Why brands need to communicate better to empower, educate and meet the needs of women in the menopause category
In recent weeks, we’ve highlighted the challenges women face while going through perimenopause and menopause – and the reasons we feel this is a huge and, so far, missed opportunity for brands.
So, for brands looking to explore the potential for product innovation or just improving communication in the sector, where do we go from here?
As things stand, even the established brands in the market are not even coming close to meeting the needs of women – but this is especially true when it comes to education.
There are no brands associated with running educational programs to help women diagnose and find treatment, for instance.
This means that there is a huge white space around catering to consumers’ emotional needs and finding effective long-term answers.
To tap into these drivers and grow the category, brands must educate women and empower them with simplified solutions. For example:
- Educate – implement programs that help women learn more about perimenopause and teach them how to recognise the symptoms, as well as giving them the knowledge and tools to find the right treatment options for them.
- Simplify – develop products that are easily accessible and available to women in need, and simplify their routines with solutions that either treat all symptoms at once or are single doses that treat symptoms long-term.
- Empower – grow a product line that is not only effective in managing symptoms and helping women feel in control of their bodies, but that is also aesthetically pleasing to empower women to feel young, beautiful and feminine once again.
The importance of education really, really can’t be understated here..
While a one-size-fits-all solution would be the dream if science can solve the puzzle, improved messaging and the building of supportive communities would be a positive step forward from where we are.
As we’ve made clear in our recent blogs, when we talk about education, we’re talking about women themselves – as well as wider society. This is because:
- Women experiencing perimenopause struggle to recognize symptoms and accept what is happening to them.
- Although this process is completely natural, this often leaves them feeling overwhelmed, unprepared and isolated.
- As a result, they are unlikely to look for the tools they need to diagnose and manage their symptoms to feel normal again.
In the near future (hopefully!), women should be able to easily access the right tools to research and identify the best products for their menopause needs in a simple and efficient manner. This just isn’t the case now.
As one of our research subjects said: “[The category} could learn that every woman going through perimenopause has a different experience so there should be different solutions for each woman’s needs. There should be discussions about giving women as much knowledge as possible about all the different alternative solutions so each woman can discover what works for their specific needs. Normalise perimenopause and acknowledge it’s mainly a pain in the bum!”
And that was from someone who was already managing their symptoms…
How Catalyx can help your brand
At Catalyx, our smart technology and innovative tools can support brands at any stage of your journey to perimenopause and menopause market exploration – from product audit to opportunity for your brand specifically to concept testing,to innovation building or knowing how to effectively communicate with this new, important audience. These include:
- Speak to our team to discover more about our Innovation Building Blocks, which are all you need to build out winning product innovation concepts. This tool helps you to understand the most pressing consumer unmet needs for your next innovation. In the menopause category, this is probably the biggest opportunity to meet women’s product needs. Request the menopause report to read more specifically what these needs are.
- Our Product Growth Audit can help you to ensure you increase share from current products in-market across all points of influence to beat competition. We give you both short and longer-term fixes and optimisation recommendations based on qual at quant scale and a highly behavioural/ real life approach to investigating all areas of your product through your consumers eyes. Suffice to say, the menopause market is currently a largely clinical offering – and yet targeted and empowering messages show huge upside potential. We can point the way.
- And, finally, our Communication Building Blocks will give you all the ingredients needed to build the most effective marketing campaign. In what has been a silent market for so long, there’s a huge opportunity to own the space with the right voice. Women want support, they want a community and they don’t want to face the challenges of menopause alone any longer. You could be their champion.
Get in touch to find out how Catalyx can help you unlock consumer insight to grow your brand.