Inclusion and Marketing

when it comes to customer acquisition one of the things two many brands forget is the conversion ass back of it they pour tons of energy into awareness getting people to come check them out but not enough into the elements that actually get customers to take the next step forward remember that fundamental question consumers are always asking will this product service or experience work for someone like me now if you want to convert more people as part of your customer acquisition efforts you have to answer that question quickly and clearly for your ideal customer by showing them people like them achieving success with your brand now if we think about the process of customer acquisition as inviting people to your party we really can break it down into four phases first it's deciding who you're going to invite second it's actually sending the invitation third it's getting your house in order so the people you're inviting feel seen supported and like they've belong with you and the fourth component which we're digging into today is answering that other question who's all gonna be there but because before people say yes to you they wanna know that the folks they respect value or aspire to be like will be there too in other words people like them so after this short break we're gonna dig into this last component of the new roles of customer acquisition series and this step the conversion step is especially critical when it comes to acquiring customers from underrepresented and underserved growth communities because these consumers often more than others needs to see proof that your brand truly understands them supports them and has already helped people like them succeed and if you haven't listened to the first three episodes yet i'll drop them in the show notes so you can catch up alright we're gonna dig into it after the short break did you know that most businesses only use twenty percent of their data that's like reading a book with most of the pages torn out or paying for a coffee that's just one fifth full point is you miss a lot unless you use hubspot their customer platform gives you access to the data you need to grow your business the insights trapped in emails call logs and transcripts all that unstructured data that makes all the difference because when you know more you grow more and when you get a full couple of coffee perhaps you can do more too but i digress visit hubspot dot com today alright so the first step in this conversion process of customer acquisition is all about the power of the guest list or adding relevant success cues so have you ever attended an event and the moment you arrived dot ugg this is not the place for me that feeling of regret is exactly what you don't want your ideal customers to experience and they don't want it either that's why they're always looking for cues signals that reassure them what you're inviting them to is in fact for them people want proof that minimizes risk and one of the best ways to do that is by showing them a kind of success queue think of it like giving them a sneak peek at your guest list both past and present you probably know this concept as social proof but what i'm recommending takes it a step further your proof must be relevant to the people you're inviting it has to communicate we work with people like you now the social proof that resonates with me is different from what resonates with my mom and that's different again from what would work for my husband sal dam is a senior growth manager at hubspot he told me that when it comes to growing in french speaking markets it's central to communicate in a way that doesn't make people feel like this isn't for me if it looks like this is not for me you know if you come as an american company in trans to sell something and you you don't advertise it in a way that the french audience can say okay that's gonna work for me the assumption is that it's not if all the examples that i'm shown are about you know an the american delivery company american fast foods american trans booking systems that don't exist i'm like okay it works but wanna work for me that's the essence of relevant proof using relevant social proof intentionally by showcasing your real experience with people who are like the customers you serve will significantly increase your conversions and i want to emphasize this because too often brands use representation as a shortcut to demonstrate belonging but that representation often isn't grounded in real relationships or results it's just stock imagery or surface level production no when you share authentic experiences of people who generally connect with your ideal customers you're not just checking a box of what you think you need to do to reach a specific community you're building trust and that trust has a direct positive impact on your conversions so common ways to share your quote unquote guest list include featuring current clients who reflect your ideal audience highlighting past clients your audience respects or relates to collaborating with partners or creators who share your customers values and showcasing your own team because their identities expertise and lives experiences help your audience see that you're equipped to serve people like them social proof works best when it's not just proof of success it's proof of belonging alright so the second thing to focus your attention on in this conversion aspect of customer acquisition is all about representation and the proof that you're showcasing or adding success outcomes now it's one thing to rattle off and invite lists past and present filled with relevant names as proof source but what makes that proof even more powerful is when you're able to share actual success stories of people who worked with you because that fundamental question consumers both consciously subconsciously asking is often broken out into two parts first is is this product servicer or experience for people like me and the second which is very much connected is do people like me achieve success with this product service or experience or two layers to that so one question is about belonging the other is about goal attainment and both are extremely important for converting more of your ideal customers especially those from underrepresented and underserved communities answering the second question often comes through testimonials and case studies now most brands are already doing this they actively seek testimonials and showcase success stories from their clients but the distinction that i want to highlight is this be intentional about featuring people with different identities in those testimonials and case studies if you've got twenty five testimonials in five case studies and none of them reflect success through the lens of someone who is neuro for example then someone who is neuro won't receive the affirmative answer to their question will people like me and achieve success here they're just gonna assume that they don't and that adds friction to the experience as a black woman i'm constantly scanning for evidence looking to see if other black women have had positive experiences with the brand or product especially when it comes to my business and personally for me it needs to be more than just one success story okay like i need to see that you've got a track record not just someone that you're token patronizing that's important and it's important to many others from underrepresented or underserved communities because our experiences are often different our identities shape how we move through the world how others perceive us and sometimes the opportunities that are available to us so when i see someone who shares those lived experiences and i see them achieving success with a particular brand that i'm considering that reduces a whole lot of risk for me now i understand that depending upon your business you might not always be able to feature clients publicly hit i've worked with high profile clients where i wasn't even allowed to mention them or mention that i've even worked with them because of contractual restrictions i get it if that's the case for you find other ways that people from various identities can vouch for your impact that might be quotes from workshop attendees participant feedback or social media comments from people who benefited from your work and your ideas the key is to take the time to curate proof from a broad range of identities especially those that align with the ideal customers you want to reach representation in your proof isn't about optics it's about outcomes show that people like your ideal customers don't just belong with you they succeed with you alright so after this short break we're gonna get into that third conversion metric or that third conversion factor that you really need to put a lot of attention into to make sure that you are acquiring more of the ideal customers you want to reach alright okay i've got another podcast recommendation for you it's hustle and flow chart hosted by joe fire and it's brought to you by the hubspot podcast network the audio destination for and professionals now the hustle and flow chart podcast it's all about how to build a business so we gives you the freedom and fuel for your life joe discusses systems mindset tweaks reframe and strategies for entrepreneurs and really anyone to enjoy the process of being in business and having fun now they are over six hundred episodes of this podcast if that gives you any inclination to just the plethora of resources that it has available for you there is definitely something for you no matter where you are in your business building journey but in case you need some guidance on where to get started tune into episode number five hundred and seventy two if you art inclusive marketing make your customers feel seen with yours truly tune in into hustle and flow chart wherever you get your podcasts alright so the third component of this conversion aspect of customer acquisition is all about making proof easy to find in other words integrating it everywhere alright so this is where a lot of brands fumble as i've said the people you want to serve are looking for the answer to that fundamental question both part a and part b do people like me achieve success here but they want an answer to that question quickly and clearly and too often brands don't do that perhaps they'll list out testimonials on a testimonial page or a case studies page but honestly that leaves a responsibility up to the person you're trying to convert to go and seek out that information on those pages that goal is to reduce as much friction as possible because reducing friction increases conversions and if you're requiring consumers to go and seek out the information that they need to make a decision about you and to go find it or see if they can find it you are creating a lot of friction and it's very likely they're not gonna do it and they're gonna look for another option that's easier for them remember consumers are making decisions about your brand at every single touch point along your customer journey so it be removes you to communicate people like you achieve success here throughout your customer journey showcase it on your social media on your website on your landing pages during discussions on the podcast you appear as a guest on and your ads and your emails at your events you don't want people to actually have to wonder hey i wonder if people like me had success with this brand because very few consumers are going to go on a mission to seek out and answer as i mentioned you don't want people to have to wonder hey i wonder if people like me have had success with this brand because very few people are going to go on a mission to find that answer if they don't see it quickly and clearly they'll assume the answer is no that's why it's so important not to con find people like me success stories to just one part of your customer acquisition efforts are just one corner of your brand experience let it sing through every touch point and here's the heart of what i'm saying what you don't want is for your brand to feel like it's pulling out a photo and saying hey look see there's a black person they achieve success here that feels force like you're selling a narrative not sharing something real instead you want your proof to feel organic and natural like a reflection of who you actually serve i should be able to tell that people like me achieve success of your brand because of what i see in your content who you on social who comments and engages and how comfortable will they talk about your brand and their experiences and their identities when that happens it's like oh i don't have to call and ask who's all gonna be there because you've already shown me what type of people hang out with you and show up at the things that you put out well let me tell you about someone who does this masterfully sean rh producer extra i've loved her work for years from grey's anatomy to bridge and then my goodness how i love queen charlotte that one was my absolute favorite but i can tell you this if s invites me to watch one of her creations i know without a shadow of a doubt that it's going be inclusive there is going to be a diverse cast and it will tell stories that feel real and authentic and natural and not forced at all that's the reputation she's developed that's what she's proven in the experiences she's delivered for decades there's no guessing or wondering that i have to do she's demonstrated people like me are welcome with her because it's a hallmark of the work that she does that's her brand reputation and that's the level that you want to reach you want people to know that inclusion and representation for people like them are built into the experiences you deliver not just an afterthought or a part of a singular campaign your goal is to make delivering inclusive experiences is throughout your customer journey a hallmark of what you do especially for people from underrepresented and underserved communities don't make people go looking for proof that they belong with you show them clearly so they never have to ask so there you have it the fourth and final episode in our new rules of customer acquisition series we've talked about how to find who you're inviting how to send the right invitations that are right for your ideal customers that you want to reach how to make sure your house is in order before people arrive and now how to show them who's already there and thriving as proof source that they will be able to do the same because at the end of the day people don't just want to buy from you they want to belong with you they wanna know that people like them don't to show up they succeed with you when you make that proof easy to see consistent to experience and authentic and how it shared you remove friction they'll trust and create an open door that more of your ideal customers can confidently walk through and that's how you build a brand that grows inclusive sustainably and with heart and that's how you consistently inquire more and more and more of the ideal customers that you want to reach across all the identities that you want to serve thanks so much for joining me of part of this series if you haven't listened to the first three episodes again i'll have a link for you in the show notes for you below and i'd love to hear which one resonated with you the most if you're enjoying the show enjoying this series oh i would love it if you would share it with your friends colleagues and your network it really does go a long way towards helping more people discover the show and if you're feeling extra generous i would super appreciate it if you would leave a rating and review for it any your podcast player of choice another quick question for you are you getting the inclusion and marketing newsletter each week i send news resources insights voice the customer commentary all kinds of good stuff all designed to help you attract and retain a bigger more diverse fiercely loyal customer base go to inclusion and marketing dot com slash newsletter to get signed up until next time remember everyone deserves to have a place where they belong let's use our individual and collect a power to ensure more people feel like they do thanks so much for listening talk to you soon

