Niche marketing is all the rage, and it seems the pink pound is the latest marketing bandwagon. We’ve all seen the car insurance TV advertisements selling ‘women only’ car insurance; this has now been taken further and there are a myriad of products catering specifically for women – from social networking sites through to financial services and taxi firms.

The magazine The Economist in April wrote, “Forget China, India and the internet, economic growth is driven by women.” According to online data company Data Monitor, there are around 376,000 millionaires in the UK. Of these 376,000, 46% are female, and their numbers are increasing by around 11% each year. It isn’t just the top of the market either – 85% of household shopping decisions are said to be made by women.

One of the biggest success stories of the pink marketing campaign is Sheila’s Wheels with their pink, in-your-face adverts. The company has already increased their theft insurance premium to allow for the amount women carry in their handbags. Thanks to their marketing campaign, the company has exceeded it’s predictions in it’s first year of trading.

Transport is a hot area for pink companies. There are now taxi firms which run pink cars with female drivers (all of whom are trained in self defence) to help women feel safer when taking cabs. In the north of England, a new airline called Fly Pink is due to be launched with the first flights being between John Lennon airport in Liverpool, and Paris.

And if you fancy a female-only holiday, there is a 50 mile stretch of beach on the beautiful Adriatic coast between Rimini and Riccione which is a strictly women-only zone. The local council has also banned friend food and loud music on the beach, ensuring a relaxing, peaceful holiday. Gourmet calorie-controlled salads are also on hand for the peckish, and there are many female oriented attractions such as deportment lessons, manicure parlours and keep-fit classes. In fact, the only man on the beach is the life-guard.

The key to pink branding is understanding your market. Many of the pink companies don’t exclude men, however they do not encourage them either. An example of this is the car insurance market – women tend to have smaller bumps and crashes meaning the pay-out is normally lower than men, who tend to have larger accidents. Having women-only car insurance means the women are not subsidising the mens’ premiums.

It’s not always as easier as slapping some pink colouring onto your product as American Airlines found out when they launched a networking website offering travel tips for female flyers. Users of the site deemed it patronising and the site was a resounding flop.

So is this pink revolution a good thing, or is it just a fad which will blow over in a few years? With women increasingly earning more money and having the same financial clout as men, it seems that the female-angle is a good one to go for, however in the march for equality between the sexes, is the quantity of pink businesses starting to flood the market going too far? Only time will tell…

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