How to Stop Running Your Business Like a Guy (and Why It Will Run Better When You Do!)
What does it mean to run your business like a woman? Well, it means implementing smart, unique strategies based on who YOU are!
When we tell you that you're running your business "like a man" right now, do you have any idea what we could mean? Or does the concept sound sexist? Wait, hold your horses! "Running your business like a man" simply refers to a couple of stereotypical masculine traits or behaviors, that are good in some ways, but NOT for long-term growth in marketing ...
1) Not being a good listener
There used to be some people who thought of men as the ones who get things done in the workplace (surely no more though, right?). But, at what cost did that come? One study showed that men interrupt twice as often as women do, and that they are three times more likely to interrupt a woman than interrupt a man!
These interruptions are not only rude, but they also mean missing out on a lot of information. Listening is important.
You need to listen, and be finely attuned to everything your customers are doing. Use a tool like Sprout, HootSuite, or Facebook's internal tools to track what potential customers are talking about, who they are following, and what they want.
So listen up, men, women, everyone! As a marketer whose main job is to get as much information as possible about your customer base, the key is listening, not talking. Which leads us to our next point ...
2) Ignoring feelings
Society has conditioned men to repress their feelings. Times are changing, but we still have years of conditioning to undo.
You can't express your feelings, because that's "girly"!
Wow, isn't that type of thinking just the worst mistake marketers can make...Why?
Because, even though it's true that a lot of the marketing and advertising industry is about cold hard facts, the most important thing to be attuned to are your customer's deepest wishes, fears, impulses, moods ... You need to be able to know what they FEEL deep inside, in order to motivate them to buy and affect their decisions. This relates back to the point about listening to your customers, but it's also something more. You're tapping into the instinctive part of their brain, in a way that some people call "neuro-marketing."
And, that's the powerful female way of running your business! Some people say "women are manipulative" ... Nope, it's just being smart, and getting inside the head of your customer so that you can HELP them! 😉
3) Hyper-focusing on the numbers
Along with the importance of focusing on feelings as a marketer, it's important to say that you can get TOO caught up in facts and numbers. And stereotypically, the people who get too caught up in numbers and data are men.
From tracking your KPIs (key performance indicators), to revenue, to your number of customers...and GROWING YOUR TEAM...numbers are of course very important! But, it's also very possible to fixate TOO much on the numbers.
For example, if:
- watching your follower count on social media go up and down makes you anxious;
- you're more concerned with the number of dollar bills you're putting behind an ad, than the quality of the ad;
- you're worrying about every single marketing metric, instead of focusing on the important ones like web traffic and number of customer purchases;
then it sounds like you're being too much of a numbers guy! Don't make that mistake, or this next mistake...
4) Not telling your story
Again, since men are often told not to talk about their feelings, they may think it's not appropriate to open up to their customers when serving as a representative of or as an ambassador for their brand. But, since you do represent your brand — you are after all the FACE of your brand — people do want to hear your story! They do want to know where you came from, and how your business helped YOU. After all, if it helped YOU, no doubt it's going to help them too!
So don't be afraid to talk about yourself. And don't be afraid if it gets a little messy talking about your struggles, your worries, your fears. It's NOT weak to share those things, far from it! People will think of you as a strong person who is still human. And that's a far better face for your brand than pretending to be boring and perfect all the time.
(Not that men are either boring or perfect. We know from experience that's not true!! 😉)
5) Acting like "top dog"
Speaking of pretending to be perfect — how exactly are men usually told to run their business? And, how do a lot of powerful men run their business? You guessed it, with an iron fist. They are at the top, and what they say goes.
While this might work for some types of businesses, marketing isn't one of them!
In our business, you have to be able to drop the "top-dog, top-down" mindset and:
- engage with your customers on social media;
- develop relationships with other influencers;
- be likeable in Instagram Stories and Facebook Lives;
- be nice to anyone you work with!!
This can be hard, IF you've been told to be ruthless in your business and 100% take charge on everything. Women are being told to run their businesses that way because that's how men have always run them…
But, we like to think that true empowerment, being a girl boss, is more about how women can run their businesses differently from men...NOT the same.
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