if you've hung out here for any length of time you know i talk a lot about inclusive marketing and how brands can better engage underrepresented and underserved communities but during my chat with today's guest he used to phrase that stopped me in my tracks growth communities that's how he describes helping brands connect with these audiences not just as niche but as an opportunity for growth and i loved it because that's exactly what inclusive marketing is about growth when you do it well it's not just good ethics or good optics it's good business that's one of the many insights from this conversation i cannot wait for you to hear so after this short break you're gonna hear my conversation with edgar hernandez chief strategy officer at my code the largest multicultural media company in the us working with brands like the nfl sephora pepsi major league baseball spectrum and more did you know that most businesses only use twenty percent of their data that's like reading a book with most of the pages torn out or paying for a coffee that's just one fifth full point is you miss a lot unless you use hubspot their customer platform gives you access to the data you need to grow your business the insights trapped in emails call logs and transcripts all that unstructured data that makes all the difference because when you know more you grow more and when you get a full couple of coffee perhaps you can do more too but i digress visit hubspot dot com today hey edgar thanks so much for joining me today how are you i'm doing excellent sonia how are you i'm doing really well i'm so excited for this conversation with you i think we're really gonna be able to get into a lot of good at juicy stuff but before we get like too far to let the people know who are you and what do you do my name is edgar hernandez i'm the chief strategy officer of my code my code been around for ten years is a culture of marketing media platform for what we call today growth audiences and really meant to be an end to end solution for partners looking to really understand connecting and grow with these communities of color yeah okay so i was initially thinking that i wanted to ask you about terminology right because historically i think the term that people have used has been in multi multicultural marketing i use a term inclusive marketing and i just heard you say growth audiences which i my my eyes and my ears perk up can you describe what is the growth audience why have you named it this way what is like the terminology that you all like to use yeah why i've been in this space for twenty some years and i remember when i initially started it was called urban audiences mh i don't know getting you myself or not but that was the term that people used back then so it feels like it's will be a constant evolution of how we think about and describe these audiences growth is term has really become more used over probably the last twelve months or so and it's really reflective of going back to talking about the audiences as a business imperative then and nice to have and when my coach started ten years ago that's really what the idea was specifically when you thought about hispanic audiences you went to a couple of major network players in order to reach those audiences and always is really paying attention to how fast these audiences were growing especially in the digital ecosystem and so we were all about helping brands find these audiences because in order to drive your business forward you had to understand them in connect of them right so that's where growth really comes from is thinking about these audiences not only as the fastest growing mh but also the fastest in driving gdp and also driving business outcomes and so i think when ref framing that we don't get stuck into any type of political yeah assignment and what it is we get back to the business at hand and that's what our whole thesis has been for the last ten years yeah focusing in on that yeah i have spent a lot of time as i've been talking about inclusive marketing educating i think people have long gotten caught up because they've they've always thought of it as like a moral imperative and i've just really have been kinda trying to hammer her home like no this is act this actually drives business results like you don't have to choose between it's like this is connected directly to your business results whenever you do it right so i am really excited about the naming that you have done because it speaks directly to the business how would you classify what are growth audiences we classify them as hispanic black aa a and hp eligible plus as well as let's say from an age demographic gen z gen okay inherently right now gen z is fifty percent made up of what we would say are those growth audiences so they're one in one yes yes for sure and i think all the more reason why like i think brands are really trying hard receipt to reach gen z do you feel like their marketing playbook that they've are using with gen z is it the historical playbook or they finding that they're needing to adjust it more to be relevant with gen z and these growth audiences in particular well there's a white swath right and there's ones that are are taking generational playbook and trying to apply it yeah the bd have changed the way people wanna connect have changed how people wanna experience brands have changed so i would say to those brands that you're putting yourself in our fortunate situation yeah where you're not gonna be relevant very quickly here you constantly have to be adopting your playbook with these younger generations all the time i mean you know just in thinking about the platforms and how they evolve and the type of content that you can be creating what is shared similarities across different demographics different regions different interests you really have to be studying this audience constantly because they're constantly moving and what motivates them is different i think you know going back to what's essential at my code is that we have this intelligence center and i am still blown away so the amount of meetings i have every week and sonia the people will say i see the sales data that tells me that this is a growing segment i'm talking about primarily black and hispanic audience okay some people are in tune with what that means for their business and how to charge at it but most or not yeah and they say i know it's important i know i need to do it i just don't know how to start mh right and so that obviously is a great setup for myself in our organization but it all starts with giving them the tools necessary and that starts with our intelligence center right so what do we know about the hispanic audience versus the black community what are similarities what are differences what are things that are driving triggers of making decisions where do they look do they look to media do they look to creators and there's nuances there within those different communities and so it has to start there before you start making any further decisions on well how am i gonna create anything yeah that really resonates with them and then where do i deploy this messaging so even if you go into my code media dot com there's a section under capabilities that's just white papers we've been building a repository of fat packs and tell you about hispanic black aa and hp as well as the p community but we also tell you more than that what as a affinity like music or beauty or entertainment draws them together and where is there things that they mutually lean in on that you can potentially tap into or where are their differences that you really have to understand that so that you do it the right way yeah so you mentioned data and i have been finding as i've talked to different clients in different parts of the world some of them are really reluctant some of them are already capturing data based upon these different demographics of these growth audiences and communities that you've mentioned and others don't have it in they're nervous about capturing it do you find that a lot of brands have this data already and that they're kind of looking and have identified these audiences or is this something that they need to start doing i've i mean a lot of the brands that i work with are pretty data savvy okay are looking for more data to help complement what they're capturing okay but it really it really depends on what they're trying to gain access to so for us we have twenty own operate publisher so we have phenomenal contextual data that tells us what people are really leaning into where they're interesting interested in that and so why is that important how can that help a brand is because it could provide signals to where the audience is moving and what potentially they're most interested in yeah why they could choose a product or service and so that type of data is very complementary to sales data that they might be receiving on the back end and who their consumer group is and where do they match those things together to potentially start to build proprietary segments yeah of consumer opportunities hey here's a core consumer here's a secondary consumer that we wanna go after well how do we start to build strong marketing campaigns to connect to these different segments so i i find where people are lacking it is more of the qualitative understanding audience and that's or we really come in the supplement so with those reports in this white papers that you are producing is that really designed to help the brands that you're serving with the cultural intelligence that they need to do a better job of engaging these different growth communities yeah that that's exactly right it and and look we wanna handle people in that don't know where to go or what to do right and i think there was a time of period if you weren't doing it you're getting approached in a certain way that didn't feel like it was easy to move forward yeah we don't want to do that right we want to be facilitator and translators so we make it super easy because we want the work to really resonate with these communities right and these companies want things that are either inspiring right hey show me something that really connects to me shows me i can do something shows me that i belong that i have the seat at the table or give me something that offers utility hey show me how to become someone who's a millionaire mh who someone who can invited their first home who could be an entrepreneur and so the more that we can be helpful at the forefront of providing that information then we could start developing and that's like the second part of our kind of proprietary formula so it's to code develop and direct and develop we'll spend a lot of time here really thinking about whether you're a brand for the first time trying to connect with these communities or you've been doing it for years how do you keep going further along that journey and so we do that in a number of ways so number one we'll do that through alignment with talent it could be musical talent we were the first to discover bad bonnie back in the day on so it's very well known it's been writing and capturing content around all these artists years in advance mh and so a lot of brands will come to us and they'll say hey i want you know i can't now afford a bad bunny to be in my opinion but tell me who's emerging who's going to be in two to three years and we can because we have a strong editorial team because we have the data we can match those things to say hey here is you know five talent that you should really look at and if we tell the story of who they are you'll get a lot of credibility in that space so we do it lot of work around that yeah well i i guess that kinda leads me into the next part of it because it sounds like a what a lot of brands have been doing you all have your hands on the pulse of culture right you said you were when the first to kinda talk about that by way back in the day what is the role of culture from what you're seeing with in terms of from a brand perspective because i i'm seeing more and more brands kinda get into it we'll be talk i know there were some commentary whenever taylor swift got engaged people were commenting brands were starting to comment on that and i'm wondering if you have a point of view on when brands should be engaging in culture and what is the role and what is the right sort of mix as part of their overall marketing strategy how does culture play a role i think it's a journey right that takes a lot of studying and understanding with the right people around you versus seeing something trending and decide to jump in yeah that's where we see a lot of mistakes happening or when you don't have people who are of that culture not helping to make decisions in the boardroom through the cameraman and the producers on set so i would not recommend doing that i think it takes really understanding who your core consumer segment is and understanding what their needs are and then from there starting to see where you can add value to that community in a way that's long term and not short term right and so i think that's just the basis foundational thesis that i would say that is important for brands and where culture should play a part within who they are and because i think once you do it that way then it is something that can be at the core of who they are and something that they stand for long term and so i think that's you know some of the best work that i've seen yeah can you give some examples of what is something a good way for a brand to sort of be engaging in culture that you see can imagine that's it's probably a lot of the work that you're doing with clients so you have anyone in particular that you feel like is a in a great example to the sort of spotlight for people as we're thinking about what is right for their brand yeah there's a number of brands we have one of our editorial properties called el dia audio it's over a hundred years of be being a community beacon here in new york so it's a newspaper brand at prints spanish language content every single day and we had a brand who's interested in connecting with thirty five plus males who are interested in buying trucks and they're looking for people who are high household income earners who are entrepreneurs business owners and we presented to them this awards that we've been doing and the opportunity to be a part of it but to also spotlight and champion those leaders in the community okay and these people often don't get spotlight on them and so they're only celebrated within their family in in small network and i thought this brand coming in to be a part of the awards that are celebrating twenty five individuals but putting a spotlight on a few and talking about their contributions to the community is generally foundational of a great way as i was mentioning of leveraging editorial brands and their connection to the community as a way of furthering that out and so this will expand our coverage of what we will be doing around the awards and so that's a really great one the other one that i would say is that we have a partnership with the nfl mh so we are one of their hispanic media partners and that gives us the opportunity to go ahead and create content around their big ten pulp moments and use the nfl shield but also go to their thirty eight brand sponsors and helped them drive a deeper connection to the hispanic community through also original content and so we worked with the brand that's very much carbonate soft drink and connected to food and what we did was showcasing local chefs during game day moments creating their favorite latin food mh and it was you know their favorite line food paired with this carbonated soft drinks and the insight was that game days at big day in the hispanic community right we love to grow we love to be around friends and family mh we prepare all week and long and we take it very seriously as we take our preparation the food we make as seriously as we take our teams and so if we could match those things together then it was a cultural celebration of some of the favorite things that we love to do on a sunday and so those are the types of partnerships that i think people will look at in the resonate and we actually took it even further and we had a car customize or customize a grill and so the idea is this young woman nominated her father and said my dad is always outside really on game day and he's missing the game mh he's missing the game because he has to go inside to the fridge and grab a beverage has to go inside he has to watch what the scores is and so we we basically took this grill and put a little monitor in it and a f it and customer designed it to his liking so that he could stay there and so you know it's it's a fun idea mh but people get it yeah who doesn't understand that you know when you put burgers or you put steaks on the grill that if