Take a look at most of the material online about Internet marketing and you will find it is aimed at people doing “Internet marketing”. There are thousands of “Internet marketing” gurus all writing books they sell to each other. But there is a common thread to all the stuff you see online about Internet marketing – it is all focused on the bottom line.
Phrases like “make a million” and “earn while you sleep” are commonplace. It seems that everywhere you look for advice on running an online business you can’t move for material on making millions by tea-time.
Take a look at the pictures of Internet marketing events – look at the audiences and the testimonials. You will be hard pushed to find many women. Lots and lots of bearded or overweight men, yes, but women – mmmm, where have they gone?
New research suggests that women are not as interested in making money as an ultimate goal as men are. Indeed, the research reveals the shallowness of the male business executive compared with the feminine touch.
Women, it seems value things like work-life balance, more highly than the bottom line. As a result they report the same, or higher, levels of business satisfaction as men, but with poorer financial results. From a financial perspective, women appear to succeed less. But that’s only true if you are a man and you can only focus on the single goal of more money.
Now, roughly half (in fact slightly more than half) of your business audience is likely to be female. So, if your web site emphasises financial gain as a target, you could well be missing out on gaining custom from women who clearly value other things in a “mix” of business success points. Focusing purely on “you can make more money” means you will be potentially losing the interest of women who would also like to see other benefits from your products and services.
The fact that so many web sites in the business to business sector emphasis money-making as a goal probably explains why they have a mostly male audience. Meanwhile, women the world over are celebrating a different kind of success – one that men have to to discover and benefit from. There is more to life than making money – it just appears that women have known this much longer than many men..!
