This article is based on following book: EVEolution "Understanding Women –Eight Essential Truths that Work in Your Business and Your Life" by Faith Popcorn and Lys Marigold, 2001 Hyperion, New York ISBN 0-7868-6523-7 Paperback ISBN 0-7868-8441-X 272 pages

For any business to survive today, it needs to understand how to market to women. The fact is women make 80% of all purchasing decisions. Women are brand loyalists. Your product or service must address their complex, multiple lives as home managers, home-workers, entrepreneurs, caretakers of elderly parents, and professionals. Build a lasting, meaningful relationship with your female customer. EVEolutionize your business before it’s too late!

Understand eight truths about marketing to women:

1. Connecting your female consumers to each other connects them to your brand. Women need a “backyard fence” to talk to each other. If your brand is marketed in such a way that it connects women to each other as a community, a group, sisters, mothers and daughters and friends, they will embrace your brand into their everyday lives.

The web communities such as iVillage, women.com, and oxygen.com are just a few of examples of women being linked together. Through EVEolution, and with help of Faith Popcorn’s consultancy firm, BrainReserve, Snackwell’s launched a program of Mother-Daughter workshops across US. It bonded mothers and daughters, reinforced idea of eating healthy, while nurturing a positive self-image and attitude about food to pre-teen girls.

2. If you’re marketing to one of her lives, you’re missing all others. From home office services, to cameras keeping an eye on her kids at daycare, if your brand markets to her merged professional and personal lives, then you will win her heart. Women need assistance in running all facets of their lives. Appeal to her need for convenience. Give her a solution for her perennial problem of what to fix for dinner tonight. Supply her with support for dog-walking, childcare, telecommuting. Deliver her dry cleaning, diapers, and pizza, run her errands, so she can find more time to just relax at home with her kids. Acknowledge that she thinks about her family while she is at work, and provide her with a service that gives her peace of mind.

3. If she has to ask, it’s too late. Anticipate her needs. Women are same whether it’s personal or work. If her husband doesn’t anticipate what she needs, she may be disappointed in him. If an employer doesn’t anticipate she needs a nursery near office, and fairer compensation, she may consider another EVEolutionized company that offers more mother-friendly perks.

Being in "Tiara Training," has helped me discover a lot about life. First, let me dispel myth that it is easy to wear a tiara in public. It isn't. Wearing a tiara makes one different and being different is not easy. When we are different, we don't fit in. By standing out, we can actually make other people uncomfortable. What I have come to realize is that most people want to be different like everyone else. They are afraid to stand out and be separate from majority. Wearing a tiara has proven to be a great way to learn about diversity and what it is like to be different.

There are days when it is easier to wear a tiara than others. I can't always pull it off. Wearing a tiara requires that I have total self-confidence. It requires that I believe in myself enough not to care what other people think or say. I have to ignore stares and smirks and occasional rude comment. When wearing a tiara, I have to think enough of me not to care what others think.