getting this on you're always looking over your shoulder you know having to walk back in and so these are some of the fun partnerships that we've done very cool very cool you meant okay i've got another podcast recommendation for you it's hustle and flow chart hosted by joe fire and is brought to you by the hubspot podcast network the audio destination for business professionals now the hustle and flow chart podcast it's all about how to build a business so we get you the freedom and fuel for your life joe discusses systems mindset tweaks reframe and strategies for entrepreneurs and really anyone to enjoy the process of being in business and having fun now they are over six hundred episodes of this podcast if that gives you any inclination to just the plethora of resources that it has available for you there is definitely something for you no matter where you are in your business building journey but in case you need some guidance on where to get started tune into episode number five hundred and seventy two the art of inclusive marketing make your customers feel seen with yours truly tune in to hustle and flow chart wherever you get your podcasts shin media and el dia is a a media component i am curious if you have any recommendations for brands especially as you're thinking about their media plans that they're creating when should they be thinking about or minority owned media in particular or media that speaks directly to the community should their to their overall media mix be changing to reach these growth market to these growth communities as well yeah it's a great setup question for me sonia sonya i need one thousand percent i mean you know i hear hey i can reach these audiences through my mass media and it's just not the same data shows you it's not the same why are we you trying to believe it's the same it's like all the data shows that when you aren't in contextual rich environment reaching the audience connecting to them on things that are core to who they are that it resonates significantly higher than not right the creative when it's inclusive it chosen those means significantly higher than not so you put inclusive creative and those environments that are contextual relevant to them equal sales yeah it's like the data's there pg the largest marketer in the world has built a whole business off of reaching these audiences look at their creative look at where it lands yeah look at their revenue and that's the thing that always is frustrating right for a lot of folks is because we have for a long time had the data we had to census this data mh we have sales data we have the additional incremental data that tells us that people are buying everything from everyday household goods to they are some of the biggest audience and buying homes over the next twenty years buying new cars starting new businesses these are the biggest consumer segments for all financial sectors yet we're still in a place that we're having to convince people right and it's like at what point and so i like to say like i just wanna talk to the marketers who are massive data nerds right that inks explicitly follow the data because those people it's not about anything else about aside from driving growth i see what i need to do as a business to drive growth and i'm gonna be so focusing on those audiences and learning about them and and that's that's funny because i i kinda think like you know platform was obviously a big part of a market job and will continue to be but i think really being inherently understanding of nuance of audience is just as important and that's an important moment an opportunity for a lot of brands right now for sure i'm thinking about my husband is from argentina and for the first time this year we watched the super bowl not in english we watched it on one of the spanish language broadcasts and as i was looking at people talking about different commercials and ads and things that they were seeing i was like i didn't see that and i didn't see that and i had to go watch them all separately later on because the ads that were served on the spanish language podcasts are largely different than they were on the broadcast that people are watching from an english language perspective and i i loved it i appreciate it because they're tailoring their ads to the people who are watching but it was just sort of like a an interesting thing to say like the market is changing in there's a new general market and we have to adjust our strategies based upon the people who are here now yeah one one hundred percent and we gotta champion the brands that are doing it and finding success doing it right i think that that that's the most important thing yeah what would you say has been your biggest observation and the ways in which consumers have changed from the last five in or ten years ago because i feel like the market is quite different but i'm i'd like to hear from your perspective who's in the trenches every day i think where they find influence you know i think in the last five to ten years it's really changed from big media to creators you know it really is a driving force of and we saw the data early on you know if you remember a word mouth market mh right it was it was kind of that that community that four block radius that would often influence your decision making and so you just look at that data that was around for a long time and you just mag in a social media environment yeah and and i think you can't ignore the power of creators i just saw a headline that you know levers moving fifty percent of their ad buying towards creators that's a lot of money yeah creator economy and it's because it's has such an influential impact on way that we'll see the world and guess what is so outs outside in that black and brown creators mh it's a fact when you look at the data called caucasian consumers will look to black and brown communities as a way of influencing their decision making eighty percent of time we have bad money performing the super bowl mh we google lamar and so last year in the super bowl just sick on that dean and and this idea that people come these communities only influence their communities yeah is wrong we know it we see it right and so you know going back to your point about hey you know is diverse own media diverse target media important it is absolutely important if we look at those two right thoughts right and i'm telling you that we were early on in discovering bad bunny and this is where culture is being influenced on a global scale you should be going to partners like us to help you identify who those people are what those trends are what are those connectors because these shouldn't be looked at multi multicultural growth investments they should be able to look like how do i mag this as a holistic strategy and reaching this next consumer segment another funny stat that i saw is that when you see other people represented in creative so it is inclusive marketing and it's not you that is represented it still drives a high affinity yeah so it just means hey i see that this brand sees the world through the same lens that i do mh and they right apple gets it yeah right they get it like i might not that might be a consumer that does not know a lick of what bad bun is saying but when i put it in the car i can bump to it yeah like this is shit this is and i see what he's doing for culture and i value that and so when i see a brand associates that then i could say hey you know what they are trying to push us forward and buy into that yeah i love it i love it and hundred percent agree before we switch gears a little bit i'm just curious if you have any things that you would say to marketers to stop doing to reach these growth audiences because i think that there's some brands who are doing a good job and they're getting it right but as people are sort of like entering into this world of inclusive marketing and engaging these growth communities a lot of them still are you know it it's not quite right so if you have any like don't do these things and stop excuse me and then start what would that be one is start with the mindset of tests mh hey i'm gonna i'm gonna test i'm gonna give a very small budget to someone to see if it performs okay k not gonna work two is holding those opportunities to the same measurement that your m mms are doing on mainstream media not gonna work and so you've got to understand that this is it's like writing mike right you're not gonna get on the bike the first time and you're gonna just start writing down street yeah right and so you've got to understand that is a commitment and understanding and partnering and learning and growing because in long term that there is something amazing that could be accomplished and that could be accomplished together and tandem with the community one that you are giving the community something that is needed inspiration or utility and you have a major growth opportunity for your brand in business yeah and so that's the biggest thing that i see the hardest thing is where do i go right and again it's now unfortunately many marketers are sitting within the walls and you can't say certain words you can't say black you can't say hispanic marketing you can't say multi multicultural market right you're potentially in a situation that makes it very difficult to what you do one is you don't do it right but your competitor does okay the other one is that you test it and there's no real strategy your plan it doesn't work and so you kind of check that box for yourself i would just encourage try to find people that can help you right and help you from a business perspective to do it right and guess what a lot of time sonia when i see someone come to us with hey the data shows me this i don't know how to translate it help us and we help them and we get something off the ground it works and we see those partnerships scale because these audiences are not over saturated with brands talking to them in a way that resonates with them yeah right so if you're you're going to an over saturated market sending them all the same types of messaging but there's this market over here that's not over saturated no one's really is paying attention to the degree that they can't and you start to guess what happens that creates real brand loyalty and opportunity and so that's what i would say that i see oftentimes someone says ham a test doesn't perform the way that they're used to perform me on mass media and it i decided it didn't work and they walk away and yeah i i think there's something larger there than just walking absolutely totally agree totally agree alright let's switch gears a little bit i wanna know about your experience as a consumer tell me about a time when a brand made you feel like you belonged the nba early on the nba i think really got it i was an i was an avid basketball player and fan and i just remember saturday mornings when they did their show that i'm trying to think the name of but it was it just felt culturally rich mh right and the way that they the language that they use the style of that graphics i just felt like it really was a league that brought me in at the time and made me felt very connected and guess what there's not many latin players in the nba back in the eighties and so it wasn't about me seeing myself on the court but it was like it was speaking to they knew who their demographic was and they knew what i cared about and there was a swag to it obviously this is prime time jordan era yeah right it was like sports in hip hop just felt like it was exploding sneaker culture was exploding and so that was a very defining moment where i was like i'm part of the nba community right like i love basketball i was like also the diehard lakers fan and and there was nothing like that golden era magic johnson and the lakers and so i would say that was a brand that early on really got it mh very cool very cool this has been so much fun and where can people find you if they wanna learn more about you and the work that you all are doing at my code and tapping into all that rich rich rich knowledge that you all have yeah first off feel free to email me at edgar at my code media dot com if you're interested in anything that i said or even want access the white papers i'll send you the link there's no obligation i'm i'm very happy to have conversations with folks but if you're interested in just checking out my code generally go to my media dot com there's some really great case studies on there there's some additional white papers and see the work that we're doing very cool very cool alright any parting words of wisdom for marketers and business leaders who want to do a better job of engaging these growth communities so they can grow absolutely listen to sonia podcast well thank you for doing the great work that you're doing and and inviting people like me to beyond here to give my perspective as we continue to grow and learn you providing this as a resource is amazing so very much appreciated it oh thank you so much edgar had so many cool things to share and i hope you enjoyed that chat just as much as i did if not more if you like to show i would so appreciate it if you would share it with your friend your colleagues and your network it really does go a long way towards helping more people discover the show another quick question for you are you gay the inclusion and marketing newsletter if not really what are you even doing each week i send news resources tips voice of the customer and all kinds of other goodies to help you attract and retain a bigger more diverse and fiercely loyal customer base go to inclusion and marketing dot com slash newsletter to get signed up until next time remember everyone deserves to have a place where they belong let's use our individual and collect the power to ensure more people feel like they do thanks so much for listening talk to you soon

have you ever been invited somewhere maybe a party a dinner or an event and the moment you got there you immediately wanted to leave like you just knew this is not for me this isn't what i thought it was going to be and not in a good way now from a customer acquisition standpoint this exactly the reaction and you do not want your ideal customers to have you spent all this time and effort inviting them to your brand but the moment they arrive the reality doesn't match the promise and they're gone so today's episode is all about making sure that that doesn't happen we've been talking a little bit about customer acquisition and how important it is to invite the people that you want to serve to be your customers if you haven't listened to the other episodes in this series i will drop them in the show notes for you so you can access them quickly so today's episode is all about getting your house in order making sure that the promises and hope you communicated while inviting your customers in to be your customers match the reality of the experiences you deliver once they show up so we're gonna dig into all of that after this short break did you know that most businesses only use twenty percent of their data that's like reading a book with most of the pages torn out or paying for a coffee that's just one fifth full point is you miss a lot unless you use hubspot their customer platform gives you access to the data you need to grow your business the insights trapped emails call logs and transcripts all that unstructured data that makes all the difference because when you know more you grow more and when you get a full couple of coffee perhaps you can do more too but i digress visit hubspot dot com today alright so we need to talk about bait and switch most of the time when we think about the term we get the image of some kind of scammer that says something really sexy to get you in the door like they're offering a ten thousand dollar car for only a hundred dollars but then once you get there that too good to be true deal is sold out or no longer available so the person is quick to offer you something else say a car for sale for three thousand dollars but of course that's not what you want at all and if you knew that that was what was on off the three thousand dollar car from the beginning you never would have gotten up off your couch and even though in this example the person who pulled bait and switch was doing it intentionally too often brands engage in similar type behavior even when they don't intend to so here are a few real life examples one a brand puts a stock image of a black person on promotional materials for an event but there are no black speakers at the event or