Does gender of the author matter when persuading in a niche?

I'm interested in self help, specifically weight loss at the moment and am wondering: Does gender of the author matter?

Say I were to create a weight loss program, or write a book. Which strategy would be most effective?

Option 1: Male author to Male and Female readers

Option 2: Male author to Male readers and Female author to Female readers.

Option 3. 2 authors, Male and Female to Male and Female readers.


I don't know if a man would listen to a woman when it comes to losing weight and whether or not a female would be comfortable taking advice from a male.

What do you think? Any studies or personal experience in this area?

Your input is greatly appreciated.

 

Of course gender matters, but it depends lots. Woman to woman weight loss chat can quickly go from friend helping friend to a envy issue.... Men helping men make more money can quickly escalate as well. It all depends on how you approach it, but salesman gender is definitely a part of the buyer's decision.

 

In my opinion it should be male to male and female to female ebooks. But you can also test female to male(I don't think it can work) and male to female(it can work).

 

I don't think so, there's no problem a little bit of Googling can't fix. If a person is a male but needs to write weight loss articles for women, I'm sure he could manage.

 

I believe dependent on the niche completely, however having both (option 3) might suit best as you get both audiences without bias. It may help to play off each other, build off opinions etc. Your audience might be able to align more with your message.

Cheers

 

This is a good question. I'm prone to agree with the woman to woman and man to man thing. But I also watched a study that showed that men are more likable to a general audience over all.

 

When it comes to weight loss, I'm pretty sure that it's better to target only one gender, and because of that, it's better to pretend to be a female author if you target female customers, and vice versa.

 

Look at Shaun T that made "The Insanity Workout". He has a huge audience of both male and female. I think if you go with male the you'll get both a male and female audience. However, go with a female author and you'll get mostly females. I think gender matters a lot.

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I think it partly depends on how legitimate your advice is. Losing weight and getting in shape is interesting in that it's largely a compromise between reality and accessibility/attractivity. If you're giving them the 'hard truth' it's probably better coming from the same sex (for example, women don't want to hear that weight training is amazing from some dude). If you're selling them some nonsense that perfectly appeals to their thirst for a quick fix ("Buy this DVD, workout from home 30 minutes a day, see amazing results") then your sex is secondary and less important, IMO.

 

It shouldn't matter. Say he is a gay. If he is really good at this niche, he would know what's good and bad for men and women respectively.

 

Hi,
I agree with screw123,
Men and women are affected differently, and men will always feel as they are stronger than female,
so i think the best options should be male to male, and female to female. Although male to female might works too.

 

In most out of the niches about any instructions or advice,

Male Audience prefer only Male Authors
Female Audience follow both Male & Female Authors

 

male to male, female to female is the best solution. We have different mentality and you should present your content in different ways

 

Well not to be biased about anything, but I guess it's about experience and general interest. For example, I know I'm best at writing about fashion and travel, then I am writing about PPC and construction related topics etc. I could go ahead and research for them, ending up with a good article. But what I'd prefer and deliver with perfection is a topic I'm really good at. That's probably the only factor that would make a difference

 

All four possible situations (mm mf fm ff) have their niche applications, and each in their own certain contexts will do far better than the other three. This is just basic human chemistry: we as humans prefer the advice/companionship/presence/whatever of all sorts of different kinds of people depending on the situation or circumstances; it is merely your job to identify the general social "mood", I suppose you could call it, of whatever niche you are targeting and thus apply the appropriate advertisal pairing.

 

I've seen several situations where this helped. I now try to use both sexes as 'characters' of the 'story' in content production. It seems to provide balance as well - and allows for interaction between the two where you want to stage Q&A etc.

 

You should write your content depending on your audience. Some content is better addressed to male audiences with a male gender, while the opposite is true. Losing weight might be better for the female gender and gaining muscle is better for the male gender. I'm not trying to be sexist.

 

Gender matters a lot. My best advice to you is to do some split testing. The only way you will know what works best is by trying both out and tracking the conversions. In my testing I have found men respond better to men when it comes to weight loss, and women respond better to women.