Although women make up a little over half of the population, and influence 80% of the spending in their households, market research companies are reporting that sales to women still have not reached their full potential. Monique Danielle, of Diva Design World ( http://www.divadesignworld.com ) spends a great deal of time researching the buying habits of women, in order to better serve her clients. She reports these findings:

Monique Danielle of DivaDesignWorld  pays close attention to marketing trends, and uses the information to better serve her clients. She gives the following information to help you design your marketing to appeal to women.

• The number of female consumers of traditionally male oriented products, such as automotive, technology, and sports items, is steadily increasing, and is expected to surpass the purchases of traditionally male products in the future.
• Women who have never been married, between the ages of 25 and 44 will be spending close to $200 billion annually as early as next year - 2006.
• According to Business Week, women will control $1 trillion of wealth in the United States by the year 2010.
• The number of women who are entering the professional work force is steadily increasing. This means that more women have more dollars to spend every year.
• Women make up more than half of the Internet population, and constitute 63% of online shoppers. On an annual basis, more than half of the new users coming online are women.
• When defining your target market in relation to women, you will get better results if you group women by their professions and interests than by their ages. For instance, woman have babies in their late teens, twenties, thirties, forties, and even in their fifties. Women further their educations in the same manner. Some women start college right out of high school, while others wait until their kids start school, and yet others wait until their kids leave home. Women can no longer be grouped by their ages.
• Women prefer to be acknowledged - and approached - based on their intelligence, not based on their gender or their age. While certain colors attract their attention, they won't buy something just because of the color. They consider features of a product when making their final purchasing decision.
• Women want information. They want to know everything that they can about a product before making a purchasing decision. In most cases, if a woman is considering two different brands of the same product, she will go with the one that gave her the most information.
• While women want information, they don't want long, complicated answers. Provide all of the information without wasting words or wasting their time, but avoid being too simplistic.

About the Author: Marketing Consultant, Monique Danielle helps entrepreneurs and marketing managers create effective, cohesive communication strategies.  Her company, DivaDesignWorld.com delivers brand, web and print solutions to small to medium sized businesses. You may republish this article on your website as long as it remains unaltered, and links/credits remain in place.