similarly a black employee is featured in promotional materials to promote your company but that person is the only black team member you have on your team another example you published a lot of spanish language ads on social media and other hispanic owned media outlets but your website has extremely limited materials in spanish in your social media team only responds to comments in english another one you take the time to create accessible fitting rooms in your stores but those fitting rooms are filled with boxes and clothes so people who need to use that accessible fitting room can't did i mention something that these are all real life examples another one your brand uses alt text on all the photos you use on your website but the text use isn't about describing the photo it's used for seo purposes instead and so the last example i'm gonna walk you through in this group is one that's really truly a pet peeve of mind your brand creates an allergy friendly menu but in reality it's a cumbersome document that's more than like ten pages long that's really hard to read and digest what types of menu options will be appropriate for someone with dietary restrictions to consume the list of examples goes on and on and on and on but i'm gonna stop there so for consumers especially those from underrepresented in under underserved communities they are just gonna grow frustrated whenever they have these types of experiences they're gonna feel they are going to feel like an afterthought because many of them already do because they hadn't encountered these types of experiences every day they will think that you did the absolute bare minimum to try to win them over but instead you left them with a really bad taste in their mouth because an experience that didn't just seem to match the promise of what you seem to offer in your invitation to come and beat your customer so how do we avoid delivering this type of bait and switch feeling so the people that you want to serve feel seen supported and like they belong with you so that they can take the next step forward with you after receiving your invitation focus on these three things customer intimacy authenticity and customer experience so let's dive to the first one customer intimacy now remember the fundamental question consumers are looking for when they are considering whether or not to move forward with your your brand is is this brand for someone like me your job as a marketer is to answer that question quickly and clearly but it comes real hard to answer that question in a meaningful way if you only know the people that you want to serve at a superficial level for instance i can't tell you the number of brands that i've come across whose po is that the way to effectively attract and convert hispanic consumers in the us is to translate everything into spanish just in case you weren't aware of that is not the most effective way to do it now while spanish speakers are a part of the equation i remember letting one client know specifically that the majority of the hispanic population in the us speaks english it was a small detail but one that had a major impact on their strategy and the effectiveness of the work they were doing customer intimacy is not up optional well that is if you want to make better use of your marketing resources it's critical to move beyond assumptions beyond stereotypes and beyond the superficial to really understand what it it is your ideal customers in especially those who under underrepresented and under communities need and want from you when you do you'll have a much clearer picture about how to clearly and quickly communicate this product is for someone like you so let's get back to that customer intimacy issue that my client had other their efforts to reach hispanic consumers were focused on language however many people who had that identity they were hispanic were looking at their english language materials and those materials did not have the hispanic representation those consumers needed to see to know that the product was for people like them their lack of cultural intelligence in that area led them a astra the more information you have the deeper you know the people that you want to serve and understand them and the better relationship you have with them the easier it is to design products services experiences and communications that make them feel seen supported and like they belong with you the deeper degree of intimacy that you have for your ideal customers that you want to serve the better equipped you'll be to pull the right levers to acquire them as customers alright we're gonna get into those other two focus areas authenticity and customer experience after this short break okay i've got another podcast recommendation for you it's hustle and flow chart hosted by joe fire and is brought to you by the hubspot podcast network the audio destination for business professionals now the hustle and flow chart podcast all about how to build a business so we get you the freedom and fuel for your life joe discusses systems mindset tweaks reframe and strategies for entrepreneurs and really anyone to enjoy the process of being in business and having fun now they are over hundred episodes of this podcast if that gives you any inclination to just the plethora of resources that it has available for you there is definitely something for you no matter where you are in your business building journey but in case you need some guidance on where to get started tune to episode number five hundred and seventy two if the art of inclusive marketing make your customers feel seen with yours truly tune in to hustle and flow chart wherever you get your podcasts alright so authenticity is where a lot of brands fall short especially when it comes to engaging people from underrepresented and underserved communities and as a result their attempts especially in the customer acquisition phase feels forced so a common example of in authenticity from brands was whenever they include people from underrepresented and underserved communities in their marketing but their internal policies do not align or meaningfully support those communities remember that whole bud light fiasco that happened a couple years ago quick refresher the brand sent celebratory bud lights to dylan mu to celebrate her transition dylan herself was celebrating a hundred days of girl on her social channels and bud light wanted to be a part of that so they sent those cans of bud light with her face on them tapping into the power of influencers is a smart way to invite specific communities to be your customer we covered that on the last episode in this series that i mentioned it's in the show for you but when backlash came from a group of consumers that were not in support of the transgender community but light abandoned dylan in essence the transgender community they didn't protect her they didn't reach out to her they were treated from their inclusive outreach and invitation to the community altogether as a result bud light lost a lot of business as many people boycott them for the way they handled the situation the brand did not authentically support the transgender community and it it really as a result just seem to be something that they were doing in their marketing just to get that community in the larger lgbtq plus community to buy more of their products your actions can't just be about doing or saying what you feel is the right thing to get more people especially those who are from marginalized communities to buy more of yourself if you decide that you want to serve them and you want them to be your customers you got to stand on business and support them through and through that means that your porting of the community you've decided to when people are celebrating you for it when people aren't celebrating you for it when people are mad at you about it and everything in between if you're inviting people to your party especially people who were already vulnerable you are responsible for protecting them while they are there i'm gonna say that again if you are inviting people to your party especially people who are already vulnerable you are responsible for protecting them while they are there consumers and especially those who have marginalized identities need to know that you truly have their backs and that what you say isn't just lip service the burden of authenticity falls completely on you the consequence of you not being authentically into serving and supporting marginalized communities has a potential to have far reaching in negative effects and consequences alright let's get into the third focus area that you need to to ensure that you're delivering consistent promise both in your invitation and in the experience that you're delivering is all about customer experience the experiences that you deliver for the people you serve throughout your customer journey serve as signals along the way that communicate whether or not your brand is for people like them but two often brands deliver and consistent experiences at one part of the customer journey and usually this is somewhere during the acquisition phase a brand will communicate this product the service or experience is for people like you but then when the consumer particularly those from underrepresented and underserved communities they will take that next step forward a brand based upon the invitation only to encounter experience that various other touch points that communicate this isn't for you and it's frustrating like i was mentioning mentioned before it feels a lot like that bait and switch we were talking about for instance i worked with a client that was considering adding an accessibility feature on their product packaging and in sort of displays doing that would have helped the brand attract more consumers from the disability community but my feedback to the team was that they needed to think about the entire arc of the customer experience that they were delivering for people with disabilities not just when they were considering whether or not to buy the products so after doing a high level audit of the brand's overall customer experience it was clear that accessibility had not been considered and woven into other aspects of their customer journey so if they really wanted to attract and retain the accessibility community they needed to do what they wanted to do with the product packaging and in sort displays but they also needed to make sure that they got their house in order from a customer experience standpoint at other parts of the overall journey so think about that party analogy you've taken the time to invite a person that you know is vegan you even put images of vegan dishes on the invitation but when the person shows up the only vegan things that there are to eat is a vegetable platter all the other guests are eating hot food and abundance but the vegan guests has just that one thing and it's super meh the guess is probably gonna feel some type of way and won't want to return and they probably warn their other vegan friends to steer clear of you and your invitation make sure that you are delivering a consistent experience for the people that you want to serve especially those who are from underrepresented and underserved communities make sure that where you're communicating and your invitations is what you are delivering throughout every single touch point in your experience thereafter alright so at the end of the day customer acquisition does not stop at the invitation it only really starts once people show up and if what they find when they walk through the door doesn't match the promise that cut them there you've lost them and often for good so that's why you can't treat customer intimacy authenticity and customer experience as extras they're the foundation of delivering an invitation that actually converts over and over and over again when you know your customers deeply when you support them authentically and when you design experiences that feel like you were expecting them you transform acquisition from a numbers game into a relationship you start spinning to get people in the door only to watch them walk right out the back door and you start building the kind of trust and belonging that turns curiosity into conversion in conversion into long term success and loyalty alright so that's it for today's episode if you like the show i would super appreciate it if you would leave a rating in review for it and your podcast player of choice it really does go a long way towards helping more people discover the show and if you're feeling extra generous i would love it if you would share it with your friends colleagues and your network then a quick question for you are you getting the inclusion and marketing newsletter each week i send news resources voice of the customer commentary all kinds of other tips to help you attract and retain a bigger more diverse and fiercely loyal customer base go to inclusion and marketing dot com slash newsletter to get signed up i will also jump a link for that in the show notes for you below until next time remember everyone deserves to have a place where they belong let's use our individual and collect power to ensure more people feel like they do thanks so much for listening talk to you soon

inclusive marketing isn't business as usual it's all about disrupting the status quo sometimes that means rethinking how you engage your customers and how you just do marketing in your day to day sometimes about challenging harmful narratives in society and sometimes it's about shaking up entire industries in today's episode you're gonna get a front row seat to what it looks like to disrupt an industry and to elevate a consumer group that's been ignored for far too long so for this conversation i sat down with the cofounder of drafted and you're gonna hear all about after in the episode it was recorded live at hubspot inbound conference and so you're gonna hear that really juicy conversation after this short break did you know that most businesses only use twenty percent of their data after that's like reading a book with most of the pages torn out or paying for a coffee that's just one fifth full point is you miss a lot unless you use hubspot their customer platform gives you access to the data you need to grow your business the insights trapped in emails call logs and transcripts all that un unstructured data that makes all the difference because when you know more you grow more and when you get a full cup of coffee you can do more to this but i digress visit hubspot dot com today good morning i am sonia thompson i am the host of the inclusion in marketing podcast and today we are gonna talk a little bit about how to disrupt industries that really be disrupting and all about how to elevate consumers that are traditionally underrepresented and underserved but shouldn't be and today i'm really excited to chat with the team from drafted oh who are gonna be the perfect ones to walk us through how to do just that so go ahead and let the people know who are you in a little bit about drafted yeah hi everyone i'm jennifer up as blend c cofounder of drafted and i am k martinez also the founder of drafted which is a sports culture media company really centering and that next generation multi multicultural fandom alright so i wanna know what made you decide was there a real inflection point or a key event that happened that made you realize that this industry needed to be disrupted yeah listen it it's a the vision of this company has been a full circle and journey for me i'm a former c collision athlete i played softball i did a decade plus in corporate america doing sports marketing multicultural strategy being the only woman in most of those rooms being the only let on these rooms and thinking okay we're leaving half of those population out of the equation what's going on we know we need to look at this and then i met got you know what five years ago and and we would pull each other into work and then about two years ago she kept at the phone and said hey i got an idea and i said say less yeah i mean i think drafted really was a culmination of our lived experiences and not seeing versions of ourselves play a pivotal role in mainstream culture and so we really created the destination that served young women like we needed growing up you know sports is so cultural to us as latinos it's a a an incredible pathway for leadership and so you know i think you know different points in our lives we realized how important sports was to us personally and then as adults not saying that reflected i think