Creating womens perfume and mens aftershave is a fine art. It's a long and skilled process to take a new brand fragrance to market and movement to the newest and latest fragrances is so quick that few womens perfumes will survive in the top spot for long. The same is also true when considering what is the best cologne for men. Turnover in position is fierce and fast.

Perfume consumers are notoriously fickle and, frequently, before a brand gets to lodge itself into the consumer's psyche, another brand comes along to challenge it. To create a long-standing reputation for producing quality perfume and cologne is quite a challenge.

There is no obvious pattern as to which womens perfume is most likely to sell. The brands are as different as the market they cater to.

Manufacturers work from the basis that the perfume a woman chooses, or the cologne a man chooses, speaks a lot about the person who is wearing it. Advertising persuades us that some fragrances are subtle but seductive, some are loud and some are playful. The more playful and eclectic womens brands are aimed more at the younger members of society but as with most advertising there it's very much a game of smoke and mirrors designed simply to sell more product.

The top selling cheap perfumes are also often aimed at younger women, specifically teenagers, adolescent and early twenties. The Marc Jacobs perfume Daisy, for example. This is a harder market to crack since in the case of the more mature woman there is a likelihood that she will have settled on her favorite scents for both day and evening wear and is likely to switch brands as often. This market segment are also more likely to be able to afford the expensive brands such as Estee Lauder.

Most women like to express their own individuality and although it is not always easy to cater to this need in an industry which pays much emphasis on categorizations of target markets, the important thing regarding the marketing of womens perfume is that the advertising should make every women feel she will be special and unique whilst wearing the particular fragrance.