. The content audit represents the last stage of this continuous process and provides the opportunity to retire old content, relaunch some of your best content and identify gaps in your overall content marketing efforts.
The idea of a content audit might sound onerous. But you need to remember how much effort it often takes to write one new piece of content. Investing time in a content audit not only provides an opportunity to improve your future content marketing efforts but can also provide the opportunity to relaunch existing quality content pieces with minimal effort.
Here are some simple steps to follow when conducting a content marketing audit:
First – gather all the data in your content audit spreadsheet
The first step is to set up a simple content spreadsheet. This allows you filter all the content by topic, target audience, date published, format (blog, video, infographic, e-book, image etc), customer journey stage (i.e. awareness, decision) etc. This should also allow you to rank all of your content based on performance metrics or customer engagement.
Free Content Marketing Audit Spreadsheet: If you would like a free copy of Honner’s Content Marketing Audit Template contact Craig Morris.
Second – allocate your existing content into one of these five buckets
Once you’ve got all your content in the spreadsheet, start to allocate each content piece into one of these five categories.
- Bucket 1 = Retain: Identify your evergreen content that still has long-lasting value.
- Bucket 2 = Refresh: Uncover outdated content and update it.
- Bucket 3 = Retire: Look for content that has limited engagement or is just plain irrelevant now – and retire it
- Bucket 4 = Relaunch: Discover the star content and promote it again. Assess your content metrics and identify your top 10 pieces based on customer engagement. Consider updating these content pieces and relaunching the piece again.
- Bucket 5 = Repurpose: You can also take your star content and package it into different formats. You also might want to consider turning these content pieces into videos or infographics or even a podcast. Also consider taking a series of content pieces or blogs and packaging them together into an eBook that could launched and promoted via paid media.
Additional communication strategies to consider during the audit process
- Look for content gaps in your content spreadsheet. The reviews should not only provide you with a view of what you have – but also what you don’t have. Are there areas of strategic importance to the business that have been neglected during the content marketing process?
- Publish a blog on your most read pieces of the year. This will drive more traffic to these key pieces and highlight the strength of your content marketing efforts.
- Identify technical flaws and find broken links that may be impacting your customer experience.
- Boost SEO: Find ways to improve some SEO such as ensuring you are using the right keywords or proper sub-headings tags.
- Spy on your competitors: Also consider tracking the performance of your competitors’ content for additional fresh ideas. Look at how they optimise their content and how many keywords they used.
- Use the insights to inform your future content strategy: Capture all the insights from this audit process, taking into account your successes and failures. It is probably true that 20% of your content is generating 80% of the results. It makes sense to learn what is performing and feed these insights into your strategic content plan.
Want help conducting a Content Marketing Audit? If you would like help or support conducting Content Marketing Audit please contact Honner’s Head of Marketing, Craig Morris on craig@honner.com.au