was really the call to action that we needed to be able to serve that next generation yeah so whenever you first started drafted what were the assumptions about the industry that you really wanted to challenge with the work that you're doing i'm gonna pull the slide here because i think it's it gives you some good kind of visual but i would say that really the most important thing that we kind of had to set out to prove unfortunately was do latin care about sports in a big enough way that a you can send her an entire company around that and to us that felt so obvious you know boat jennifer and i are former athletes and were avid fans of a number of different sports and so it felt so obvious that not only did to be care but it met so much to us emotionally but unfortunately that was kind of the first major hurdle was how do we teach people to know that this audience not only cares but is extra passionate and of course when we're speaking to businesses will they spend money on sports and sports culture and so when we are looking at our business model it was really important for us to be a media company and on agency because of media heavily has the ability to change the conversation and to gal in a major a community so here just some of our numbers to give you some of that content context so we're about two years old actually i think our anniversaries next week next week and this what we've been able to do in in two years build an audience of over a hundred thousand across channels our content organically reaches about four to five million people every month and so that was enough of a case study really to show brand partners that this audience really cares there was a stat that you mentioned when we were chatting before about guess the number of jersey that yeah latinos have that was pretty shy can you share that with us and just to kinda ground people on why this is an audience that company to pay attention too yeah i mean i think to that point is like you know we kind of had to build an ecosystem around this consumer with sports centering her and so when we were thinking about the pieces of that ecosystem it was content and and media which i think really informs culture and popular culture but then there's the other component which jennifer really has been an amazing job is to be the leaders in in data because we know that those data decisions really make a difference in the rooms where dollars are being spent on this consumer and so what we do is we we kind of launched the first ever latin fandom report which breakdown the motivations desires and the unique kind of preferences that this fan has and one of the really cool things that came out of that research was that for every jersey a white woman owns about one in her closet and latino owns seven or more so i think that is kind of like the halo data point that we use because it talks about it shows passion because we love sports so much and it shows our buying intent and are buying purchasing power and and that's the one that really released sticks with brands when we say this is how important this fan is and an influence right so through that latin phantom report we also found that can influence hurt those around her twice the rate as a white fan across seven categories so that's following a team following an athlete purchasing tickets to a game so it's not only watching but it's attending the game too these data points never existed until we came along yeah and started to accumulate those data points so you're you got the audience you know they've got the passion they're ready to be elevated but what resistance did you find as you were going through trying to really break through and change things up in this industry i think from an audience perspective there was no resistance i mean i remember one you know in the early days looking at some of our following i'm like okay we're surpassing the people that i know in my ecosystem it's not just like my mom and my my cousins following guys i like we are in the thousands and i do not have a thousand like hundreds and thousands of friends you know unfortunately on that b to b side that challenge i see as an opportunity it's just an opportunity to up upscale right ups upscale that decision maker so what ke was saying was that first question was do latinos us care about sports and luckily we have all that data in our back pocket to prove that out got it alright so beyond just featuring the stories of women in sports and fans and sports what does it look like to actively change power structures in sports in media from your perspective yeah i mean that's a great question and it's like you know i think for us we always say can one company really change the culture of sports and i think really what our goal is is to create a ripple effect so i mean i pull up the slides to kinda give you some context on how we view storytelling in our business and it really looks at not just what happening on the field but the impact that this consumer and this culture has on the ecosystem of sports culture so fashion beauty entertainment family and traditions and so you know when we think about that ripple effect it's it's both how can we change the conversation to make people ask the right questions that they think about this consumer but the reality is like one company can't change at all so one of the things that we're really proud of is being able to use our relationships and use kind of the ethos and the mission of our business to create sports as far as like the working in sports ecosystem more accessible to latinos because the reality is that if things are going to change people in the decision making seats need to either have lived these experiences to bring up this consumer to think about things differently from all the way down to the fan experience or see the value because of the data and things that we provide yeah are there any misconceptions about women in sports that you're really excited to dismantle especially now that you've got so much data i mean it's all of it i think in that sentence right there are women in sports yeah we've always been an afterthought it's always been the exclusion from the field to the front office our narratives have always been missing our lenses that are leaning towards sports has always been has always been absent accent yeah yeah i mean i think i would add to that which is sports and and women's sports in particular really is kind of this catalyst and this gateway to culture i mean we're seeing it in real time happening from you know the amazing kind of self expression things that are happening in fashion and and these kinda tunnel of moments that these athletes are having and then that ripple effects into how young children and young girls are dressing to the music that they're playing and so i think for us like the biggest misconception is that sports and women's sports in particular right now really is this kind of gateway to culture other than just this growing asset but it is this opportunity for brands teams leagues to really change the culture conversation through the lens of sports yeah as you've been blazing this new trail with an audience that generally has has not been given the attention that they should have have you had some balance any particular pressures from the industry or traditional ways of doing things and interacting to be able to achieve your mission no and i think that's the beauty of of being a start up right it's it's we're we're a speed boat not a cruise liner i come from this heavy corporate sports marketing background so i have a lot of biases i love having this partner in crime who she's just like let's do it like you know she has none of that bias of like this is the way traditionally it should be done in sports and marketing in those partnerships and that has been proven to work for us every single time so really glad that we have this partner yeah i i would say that like the entire like from the inception of this business has been to do things completely different yeah you know i think first starting with culture forward stories that no one really knows exists and so having to pool some of these stories whether that's sourcing them from international media outlets or even collecting those from our audience to even the the platforms and the mediums that we use you know i think what's really beautiful about media is that it's really the opportunity to democrat how we get at information now and so we're really leaning on social because we know that that's that social media is where culture and popular culture starts we know it's where that consumer learns about these stories or learns about things and either gets inspires or educate or shares and so it's it's kind of this a really fun bend diagram where we're looking at media and the way that content distribution happens in a modern way and we're looking and we're layering on a consumer that's really never been spoken to so i think when you think about our business there's really nothing quote unquote traditional from the get yeah how are you going about measuring success because like you said you're chart your own path you're doing things that haven't necessarily been done before how were you able to measure both what you're doing and the impact that it's having on the broader culture within sports and and media yeah and then please chime in but you know i think you can look at it obviously in two folds is quan and q approach right from a quan perspective just the sheer number of audience that we've accumulated very organically in a very short time but my personal favorite and what keeps me going every day is the qualitative feedback that we're getting and that we're measuring on a consistent basis always talking to our community but even just the inbound response has been just tremendous yeah i mean that's such a difficult question to ask because how how do you call like i quantify cultural impact but i think what excites me is more anecdotal and i think because we're so early in in our business is that it's hard to know the impact that we have maybe five ten twenty years from now but i think the number of messages that we get that say either i learned about someone that i didn't know about and i shared it or i i've always wanted to pursue golf as a young round girl but i didn't know if that was accessible but then you you shared a story or you shared a resource and now i know i i i can and so i think those are some of the ways that we directly and indirectly but i think what's even more exciting is because of our data because of kind of the mission of our business we're starting to see some of our data being used in other articles or people referencing those things or talking about some of those things and that all has its layers and perm and how culture is shaped so yeah i think there's some more feel good anecdotal but then you know that that data really is is helping us propel and you know i wanna add to that because i see our slide if you wanna pull up the dove example i think this is a really great example to your point of looking again at the how are we measuring impact we partnered with dove for a super bowl camp everybody knows you know that you have your hero commercial but then you have your anecdotal social media campaigns so dove had never done an in culture social forward campaign for super bowl they've always just translated it into spanish so when we worked with them and partnered we really leaned into this cultural insights and nuanced found that nuanced and made a flight of social assets that spoke to what it actually means to be a latin athlete in culture and that performed so well in terms of okay if you're looking at the dove original benchmarks for quote unquote general market that's a fifty fifty five percent engagement rate our assets had ninety six percent great engagement means so i mean they they were beyond thrilled and they're were like we need to do more of this yeah do you have you found as you've been going through that brands are adopting best practices from you all in terms of how to reach latin consumers because i feel like whenever i'm talking to different brands they think latin spanish mh done right have there other things that you have been able to help them say show them that they need to do to be able to be more effective with reaching this community yeah i mean i think this dove example is is prime but what and gu was mentioning that people are starting to note the latin phantom report but we'll jump on a client call or discovery call and they say we've heard about you which is the best compliment i get yeah i was like oh okay you know and my instinct to be like from where but like he was like it doesn't matter yeah doesn't matter where you know i i think it's it's interesting and i think there's kinda two pieces to this i think there are brands that are really excited about the kind of new approach that we're speaking to this consumer and come in really curious yeah you know and and i think those are the ones that we know are willing to take a little bit more of that risk with us and we're willing to push the boundaries like this dove one was amazing because these are real stories these are literal videos of these young girls and is was so fun to see their reaction so i think there's those that are coming to us with carrot with questions and i think those are the ones will we see opportunity and then those there's others that are still using historical data to say here's what we've done before how can you kind of intertwined and i think that's the part works difficult is that the reason why we exist to to change the way things have been done and so you know i think the more that we continue to grow and kind of create this incredible community that advocates for us as a whole we'll get more of those curiosity than here's how we've done things in the past okay i've got another podcast recommendation for you it's mistakes that made me hosted by ema ism and is brought to you by the hubspot podcast network the audio destination for business professionals mistakes that made me is a podcast that asks extraordinary business owners to share their biggest mistake so you know what not to do on here road to success i was a guest a little while back on this show and i had really great time talking to y on i have listened to so many episodes of this show they are really juicy really meaty and it's just beautiful telling throughout here's an episode that you might enjoy putting all your client eggs in one basket with steve fallen listen to mistakes that made me wherever you get your podcasts so as you're working on telling these stories that haven't historically been told and that the community is really responding to and reflecting are there things that you have been doing to ensure that these stories are changing the way marketers and decision makers at different companies are able to think about how they might need to be considering this community or approaching their community especially as they're putting into their strategies and plans yeah i mean i think there's a lot of layers sir i think first and foremost like i said we're social first so i think that i think that has been really great for us because you know one of the things that we're really excited about is how the latin latino demographic is really growing in the states and really is kinda becoming this mainstream consumer and so i think for us like using social as that touch point has been how we're able to really tell those stories but i think the other one that's really interesting is i were english first and that one always perks up a lot of years because in this funny we're looking at a spanish one but this is an exception to the exception but i think what's i think that's one of the things that people are always really curious about because i think hispanic consumer and they think spanish first i think when you see all and the reality is that this next generation is either a couple of generations away from having been having learned spanish but still identifies some of the you know span kind of elements of of how we speak but they're consuming you know both soccer on del and watching you know netflix and selling sunset and you know so it's really this multi dimensional consumer which is why english is really important to us because we speak to her in culture not necessarily in which and i can elaborate to an example of like what does in culture mean so for this dove example yes you know the the visual asset was in spanish but we lean on this insight that is in our culture we