The fight for diversity and greater inclusivity has made great strides over the past decades. As a result, more and more people were already afforded equal rights and protection. But aside from victories concerning social justice, they must be eventually included in the overall social discourse, their inputs recognized, and we must value their opinions because diversity and inclusion are important to our society.
Society will benefit from their greater inclusion. Businesses, for instance, could tap the vast market of the LGBTQ+ community, and they could include queer content in their products and orient their marketing strategy towards capturing this colossal market. Learning how to market to the LGBTQ+ is then a must.
Aside from this, including queer content in marketing strategy is vital to promoting inclusivity, a significant step in the fight for equal rights, protection, and social justice. Making the targeted marketing strategy involving them more effective is for the better.
How targeted is your marketing strategy to the LGBTQ community?
To be successful in LGBTQ+ marketing, you must apply principles of inclusive advertising; that is, you must incorporate their ideas and advocacies in any advertising. You must avoid those usual pitfalls that characterize failed advertising concerning the LGBTQ+ community. You better employ targeted marketing strategies to market to the community successfully.
Targeting the Community, Appeal To Unity
Inclusivity means including as many people as possible and not including ones at the expense of the others. It means that you must include the LGBTQ+ community, but the message must appeal to everyone as much as possible. Overtly packaging might backfire and may prove to be counterproductive to the product.
The LGBTQ+ community is a great consumer with tremendous financial clout, and overpowering the brand for direct appeal might be construed as naked opportunism. A crass appeal will not work, owing to the nuances and sensitivities each sexual identity possesses under that broad umbrella.
A more refined approach, subtle and yet appealing, not only to the LGBTQ+ community but everyone else, is better and more appropriate, certainly better than naked patronizing.
Don’t miss the high-demand jobs from diverse and social impact valued employers
- Assistant Director, Pathway Programs and Student Belonging – Georgetown University Medical Center
- Employee Resource Group Manager
- Equity Officer, Operations Officer II (NCS) – Department of Housing and Community Development
- Registered Nurse / RN, Hospice
- Senior Relationship Manager, STEM
- Associate Director, Community Engaged Learning and Immersion – Center for Social Justice Research, Teaching, and Service
Targeting the Community, Recognizing Differences
Most targeted marketing strategies fail due to difficulties recognizing some of the nuances and sensibilities. In short, they fail to differentiate sexual identities within this broad spectrum. They fail to pinpoint specific targets for marketing and thus, remain unresponsive to specific needs and wants of a particular group belonging to the LGBTQ community.
Recognizing differences, then, is to recognize all those nuances and sensibilities and target specific members of the LGBTQ+ community. If you want targeted marketing strategies for the whole community, then recognize all they have in common, advocacies and issues, and include that in your strategy.
A targeted marketing strategy for some groups within the LGBTQ community focused on their needs makes for a more appealing strategy than a catch-all approach that may target anyone and no one at the same time. The same applies to marketing to different cultures.
Using inclusive language
One way to specifically appeal to the LGBTQ+ community and at the same time account for their sensibilities is to make appropriate use of language. In general, community members are very particular about language is deployed concerning them and their sexual identity (e.g. polysexual), and targeted marketing strategies must take notice of this fact.
Using appropriate language means several things. First, it must be inclusive, and by inclusive, we mean all the connotations, like proper use of pronouns in addressing the LGBTQ+ community. Non-use of particular pronouns associated with heterosexuality and substituting more inclusive ones is also a way to promote inclusive use of language.
An example of the appropriate use of inclusive language starts with using the right gender pronouns. Appropriate use also refers to politically correct usage of specific terms relating to the LGBTQ+ community. It means not using stereotypes to refer to them and avoiding specific terms and words associated with previous oppression, discrimination, and exclusion of the community.
The way you deploy language will determine to a large extent your targeted group. The more inclusive the language, the more it will include everyone, the broader the message, the broader appeal. A gender-specific language will appeal only to that particular sexual identity, and hence, strict and may be severely limited in appeal and influence.
How do you determine if your LGBTQ or Sex Orientation marketing efforts are successful?
There are several ways to determine whether your marketing efforts are fruitful. Increased sales, feedbacks from clients and customers are the more conventional ones. These are the usual indicators used repeatedly by marketing agents and advertisers, and most of the time, they are reliable.
But you need voluminous data, and it takes some time to get some information relating to these. One way to quickly determine whether you are doing it right as far as marketing for the LGBTQ community is concerned is to determine the volume of the interaction of people to your website and the ads in particular.
Response to call to action
How visitors respond to the call to action indicates a lot. It can show you their interest, issues, advocacies, and even problems relating to your webpage content. It can also show the volume and the traffic relating to those issues and topics.
Having a call to action evaluation tool can help you assess those things. A particular pitch, for instance, could be deemed successful or not, depending on the interaction visitors have in it. The whole context, time, and location of visitors, for instance, could be looked at, helping in the assessment of a particular marketing strategy.
It is undoubtedly quicker and may give you an indication of whether sales would be up or down, depending on the interaction and its nature. Mostly negative assessment, for instance, would surely mean a drop in sales, whereas positive comments may indicate a rise. You could make an assessment even before the complete data regarding sales is available.
Looking at the rate of conversion
Responses are not limited to call to action. Whenever a visitor responds and makes specific actions on your website, the visitor is already engaged. It is called a conversion. Visitors performing actions on your website should serve as a good indicator of their interests. The more visitors perform more actions on your website, the better your marketing efforts.
You can make the call to action and pitches more appealing, leading to more conversions. They could then serve as a conversion rate optimization campaign to drive your marketing efforts to target the LGBTQ+ community into high gear. Looking at the rate of conversion, you will know then whether you are making progress or not in your marketing efforts.
Example of Inclusive marketing and products
Conclusion: The Importance of Including Queer Content in Marketing Strategies
Including queer content in marketing is a way to promote inclusivity in society and fight discrimination, exclusivity, and forms of oppression. Everyone, therefore, must contribute to that fight, and advertisers and marketing experts must do their share in that fight for the benefit of everyone.
Giving exposure to their content, ideas, and opinions in whatever forms allows for greater receptivity. At the same time, it also allows marketing to gauge their wants and needs and create appropriate content and products for the LGBTQ+ community. Everybody can undoubtedly benefit from greater inclusivity, equal rights, and discrimination protection.
The LGBTQ has contributed a lot to our society’s betterment and could contribute more if the society only utilizes its full potential and capability. Financial muscle aside, the social group could share ideas and do more in helping other marginalized, oppressed groups fight for acceptance and greater inclusivity.
LGBTQ Marketing
