How to advertise to women entrepreneurs

Nothing on this page is true because of gender. It is true because of how a particular set of businesses is structured, financed and run, and because of which hours of the day the person running it is actually free. Write the campaign from those facts and it works. Write it from an idea about what women want and it fails in public, usually in the comments.

So start with what is actually different about the business rather than the owner.

What tends to be different about the business

It was often started from home, and may still be there. Kitchen, spare room, garage, one corner of a shop. That changes the buying: no separate office budget, no procurement, and a strong preference for anything that does not need a premises or an installation.

It runs on visible working capital. Money that can be seen in the account this month, competing with stock, rent and salaries. Annual contracts lose to monthly ones here even when the annual one is cheaper.

Instagram and WhatsApp are often the whole shopfront. Many of these businesses have never had a website and do not need one, because the catalogue is a WhatsApp Business catalogue and the storefront is a grid. Anything you sell has to fit that reality rather than assume a sales team and a CRM.

The network is real and it is used. Chapters of bodies such as FICCI FLO and WICCI, the TiE women's programmes, self-help group federations in smaller towns, seller groups on marketplaces, and the exhibition circuits that repeat every year. Recommendations move fast inside these groups, in both directions.

The founder does every job. She is the buyer, the marketer, the packer and the person answering complaints. So an offer that requires her to learn a new tool in her own time is competing with sleep.

The credit rule, because it catches people

If what you are selling is a business loan, working capital finance, a credit card, invoice discounting or anything else that extends credit, your advertising falls into one of the special categories the platforms restrict.

Once a campaign is declared as credit, targeting by gender is removed, targeting by age is removed, detailed demographic and interest options are cut back, and location targeting is widened. Lookalike and customer-list tools are restricted.

Which means the campaign every lender wants to run, a working capital product advertised specifically at women who own businesses, is exactly the one the platform will not let you build that way. The category scope is set by the platform and has been extended before, so check the current policy for each platform before each campaign. The penalty falls on the ad account.

What you do instead is what housing advertisers have had to learn: let the creative do the selecting, and buy the search. Somebody typing "business loan without collateral for small shop" has told you more than any targeting option would.

When she is reachable

A seven o'clock evening webinar is scheduled for the convenience of the person running it. Move it to half past ten in the morning and watch the attendance change.

One more thing about language. A large share of these businesses sell in the language of their own town rather than in English, and the founder reads and writes in it comfortably. A campaign in Kannada, Tamil, Hindi or Marathi is not a downmarket version of the English one. For a supplier selling into Mysuru, Hubballi or Davanagere it is the only version that will be read, and most competitors will not have made it.

The day out is the real price, not the ticket

A full-day seminar at a venue across the city. The travel and the day are the cost, not the ticket.

Language about being inspirational or about breaking barriers. It is decoration and it does not sell anything. Say what the product does and what it costs.

A panel of four men explaining an opportunity.

An annual contract as the only option.

A free consultation that turns out to be a ninety-minute pitch. Word travels quickly in these networks and it travels accurately.

A worked example

For example, a company selling packaging and labelling to small food businesses, many of them run from home kitchens in Bengaluru. Illustrative throughout.

The campaign that underperforms targets women aged 25 to 45 interested in entrepreneurship, with creative about following your passion.

The one that works runs on Instagram with the minimum order quantity and the price per hundred pieces on screen, because the real objection is that everybody else insists on five thousand pieces. It takes a stall at the same three food and craft exhibitions each year, where the sellers are the customers. It joins the marketplace seller groups and answers the packaging questions properly without pitching. And it sells in packs of two hundred and fifty with a monthly reorder on WhatsApp, because that matches how the money actually arrives.

The measurement is reorder rate at ninety days. In a business where every customer is small, the first order is not the sale. The fourth one is.

What to do next

Take your last thirty customers of this kind and note three things for each: how they first contacted you, what hour of the day they did it, and whether they bought monthly or annually. The pattern usually shows up immediately, and it will tell you where to move your budget and what to change about your commercial terms. Then go through your creative and cut every line that could have been written without knowing what these businesses actually sell.