get labeled with nickname that describe our body right la skinny go heavy chap short and it you know dove is all about body confidence in owning that we get put those labels on on us so we've kind of flipped the script and said this is an insight this is seen as normal but it is harmful so how do we take that word and that description and flip it on its head yeah you might say i'm going to beat that but i think that i'm powerful yeah and so that's that cultural insight and even though the assets were in spanish again that qualitative engagement and the feedback in the comments was oh i i see myself i've been hog go hour i'm hour or i'm talk about eat that so it's that cultural insight so you mentioned earlier this whole thought of redefining what mainstream consumer or the general market consumer is and we hear a lot of whatever brands we're thinking about they've got general markets or and then they've got everyone else and they think about them possibly as like silos or separate types of budgets they need to be thinking about our campaigns but this is really what you're starting to call a new general market and they need to start thinking about latin in particular as part of their overall general market how has it been going for you to sort of redefine the way in which brands are thinking about who their market is and how they are approaching them yeah i mean what's really cool is that everyday less and less it's about how we redefine but it's how culture is being redefined you know like i'm not making bad money stream the most in the world it's because the music speak so loudly to this audience into the general market and so i think it's it's things that are happening kind of outside of our control that are really being a really powerful catalyst for us like like bad bunny effect and having people who've never spoken spanish and we don't even really have a lot of context with hispanic culture but are really enjoying his music and are starting to then poke around and maybe listen to carroll g or becky g or you know starting to ask all the right kind of questions around how they can explore their own cultural nuances for themselves and so i think for us like we're just adding to what already exists and reflecting what already exists so there's you know that fun kind of elements and then there's the demographic growth i mean there's thirty million and growing latin is in the united states and one in every four gene alpha will identify latin in the next kind of decade and so those are numbers that we're just all we're doing is we're a reflection of what's already happening in our audience and in our community and across the country and we're serving this this kind of under celebrated consumer and i think those really savvy cmos are seeing that and understanding that especially from the lens of sport you have this gen z gen author they're not engaging with traditional sport they're not watching broadcast they wanna see the clips they're not really interested in game plays just show me the highlights show me the tunnel fit so they're internally having these conversations and they're seeing the data we're you know we're just providing it on a on a platform for them alright so i know your your company is still very young but thinking forward if you could wave a magic wand what would the sports media industry look like in two thousand and thirty which is not too far thirty that's not what are we we're almost there so yeah no tomorrow yeah i mean it's an interesting question and mean maybe two thousand thirty might not be the right time frame but i and i think my dream would be that a business like ours isn't needed and that's like a really in that's a really weird answer because why would i wanna put myself out of business yeah but i think the reason we exist as to serve audiences that's under celebrated and i think my vision would be that this exists across all media channels it a media channel and company just for latin sports culture is one of everything you know we've seen it on whether it's something like espn or more of these other media outlets i think that is my vision is that a young girl sees herself reflected across all media channels whether that's prince commercial you know mainstream television athletes and so you know i think for us is like we really see ourselves as the one kind of opening the conversation and our goal is that others kind of pick those pieces and they integrate that into their into their business structure yeah i'll add to that you know by two thousand and thirty i hope not to be in the exact same spot in terms of the macro women sports we're seeing this hockey stick moment i hope we can continue to have some of that equity or even more playing time coverage the data in the research shows that you know female athletes are bringing in more attention more viewership so if by twenty thirty it has to just be even better place than where we are right now are there any trends specifically in terms of how the industry is changing that you are most excited about in terms of what the potential is and the opportunity is to really sort of change things and disrupt what has been for so long you know i love our lens on things we're we're not coming out at it just play by play sports it's the ultra of sports yeah on them is a spectrum right yeah i could be a die hard you know i i love the green bay packers you know i may not know everything about soccer versus she knows everything about soccer and she's like wait who's playing today who you know what what's going on right or you know i'm a big women's basketball fan and she's casual so it's a spectrum and i love how we're looking at it from this wider lens of fashion music food community than just a play by play yeah i mean i think i'm really excited about the the way that technology has changed the information that's available to to people into consumers and so you know when we look at sports consumption now most of it for gen z is happening on social media which means that you know they're watching highlights on tiktok or on instagram they're talking about it with their friends you know through some of these social channels and so i'm most excited about how the content can continue to evolve with consumption behavior and how we can continue to find this consumer where they already are and giving them really amazing stories and giving them really great resources that speak to them directly i think you know i think that's really the amazing thing with how media has changed is that it's really more about interest rather than social and so how can we continue to use technology to our advantage to meet this consumer where they are so that they start to change their their perspective alright so this is a two part question what advice would you give to other women who want to change the game and disrupt a male dominated industry and also what advice would you give to men who were seeing women entering into a male dominated industry because i know you probably have experienced advice on both sides of banks from what you wish existed and what you've learned that you can share in impart yeah you know when you asked that question i immediately go back to corporate life from the mail perspective i had some really great of sponsors and champions you know mentors are mentors but you need a sponsor to speak your name and rooms that you are not in already and i had some amazing male counterparts speaking my names and rooms and giving me opportunities in that corporate sense in terms of trying to break through from a female perspective it's like just keep showing up and stick together i think that's really beautiful what we're seeing within our community is that we have thousands of women supporting each other hey i applied for this job what do you know know does anybody know anybody here at this sports organization or at this media outlet so it's sticking together and then just continuing to push to push through what advice would i have just create your own company right no great yes or no but i think i think the advice that i have is when we think about like our internal lived experiences is we sometimes feel that those are disadvantages and that we have to kinda keep those at bay in order to fit the status quo of whatever room you're in but the reality is like this company is so powerful because of the fact that we pull from our personal live stories and experiences as a queer woman as an immigrant as la and i think we don't realize that these nuances of ourselves are really this quote unquote superpower and those are the things that change culture that a weighed that we you know a marketing tactic can be perceived because we use our voice and say hey this is this is how i've seen it this is how i've lived and so i really would encourage more women to pull from their personal lived experiences and not be a ready to talk about them and use that as an innovation opportunity because nobody has lived the life that you live and nobody has the insights that you have and so how do we use that to our advantage and i think if i'm looking at it from a male perspective i think what jen said is if as a male i'm in a room when i look around and i don't see you know female counterparts how can i break sure to bring in at least one other person or advocate for others because it sometimes unfortunately the way society works is that we as women don't always get access to those rooms and not only do we not get access we don't even know sometimes those rooms exist and so it is you know the job of the people who are in those rooms to to know hey there's something missing here hey there's someone missing here and and that's how we can continue to really shape things and and make things a little bit better by advocating for the right people in the right rooms very cool last question rapid fire what is one thing that she would recommend that everyone here can do to support women who were working to change the game in sports my gosh i don't know why i'm blanking watch driven sports yeah watch women's sports buy women's sports stuff but i think it's i think it's exactly what i said is you know how are we you how do we utilizing our relationships to make things better and how are we just inviting that one extra person to the room i think we are sitting here because people have raised their hands and advocated for us quite literally on this stage because someone raised their hand and said we needed to be here and and sometimes opening that door really can change the entire trajectory of someone's life or someone's career or someone's perspective so i think you know together is better alright thank you so much this has been so insightful on a lot of fun and thank you all for being here and joining us today i still enjoyed that conversation with the drafted team and i'm really enjoying following along with what the draft team is doing and how they are making an impact and change the narrative about latin latinos as consumers for the better now if you're liking this show i would so appreciate it if you would leave rating and review report and your podcast player of choice it really does go a long way towards helping more people discover the show also are you getting the inclusion and marketing newsletter each week i send news resources voice of the customer tips and more to help you attract and retain a bigger more diverse fiercely loyal customer base go to inclusion and marketing dot com slash newsletter to get signed up i'm also gonna drop a link for you in the show notes so you can access it easily until next time remember everyone deserves to have a place where they belong let's use our individual and collect the power to ensure more people feel like they do thanks so much for listening talk to you soon

buyer personas are a foundational component of the marketing strategy for many brands personas often serve as a blueprint that guides marketing campaigns customer journeys and even product development even though buyer personas are highly effective they often fall short in providing sufficient context that marketers need to effectively serve the various identities their ideal customers possess and as a result aren't converting certain consumers at the rates that they could be so today we're gonna walk through how traditional buyer personas fall short with helping brands tracks and convert more of their ideal customers and of course how to fix it we're gonna get into all of that after this short break did you know that most businesses only use twenty percent of their data that's like reading a book with most of the pages torn out or paying for a coffee that's just one fifth full point is you miss a lot unless you use hubspot their customer platform gives you access to the data you need to grow your business the insights trapped in emails kellogg logs and transcripts all that unstructured data that makes all the difference because when you know more you grow more and when you get a full cup of coffee you can do more two but i digress visit hubspot dot com today alright so as a inclusive marketing strategist and consultants one of the things that i do with my clients is audit various components of their customer experience this often includes reviewing and providing feedback on their creative brief as they are working on creating campaigns it also involves getting consumer feedback on what they produce as well in almost every instance whenever i flag materials that can be improved when it comes to consumer specific identities brands have included in their creative brief specific buyer personas that the brand wants to target now this is a sample traditional buyer persona for a software company that makes editing software for social media and the persona specifically that i'm gonna walk you through is for creator carmen the age rage for creative carmen is eighteen to thirty four race ethnicity is hispanic in the highest level of education completed is a bachelor's degree from a personal bio description of creator carmen carmen is an aspiring creator who dreams of going full time she built her audience through written posts and image based content but knows platforms now prioritize video since she doesn't have the budget now to outsource she's looking for affordable tools to let her produce high quality professional looking content herself she often learned new skills through youtube tutorials creator communities and from observing design elements from creator videos on social she gravitate towards brands that feel approachable supportive and align with her values now creator carmen goals and objectives are to grow her audience trust and profile as a creator she also wants to create engaging professional videos quickly across multiple platforms and she also wants to utilize popular editing features and techniques that make content stand out visually biggest challenges for creator carmen most editing work happens on cell phones and carmen wants an intuitive desktop solution also she wants to repurpose multiple clips across formats with ease such as youtube shorts instagram meals in linkedin and that's not always the easiest thing to do she also wants access to affordable royalty free music and built in captions she doesn't want to be overwhelmed with steep learning curves with complex editing software also she doesn't wanna deal with monthly memberships that aren't cost effective for creators who are just starting out alright so that's the creator carmen by buyer persona however as i've been reviewing these buyer personas and these creative brief and all these materials for different brands the execution of the materials often hasn't been so successful because the personas which are very much like creator carmen lack the depth of information about the various identities of the consumers a brand wanted to reach and as a result the campaigns often fail to effectively engage consumers who are part of underrepresented in underserved communities that also fit the buyer persona profile making them feel seem supported and like they belong and as a result the resulting of often fail to effectively engage consumers who are part of underrepresented and underserved communities that also fit the buyer persona profile and that doesn't do a good job of making these consumers feel seen supported and likely they belong so here are some examples of challenges that arise with these types of personas now it should be noted that these are all complaints that i've heard directly or seen consumers commenting on in various channels so we'll often see magazine covers that don't have