Inclusive Marketing is more than a trend, it’s a movement now. As you strive to grow your business and earn more loyal customers, you must understand the importance of inclusive marketing for your brand building. Today, incorporating inclusivity into the fabric of your brand is the smartest thing to do. Based on the growing trends in the market, developing an inclusive brand will soon convert from a ‘nice to do’ to a ‘must do.’
What is Inclusive Marketing?
Inclusive marketing refers to the process, messaging, people, and technologies that effectively connect brands with marginalized or underrepresented groups. It’s a form of marketing where marketers consider all facets and layers of their customers’ identity such as skin tone, gender, age, sexual orientation, body type, ethnicity, language, culture, religion, socio-economic status, physical/mental ability, and mindset while branding their products and services. Inclusive marketing doesn’t target one demography and rises above stereotypes set by people, showing that a brand cares for its customers across all demographics.
The Three Key Concepts to Create Inclusive Marketing:
- What you market – an inclusively designed product/service.
- Who you market to – a set of audiences who are typically not considered as part of mainstream society or a part of the majority.
- How you market – Marketing campaigns planned with inclusive customer’s decision journey insights, and accessible marketing event experience, or a campaign with a supported cause that authentically aligns with your brand’s mission.
Importance of Inclusive Marketing
Inclusive marketing identifies and promotes diverse voices and stories. It allows brands to create more respectful and considered marketing campaigns that dispel damaging stereotypes rather than preserving them. From a business perspective, it allows organizations to expand the reach and potentially find new consumers. It also gives the existing customers, a chance to connect with the brand on a deeper level and build brand loyalty. As society and the people start to be re-shaped by the fast-paced changes in the world, adaptive inclusive marketing is a medium of preparing for the future.
Principles of Inclusive Marketing
* Tone:
Inclusive marketing begins with tone. The style in which you convey your message is more important here than anywhere else. Prospects who don’t get turned on by a message that isn’t inclusive don’t need a reason to hate it. They will simply invest their money elsewhere.
* Considering connotation:
The underlying meaning or sense in words can strengthen the relationship between your brand and your prospective customers or it can completely destroy it. Inclusive marketing thoughtfully considers the connotation of its expressions and symbols.
* Multicultural representation
For modern businesses, the visual representation of the multicultural audience is very crucial. Generally, people like to see themselves in the media they consume, and this includes ads as well.
* Considering context
Using stock photos of male bosses hovering over female employees in ads will work no longer for your business. This can turn off modern women, who are self-dependent and powerful.
* Countering stereotypes:
Inclusive marketing gives businesses a unique opportunity to use influencers to reverse the patterned images of different cultures. As the images used in marketing are very powerful, they can play a vital role in countering uncritical judgments about the images within them.
Conclusion
Traditional marketers may have a belief diverting attention from the profit motive will limit the success of their marketing campaigns. But the future-ready marketers think just the opposite. That’s why inclusive marketing came into existence. Inclusive marketing allows a brand to reach out to a wider audience in a deeper way. Therefore, foregoing the profit motive in some circumstances is the best way to optimize towards it.
