It's time to get serious. Halloween is looming on the horizon and once it's over...all bets are off. Once the ghosts, goblins, and ghouls go their merry way, it's time to get serious about mistletoe and holly, and all the baking and celebrations that make up November and December, in this country. Are you prepared? Are you marketing the right way, to the right people? Is Jane and all of her friends your prime target?

Shame on you if she isn't!

Shame on us if all of our advice is falling on deaf ears!

We write a lot about the women's market as a natural way to get to the men's market, to the kid's market, to the senior's market, to get to the pet market, and more. Lip-sticking makes no bones about our intent: to teach you, dear readers, how to get your small business in front of the women's market, because the women's market is the biggest market out there. And, all those women shop for other people more than they shop for themselves!

Here's the reason you should read today's post carefully -- perhaps even print it out and refer to it again and again -- because Jane is going to share some information on the women's market today from several different sources that support everything we have been telling you, and also offers more insight into how to turn women browsers into loyal customers.

Let's start with Roy Williams over at Wizard of Ads. Roy writes a Monday Morning Memo which Jane reads, faithfully. This day, his memo discusses the differences between transactional selling and relational selling; two ways to get your message in front of your customer.

According to Roy,

"Customers in Transactional mode are concerned only with today's transaction. They enjoy the process of shopping, comparing, and negotiating. Their only fear is paying more than they had to pay. Relational customers don't relish the idea of comparison shopping. Their only fear is "buying the wrong one." This is why they're hoping to find an expert they can trust.

Good ads target one mindset or the other."

Jane was especially interested in this morning's memo from Roy because she knows women fit in both those categories, but we dominate the second one. We WANT to build a relationship as much as we want to buy the sale item of the week. Roy tells his readers to tell a story -- where have you heard that lately? To cite his advice, he gives us an ad that works: AN AD FOR A GARBAGE BAG!

Use it to your best advantage. Jane knows it works, Roy knows it works, and Glad knows it works.

Let's move on to some stats that will help you target your relational ads to the right market: the women's market. Our friend Kelly Papinchak from Schipul: the Web Marketing Company, sent us some relevant stats from our favorite Search Engine Optimizing expert, Jill Whalen, whose newsletter "High Rankings Advisor" comes out weekly. (You may remember Kelly as our second Smart Women Online interview.) We urge you to use these numbers to target your ads to women, using relational selling techniques...TODAY...not tomorrow...

Let's look at the stats Jill shared with her newsletter subscribers:

-- "A May 2004 study by Hitwise showed that "55% of women prefer MSN Search while a majority of men favor Google Search." Jill goes on to say, "Yahoo! Search was split even on gender, with a greater focus on people 18-34 in age."

Jill, a great marketer in her own right, goes on to cite an iProspect study showing that

-- "women found paid ads to be more relevant than men did when searching across Google, Yahoo!, MSN, and AOL."

Since we all know that women influence over 90% of the goods and services bought and sold in the U.S., and are responsible for the majority of household purchases -- AND that if they like a particular product used at home, they will take it to work with them (from our own research) it behooves the serious business owner to attack this marketing model aggressively!

As a final word on marketing today...Jane would like to include this note sent from our friends at The White Rabbit Inn (thanks to AJ!), from VNet in the Uk. According to an article posted on the VNet site last week,

"Men talk to Google not girlfriends."

The article states that "A poll conducted by MSN Search found that search engines are the first port of call for nearly half of men seeking advice. Family are consulted by a third, while partners are the sounding board of choice for only one in four men."

According to the study,

"women still opt for more traditional advice options, with one in three rating family as their number one choice for help and information."

Dear readers, use this valuable information wisely. Do not discount Jane's ability to spread the word via word of mouse, as well as word of mouth. Do not discount the power of using search marketing to get in front of men, knowing they are less loyal than their wives and girl friends, but...a sale is a sale -- and you could, if you're clever, get both genders to buy from you.

Now, what's not to like about that?