plus size people featured we'll see general market ads that don't feature any hispanic consumers we'll see website pages that don't take into account accessibility features to support consumers with disabilities we'll see ads that feature of people from underrepresented and underserved communities but lacks cultural intelligence elements or messaging that doesn't speak to their needs or objections and we'll see visual imagery that features people from underrepresented underserved communities in a stereotypical way consumer identities are often a parts of their decision making process it's very important to remember that every consumer has identities that influence what they buy and who they buy from whether they know it or not for instance i'm a black woman i'm left handed i follow gluten free diet for health reasons my husband is a spanish speaking immigrant and together we have a mixed race bilingual child as both a consumer and a business owner and more instances than not at least one of these aspects of my identity influences what i buy for example as a business owner i often look for success stories from other business owners who looked like me after relocating to the us from buenos aires when we went to buy a car my husband jonathan and i chose our salesperson based on whether or not they spoke spanish when i buy clothes dolls and toys for luna i intentionally look for options where the images reflect girls who have curly hair and match her skin for other consumers at times they don't have the choice of considering their identity when it comes to making buying decisions because the societal influences shape their experiences and how others respond to and or engage with them in a manner that is different from other people who are part of what has traditionally been considered to be mainstream so it's to illustrate i worked with a client who had both service providers and the end consumer as parts of their customer base during research we often heard from service providers at aspects of their identity including race ethnicity and gender impacted the way they were treated while doing their work their identity did not impact how well they were able to perform at their craft but their identity sometimes impacted the kinds of experiences they had with others that wasn't the case for people with identities that were part of the quote unquote mainstream so as consumers our identities are a core parts of who we are most consumers don't compartment or separate their identities when it comes to the buying process even if marketers aren't necessarily considering identity or in confusing it effectively into personas their identity is so ingrained they might not even realize how much it is a part of their decision making process and if marketers don't ask about it during research it may never even come up as a point of consideration and therein lies the disconnect between many buyer personas and the consumers they are intended to represent as a marketer it's important to remember that the customers you serve are both consciously and unconsciously looking for an answer to this fundamental question when engaging with your brand is this product for someone like me you've heard me say this for and that someone like me could be a variety of things it could be a solo someone who isn't in tech savvy someone who is neuro diver someone who speaks english as a second language a woman someone with a bigger body frame someone with shirt hair someone of the kids without kids who was single who was married who practices hindu who's a gay male and immigrant someone with a disability someone who was fifty three and the list goes on and on and on and on now if a consumer doesn't feel like what you have to offer is for someone like them they will move on to something or someone else and as a brand it becomes difficult to clearly and quickly communicate that your brand is for the specific identities of the people who have the problem your brand solves if you haven't specifically called out those identities and acknowledge them in your personas so even though a neuro consumer fits one of your buyer persona categories to a t that doesn't feel like he will feel seen supported or like he belongs with your brand with the marketing you produce especially if there's no mention of any aspects of his identity in your personas alright so after this short break we're gonna walk through what to do instead how to make your buyer personas more effective okay i've got another podcast recommendation for you it's mistakes that made be hosted by ema ism and is brought to you by the hubspot podcast network the audio destination for business professionals mistakes that made me is a podcast that asks extraordinary business owners to share their biggest mistake so you know what not to do on your road to success i was a guest a little while back on this show and i had really great time talking to on i have listened to so many episodes of this show they are really juicy really meaty and it's just beautiful storytelling throughout here's an episode that you might enjoy putting all your client eggs in one basket with steve fallen listen to mistakes that made me wherever you get your podcasts okay so when it comes to customer acquisition one of the core tenants is choosing the specific identities you want to serve as customers by using the identities you chosen to serve into your buyer personas you'll set up your brand to get the insight and foundation needed to effectively serve all the consumers you desire to now there are two ways you can approach this the first is to add identity layers within your personas this involves taking your existing persona as in adding in more of the identity based context that will be helpful for you as a marketer to actually execute on in your work it's always a good idea when data can inform the identity based layers you want to include bonus so whatever data you can access about your ideal consumers from an identity standpoint dig into it to help you assess which identities you want to include if you can't access that data from your own internal or third party data sources consider sourcing this type of information from a survey from one on one interviews or other direct engagement means that way you can start to build the layers of the identities of these different consumers and weave them into your buyer persona profiles and then once you have more specifics about what the identities are be intentional about clearly and quickly communicating that what you have to offer is for people like them throughout your customer journey so building off that earlier example of creator carmen here's what adding in more identity based information will look like so for right now to start off all of it looks the same but what we've added is more details about her identity so in one variation creator carmen has a disability specifically she's visually impaired in another version creator carmen the identity that we've added is she's an emma immigrant and she's speaks and reads english but prefers to learn about new concepts in spanish by the way i speak spanish it's my second language i speak it every single day to my family but if you give me something to learn about or something to read while i can read spanish a hundred percent hands down every time i'm gonna choose to read it in english if there is an opportunity for me to do so on the last aspect of this for creative carmen is she is in a latin now i'm not saying that creator carmen has all of these three individual identities i'm just highlighting that additional identities that creator carmen could have are she could be latin she could be in immigrant there's another version of creator carmen who has a disability right now while knowing these facts alone might be helpful to include in the narrative if you enter your marketing team don't know how being visually impaired how being an a latino or how speaking english with this spanish preference potentially influences in it impacts these three versions of creator carmen decision making process and by our journey then that information alone isn't useful so my recommendation is to infuse more nuance information into your personas like this so for creator karma specifically creator carmen who has a disability and who's visually impaired we're adding in more nuance by creating a separate section that incorporates the biggest disability related challenges and frustrations of creator carmen those include because of her disability editing videos on her phone is more cumbersome she prefers to work and edit on her desktop because the interface is bigger and she can more easily tap into her external tools that help her when working a second challenge and frustration is that disability representation is extremely scarce in comparison to the people who have disabilities around the world carmen likes to see people like her achieving success with the brands that she's engaging with and buying from another challenge frustration that not enough brands talk about their accessibility features she's never really sure if a brand has accessibility and just isn't talking about them or if there aren't any accessibility features which would add more friction to her user experience and lastly the user experience for accessibility focus features is off clunky and takes a bunch of extra steps to access it doesn't feel like equal access at all and more like a check box than an afterthought so having this additional context for creator carmen knowing that there are versions of creator carmen who meet the right profile who have these goals and objectives and challenges that are specifically related to the product or services that you're offer that's helpful but we also have to go one layer deeper to consider how carmen identity adds additional challenges frustrations and wishes that will help you do a better job of serving her once you've got this information supplement your identity related challenges frustrations and wishes with supporting documentation that serves as a guide book of what's different for creator carmen experiences because of her disability versus creator carmen who doesn't so you can show up well for the various versions of creator carmen that you want to reach customer interviews folks group social and other secondary sources can help you get the cultural intelligence you need related to identity alright the second approach that you can take is building identity specific personas so depending upon what your suite of buyer personas looks like or is categorized by you might find that there are times when having a buyer persona specific to certain identities is helpful this works well in the instances where it may be necessary to create specific products or features communications experiences and even core messaging designed just for them for instance let's say one of your product offers includes a customer segment of children under the age of eighteen the needs experiences expectations and ethics associated with how our brand communicates with them would be sufficiently different that it could be harder to make personas with identity specific layers to work here's another example for you and this clip that i'm gonna play for you we've got email marketing strategist ism explaining how her muslim faith identity has impacted her when it comes to business events brands that host any kind of event and who want to create a space where muslim attendees feel seen and supported and likely belong could really benefit from creating a separate identity specific persona k i'm muslim and then i feel like it's different i'm visibly muslim you can see from the clothes iowa when you look at me you can see that muslim isn't always the case with man or with other women as while sometimes i'm a mother so loads identities but the the one that is kind of most at the forefront when it comes to events for me is the fact that i muslim and so i don't drink i don't drink alcohol but it's more than that i i don't basically put myself in environments where alcohol is the main you know thing that's the main attraction the main attraction exactly okay so you wouldn't really find me in in a bar and a pub and people got confused because like yeah but you can still come but just like donate like a alcohol like drink orange juice i don't know but it's it's it's not just about the drinking of the alcohol it's it's the bai environment as well yeah and i have found basically that it's been really difficult a lot of events are centered around alcohol business events centered around alcohol and even if it's not like really over like the the day i was looking at in a a business event and i was like oh i'm so excited like because i don't go to a lot of business events where i am and it was pizza and bare like the title of the event was pizza and bear is really i was really excited about that one so if it's not really over like that then it's like the environment that i sent it's it's the networking in event or even i don't know i i wanna say a club but it's not quite good it's it's still it's like bar dancing let's all like you know have a great time which is fine but also it would be really great if there were some alternatives so it would be that would be really great because you know the thing is is muslims who who practice the way i practice just won't attend these events we we were excluded for these events even though we want to join them we wanna be included and we wanna take part and we wanna get involved and and then you know there people have conversations about well this community or that community you well they don't integrate with us well you know we don't see them they're just not hit well this yeah usually there's a reason why you don't see them you know and so that's something i found really difficult i recently spoke at an event there was the networking part of the event of the evening like all got together and like let's get know to the and both nights it was in in a bar and so i wasn't able to and i chose not to not to attend and it was i mean it's fine because i know i i make that decision and i was actually fine just going back to my hotel and i need to practice my talk and whatever else but also you know i did miss out on business opportunities i missed out on meeting and people it's yeah it's between the you know the talks and stuff that and when you've trying of people you get to know people that relationships are built yeah business opportunities are built so i'm very aware of what's being missed and so that's the first challenges that alcohol is events being centered around alcohol so the other one is again it's related to to my religion but i will say that even if it wasn't related to my religion i think i'd i'd still have exactly the same issue just because of my personality and i also just wanna make the like disclaimer that i don't represent muslims limbs i don't speak for all muslims just like you'll see different variations of different people from different religions from the same religion living in different ways i basically don't engage in in physical touch with men who aren't unrelated to me so it's similar to me wearing in my her job my scarf i don't only the males who are related to me can see we'll see me without my head sc basically in in the same way i only physically touched males who are related to me and so this causes an issue when i go to events and forget handshake because we're so yeah past han like that was like that was an issue ten years ago now everybody is like hogan everyone yeah which is great if you're a h yeah but i'm not a h the best of times i was like let's put my religion to one side and so it creates a situation where i'm at events and of course i don't blame anyone because the normal like natural thing that we're used to on this side of the world because yeah just to be clear on the all sides of the world and all place in the world this this isn't normal on outside of the world in the west you would take some one hand so i then have to like prepare a little like thing where i let them know in very quickly under a lot of pressure because you have like a split second yeah in this situation if well well i wanna make the other person feel uncomfortable i wanna embarrass them i don't wanna make them feel where in any way you can yeah but i have to i say hey i'm so sorry i don't i don't say kinds i don't hope body it's really great to me i'm so excited to meet you you know etcetera etcetera and then we just kinda like trying to move along and this last event i went to it went really well but i just spent the entire two days literally duck out of hooks and avoiding hugs oh know from men specifically we could with women i and it was usually women that i knew and that i felt comfortable with they'd hug me and if be fine with men specifically i'd like dodging hugs the for the whole two days to the point my my friend who was with me she was like i'm exhausted just watching this like i don't know how you're deal with this alright so i learned so many really great things from that conversation with yam on that i i just did not know and wasn't aware of before and that's the beauty of talking to customers were able to learn and pick up and add more details and layers into our personas that help us do a better job of serving more people if you're interested in listening to my entire conversation with oman tune into episode number one hundred thirty had to plan more inclusive business events with oman ism and i will also drop a link to that in the show notes so you can access it easily alright it's time to make your buyer personas more effective buyer personas are really powerful now imagine what they will do for your business and your growth and your effectiveness and conversions when you create them in a manner that lets them operate at their full potential move beyond traditional buyer personas to incorporate important elements of identity your ideal customers are using to make buying decisions and the payoff is more authentic campaigns more conversions and greater impact alright i wanna hear from you how are the buyer personas that you are creating for your brand are they detailed do they incorporate things related to identity could they use some work let's continue the conversation are i really am interested in how you are approaching this and how you feel it is impacting the work that you were able to do an impacting in the effectiveness of it another check for you are you getting the inclusion and marketing newsletter each week i send news resources stories voice to the customer all kinds of goodies to help you attract and retain a bigger more diverse and fiercely loyal customer base go to inclusion and marketing dot com slash newsletter to get signed up i'll also drop a link to it in the shown below so you can access it easily until next time remember everyone deserves to have a place where they belong let's use our individual and collect power to ensure more people feel like they do thanks so much for listening talk to you soon

