Tools To Tap the Female DIY Market
ADOTAS EXCLUSIVE — You would have to be living under a rock not to recognize the DIY acronym: Do It Yourself. It’s all over the home improvement sites like Home Depot, Lowes, and whatever local store advertises in your hometown. And the net isn’t being shy about it, either. Search Google for information on DIY and you get 194,000,000 hits!
Back in the day, most do-it-yourself people were male. In my day, growing up in the fun Fonzi days of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, we gals wouldn’t be caught dead with a hammer in our hand. Most of us opted for aprons and Tupperware. Our dads and brothers and uncles handled the garage, the basement, and anything that required a drill or a mitre saw.
Those days are long gone. The rise of the Internet, and the decision to put off marriage and children, created an environment for women to become homeowners – and, by virtue of that accomplishment, to take up the challenge of DIY home improvements. Today, women of all ages are stepping up, wielding hammers, mitre saws, 2X4s, and more, with the eager expectation they once used for mixing bowls, cake batter, and pot roast. These are not the daughters of the women born in the baby boomer years – these are the baby boomer women, and their daughters, and their best friends. Somewhere in the 90s, women got the bug. We realized that home improvement was a lot like baking a cake. If you had the right ingredients, and you had the know-how, you could create masterpieces.
Understanding why women participate in DIY projects today can be an education in interactive marketing. After all, DIY projects are interactive, on-going, and sometimes a bit addictive. Over at Doityourself.com, writer Margareth Montenegro writes, “With the help of home improvement shows featuring women carpenters and designers, women become informed about the type of tools needed for specific home improvement projects and how to use them.”
The Tomboy Tools gals have a site designed to cater to the DIY woman, complete with home Tool Parties! I’m not sure they had to go so over the top with the pink tools, but these women are front and center in this space, and they could be your ticket to meeting high-energy women in need of…whatever it is you sell!
At Today’s Modern Woman, the forum thread flows freely, with questions about “washing superglue from your fingers,” or “improving the insulation of lath and plaster clad exterior walls”! These are women asking questions of other women, and getting the right answers!
What does it mean for your interactive marketing campaigns aimed at your female customers? It means opportunity. It means tapping into today’s woman’s need to be independent and self-sufficient. It means being creative – sponsoring an event that invites women to learn how to reface their kitchen cupboards, and oh-by-the-way, maybe you’d like to consider some plants and flowers for your new room (if you’re a florist). It means being at the next home-improvement show, even if you sell insurance! Hey, doesn’t she need insurance, if she’s going to be playing around with saws and hammers and that stuff? (NOTE: I am NOT one of those DIY gals; I still call it “stuff”…but, I hang around a number of DIY gals, so…don’t dismiss me; I have influence.)
DIY is an activity much like gardening, to some women. There is a high level of accomplishment when you’re done. You have a masterpiece to show off and admire; a work of art, perhaps. One that will last for decades. Unlike those cakes and casseroles of yesteryear that were gone in less time than it took to cook them.
Your job is to tap into that excitement – find a way to engage these women and discover what makes them tick. All of the reasons they accept the challenge of a kitchen or bath remodel, or of doing their own landscaping, may be reasons for them to buy your products or services.
As I look around my office, which was recently redesigned, btw, I see my computer monitor and my PC. Do you sell electronic equipment? Think you can sell me an update by approaching my inner electronic whiz? Think you can sell acknowledging that I’m smart enough to understand geek talk? Or, help me understand geek talk by hosting a coffee klatch with my friends, so we can all learn how to take better care of our electronic equipment? With all the home businesses today, any company able to build an interactive relationship with the woman at the top is sure to be a winner.
It doesn’t matter what you’re marketing. Get interactive with your female customers by acknowledging their inner need to wield their own tools. We’re movers and shakers – we ladies of the 21st century. Shake us up. Move us to action. Get in the game. If you’re lurking around, wondering how to do this – you’re in danger of dropping the hammer on your foot. Understand that in a DIY world, you must look us in the eye, never ask where our husband is, and respect the pink in our world, but don’t confuse it with softness. Pink drills make big holes, pink hammers wield power, pink tool belts just might hold the keys to your success.
As Harriet Beecher Stowe once said, “Women are the real architects of society.” Join us. We like company.
Reader Comments.
Yvonne,
I couldn’t agree more! I am now devoting the majority of my waking hours to gaining visibility from my website which is dedicated to encouraging women to grab their own hammers & Splinter the Plywood Ceiling ©2008!
After 30 years in construction in a male dominated field, I am ready to regurgitate the tales and lessons in an effort to dispel the myths that carpentry and construction are exclusive to those Y chromosome.
I appreciate your article as I think these messages let women know that they are not an anomaly to want to learn more about “doing it themselves”, that there is a large population of us that are capable and competent.
Kudos!
Leah L. Burton
Author & Women Carpenters Coach
Leave a Comment
Article Sponsor
More Features
-
Loading ...
Latest News
- Twitter Knows Where I Am; Gulp March 12th 2010 ADOTAS – I log in to Twitter to share with [...] more »
- WWN Has a Stopwatch on Ad Visibility March 12th 2010 ADOTAS – Considering how much time people spend online, why [...] more »
- Jumptap Offers Self Service Lane March 12th 2010 ADOTAS – Possibly inspired by those neat-o self checkout lanes [...] more »
- AdPix Barges Into the In-Image Market March 12th 2010 ADOTAS – Watch out, Image Space Media — there’s a [...] more »
- Got Funds? Todacell Scores a Cool Million March 11th 2010 ADOTAS – After securing $1 million last summer, Todacell has [...] more »
- A Custom Postcard Thanks to Your Favorite Brand March 11th 2010 ADOTAS – Handwritten letters may have been trounced in the [...] more »
- Display, but Nothing Else, Hops on YouTube Mobile Site March 11th 2010 ADOTAS – Google has officially opened the gate to display [...] more »
Features
- Amazon Leaves Colorado Affiliates Out in the Cold March 12th 2010
- Secret Salsa Recipe: The Best Digital Marketing Mix March 11th 2010
- The Basics of Brand Protection March 10th 2010
- Agencies: Working Hard or Hardly Working? March 9th 2010
- Why Big Brands Will Love the iPad March 8th 2010
Spotlight
AdBidCentral’s CEO, Vivek Veeraraghavan Talks Openly*What was the inspiration to start AdBidCentral? The conditions that inspired AdBidCentral came from a variety of factors in my personal [...] more...
Reader Favorites
Classifieds
- Client Relationship Manager-Search
- Search Marketing Analyst
- Paid Search Marketing Associate
- Digital Project Manager
- Sr Manager Paid Search Operations
Recent Comments
- AK Works: "Other sources have claimed that Target, who is collecting state sales tax, is using technology
- Gavin Dunaway: Hi there! First off, comments on our site must be approved by the editor --
- lolocaust: I left a comment on here last night. now its been deleted? i love the
- E. Johnston: I like this: "To put it bluntly, brand protection is not media verification and media
