Why Her Brain Matters

While we’ve only scratched the surface of brain study, here’s one fact we do know:  a woman’s brain has four times as many connections between the left and right hemispheres as that of a man’s.

Does this make women smarter or more superior than men?  No.

Well, some women think it does.  Okay a lot of women do, but usually only after a situation involving either a road map, a Christmas tree, or jalapeno peppers.

But I digress.

Here’s how the female brain connection should affect the marketing of your business:

1.  The exponential increase in connection means that women take in that many times the number of signals through the brain.  Now that’s a challenge for you, because it also means the filter she has in place to reject all of the world’s frippery is mighty ornery, like a curmudgeonly little troll standing between you and her “take action” button.  The words you use in your advertising and the experience you create in your store have to be remarkable enough to penetrate that filter and plant themselves in the reward behavior area of her brain.

2.  All of those incoming signals are hurtling down the express lane of a superhighway into her right brain - the home of emotional memory, intuition, and experience.  She’s not only reading your advertising or web copy; she’s attaching feelings to it.  One critical word can make the difference between driving her to flip the page or compelling her to pick up the phone and find out where your store is located.

3.  Studies show that because of this brain wiring, women actually have a heightened sense of pain.  She’s constantly comparing her current situation to folders in the right-brain file drawer of experience; not only does she pull up a memory, she re-enacts the feelings connected with it.  And her emotional memory is so strong, she doesn’t even have to had the experience herself - all she has to do is hear the story from a friend or family member, and she stores it as thought it were her own.

Marketing to women doesn’t mean “color her female” – there’s an actual science to this stuff that should be mighty appealing to all you left-brain logical types out there.  Hmmm.  I foresee a series of posts on this…

Comments

[David Lively]

While not necessarily talking about the difference between men and women's brain wiring the Dr Rene Marios of the Human Information Processing Laboratory at Vanderbilt University, of which he is the chair, is furthering the research and deepening the understanding of your post.

In the research article Fougnie, D. & Marois, R. (2006). Distinct capacity limits for attention and working memory: Evidence from attentive tracking and visual working memory paradigms. Psychological Science, 17(6), 526-534. I believe his study of (MOT) multiple object tracking will eventually lead to a breakthrough understanding that women are hard wired to be at least four times as likely to be able to multi-task and being able to quickly access information from the left and right hemispheres of the brain.

Keep giving us the good stuff…thanks

[Nathan Lands]

Very interesting article, I had no clue that woman had 4 times more connections between the left and right part of their brain. How you described woman as actually feeling what they are reading gives me a lot to think about.

Nathan Lands
http://www.hiyaya.com
Software Development - E-commerce Platforms - Web 2.0 Application Design
Tampa, FL

[Melissa]

It's not just the way the signals come in to a female brain that should make a difference in how businesses market to women. The fact that women make more than 85 percent of all consumer purchases and either make or primarily influence the purchase of 91 percent of all new homes should be enough to get businesses interested in tailoring their marketing to her perspective. According to Woman-Centric Matters, a marketing organization in Omaha that helps businesses develop a woman-centric approach, it just makes sense to center the buying experience around those who do most of the buying.

[kalindria]

Great newsletter but you lose credibility when you mistake 'hurdle' for 'hurtle'... UGH!

[Jerry Hollingsworth]

Venerian For A Reason...From college psych MANY years ago I learned that those emotions that women attach to "things" and events existed to provide a better response to slowly changing or evolving events whereas males needed the instant decision (yep, "fight or flight"). In business I have observed that the most effective leaders are able to make sound decisions quickly then inspire the initiation of the project. The most effective managers are those that sense the nuances of a project (or team) and then are able to manipulate the pieces for efficiency (or at least achievement of the goal). While not always driven along gender lines I have found the best managers are in fact - women and the best leaders men. This has nothing to do with pay, authority, or any of that poly-soc-pseudo-correctness; just an observation.

Great article - good for the brain cells to hurtle over the hurdles!

[Varun Badhwar]

Hi Michele,

Couldn't resist adding to this post.

I have read a lot of books on Psychology,How Mind Works, How Mind forgets, How mind remembers but still dint read that a woman’s brain has four times as many connections between the left and right hemispheres as that of a man’s.

So, great work.

I would agree with Nathan, as he is right when he says, that most of the purchases are either made by women or influenced by women.

Thats why Companies have tapped this tendency and are coming out with more women centric Ad campaigns.

I think its more to do with women being decision makers rather than the state of their brain.

Cheers..!

Varun Badhwar