performance marketing is a popular strategy brands are using to grow but here's the challenge too often inclusion and specifically inclusive marketing gets left out of that equation that means many performance marketers are missing huge opportunities to connect with underrepresented and underserved communities and as a result they're leaving money on the table no bueno so that's why i sat down with laura lee a growth marketing expert fractional cmo founder of ll l consulting and board member of asians in advertising in our conversation we talked about where brands are falling short and how marketers can do a better job of engaging underrepresented and underserved communities especially in the world what they are increasingly more and more powerful so much insights to glean from this chat with laura and we're gonna dive right into it after this short break did you know that most businesses only use twenty percent of their data that's like reading a book with most of the pages torn out or paying for a coffee that's just one fifth full point is you miss a lot unless you use hubspot their customer platform gives you access to the data you need to grow your business the insights trapped in emails colleagues logs and transcripts all that unstructured data that makes all the difference because when you know more you grow more and when you get a full cup of coffee you can do more too but i digress visit hubspot dot com today hey laura thanks so much for joining me today how are you i'm good thank you thank you so much for having me totally my pleasure i'm really excited about the conversation that we're gonna have today but before we get too deep into that lets people know who are you and what do you do amazing yes so i'm laura lee and my digital media and growth marketing executive and founder of l consulting my focus is really to partner with b2c c and d organizations to drive growth and performance i launched my consult to really help to democrat access to this expertise you know providing fractional opportunities and kind of consulting and advisory my hope is that the support that i can provide really helps to motivate and grow inclusive communities to really launch and launch their brand launch their product you know whether it's women or aap api founders for me i'm really trying to help consumers find these products and really help them find success in the ways that these deserve and the reason why this is really important to me is because this goal really ties to my not just professional commitments but also my personal passion so i'm a strong advocate for diversity and inclusion this led me to becoming the board chair vice chair of agents and advertising along with involvement in many additional communities like chief for awakening wisdom so for me it's really just how do i balance things and really help things come full circle to to really connect what i do for my day to day and what i kind of really connect to my personal passions very cool very cool i know there are somebody many wonderful reasons to chat with you and i'm excited that we're able to have this conversation because i think you'll be able to tie a lot of these lessons specifically around performance marketing and the work that you're doing with agents in advertising in a way that'll really resonate with people so i'm curious from your point of view and the unique expertise that you have what would you say is the states of inclusion in performance marketing so right now i think inclusion in performance marketing it's not an interesting crossroads right so i i think i read a a d and i study on digital marketing and reporting shows that inclusive campaigns really drive stronger results which is amazing to see right like results like twenty eight percent higher conversion rates or twenty percent improvement in roi but this happens when brands represent diverse audiences authentically and i think today consumers especially millennials and gen z are they're actually choosing brands based on how inclusive they are right so the execution it really hasn't caught up to the intention but i think the representation is kind of you know start working towards that that level that we're looking for there's a lot of inclusion that still i think a little bit surface level there's a lot of checking the box actions that are taking place as opposed to really telling authentic stories so i i really think you know when we think about it from a performance marketing angle the challenge that other advertiser phase is sometimes platform algorithms can kind of skew in the way that we don't intend for so like they can unintentionally create bias right so i think there's a a little bit of movement that we're seeing in the right direction you know things like ai and different data checks and tools are really helping to kind of mitigate some of those bias and kind of you know provide stronger engagement when it comes to multi multicultural campaigns but you know there's still some work to be done so awareness is high the this case is proven you're right but the industry still working through what those real gaps are and try to figure out how to tie representation with kind of what that you know process and accountability looks like today for sure for sure the good news like you said is the intention is there and i think that like with time we will get better we move we will move more closely to what consistently good inclusive marketing looks like and that's just good marketing right overall right do you have any other specific areas of that you have identified as missed opportunities for brands as you're thinking about performance marketing and how to use it as a way to engage people from underrepresented and underserved communities yeah i mean i think if i think about performance marketing as a whole and then we will kinda like double click into performance with inclusion like let's talk ai right everyone wants to be ahead of the game everyone wants to find ways to integrate tools and technologies that really incorporate ai right there's a really really popular quote going around it's by the economist richard baldwin and he said ai won't replace you but someone using ai will right like everyone's kind of like we gotta say ahead of the game gotta make sure that we're not getting replaced by someone else who's using it so my take on this is that ai should be at that it's a tool that should amplify human potential right it needs to help increase innovation help increase creativity but it can't be used to reduce human oversight and so where i think this connects into what we think about from like an inclusive marketing perspective is we have to make sure that we're not relying on over automation right we have to put those checks and balances in place really find ways to avoid like algorithms just letting it run because then this leads to poor audience targeting pork creative messaging right and what we wanna do in inclusive marketing is really tie those things together so that you're really connecting authentically to your audiences and it's really feeling like it's more of a conversation and it's really moving past things like token and you can really dive into that very easily by just letting an algorithm do what it wants to do so this is where i think the human element needs to come in and really play that part to really give that layer that extra check that extra balance to make sure that you're really connecting the two together for sure for sure so i think that's i guess maybe a nice entry point as to the recommendations that you might have for how brands can get started engaging people from communities that are often or historically have been pretty ignored by brands in the past are there any other thoughts that you have on bra ways brands can get started in fusing different communities different identities into their performance marketing efforts yeah i think really like the the very best first step is really listening right understand the needs and the values and the behaviors of the communities that you wanna reach right don't just assume what might resonate don't just check a box right it's really making sure like your creative reflects those audiences authentically and you know i've sent this you know in the last last question as well but it's like not just in token visual right it's not just to say that we put someone who's diverse in a ad campaign but it's really speaking to how does it reach the the communities and the audiences in the way that it should so bring them into the process early rate props like partner with different diverse creators advisors influencers and make sure that the campaigns feel built with the audience in mind and not just at them and i think that's super important i actually saw an interview that the actor daniel kim he did recently and it's it's about ethnic specific casting right and he says interestingly like we're in a state of over correction which i think is like a really interesting state to be in right because we're all talking about diversity and inclusion but now we're kind of like overdo it to the point where we are kind of being counterproductive so i thought that was such an interesting take because i think that ties well to what we're thinking about from marketing perspective too where yes there are scenarios where it's really important to keep storyline or character you know at the discretion of like linguistic accuracy or like real historical figures but doing it just for the sake of it's really not solving any of the efforts right it's like it's just creating more problems so for me like finding that right balance is really key to help find representation in a way that's intentional and not in a way that's over correcting and coming off as less inclusive that's a good point i thought about this a lot and i think the challenge is with the over correction is that it's not a strategic decision mh and that there aren't enough unique stories that are told from the perspective of people with different identities exactly it feels like brands are saying oh wait like we need to make this inclusive like we've got a story that we wanna tell how can we make sure that we've got everyone sort of covered versus thinking we've got a story that we wanna tell about this community and then kind of going from there the second one that i just mentioned feels much more authentic and it enables you to much more effectively reach people versus whenever you're trying to tell like quote unquote universal story or generic story that doesn't have nuance or different cultures incorporated in it and then we just drop in what feels like you said token at the end and then it's it just feels not quite right yeah it feels forced right and yeah the thing is your consumers can sense that and they can feel it right and so that disconnection comes through in those types of decisions even though you've tried to make it a certain way it just doesn't come across in a way that doesn't feel organic so yeah i think that's something that a lot of brands and companies and you know or or really something that they're they need to look out for at this time yeah absolutely are there any skill sets or mindset that you feel performance marketers need specifically to help them do a better job of helping their clients or helping the brands that they're working on deliver authentic and effective of course campaigns to people from underrepresented and underserved communities i think on the skill side like it's very technical on the performance side right so it's about data fluency like how can you analyze campaigns that are actually reaching and resonating different audiences and this is like mh you'll see this back in the data right you know specific attribute attributes specific behaviors and what's kind of peaking and what's kind of not so making sure you can kinda read into that how do you now build a creative strategy that's aligning with all of those touch points that you're seeing data on i think and again you we're talking about authenticity like how do you do it in a way that feels authentic from a mindset perspective it's it's curiosity like that's key and i say that because experimentation is huge when it comes to performance marketing this is you know you're testing everything from the color that that's featured in an ad to the type of font to the type of audience to the type of domain right so like you're kinda testing it to all these things so you have to be una afraid to kind of really get there but i think when we think about it from an inclusive it's like you have to make sure you're not thinking about testing and learning as a one size fits all and this applies to different cultures communities right and so you have to kind of balance out that precision with like empathy and then kind of just see like what tracks from like a human experience perspective and kind of find that balance there yeah yeah i don't think i asked you this the beginning but how do you define performance marketing yeah so i mean i think a lot of people think you know marketing as holistic right which it definitely is everything has to connect together the performance marketing side is really kind of the results driven end of marketing so in very simple turns it's like when you optimize towards a really specific desire to action so this can be like a conversion or like a click right so you really want that user to take a specific action that's gonna in turn kinda give you some sort of result right it's really measurable it's data driven as i mentioned it's really centered ground experimentation you can find things like your optimal performance when it comes to different channel mix audiences like what does incremental mean like lifetime value these are the kinds of terms and things that you're looking for from a performance perspective yeah when you balance that out from a brand perspective right brand is really about like long game it's like yeah it's less about immediate action it's more about how do we build awareness and trust and like emotion to really create that with an audience so for me it's like how do you balance both out to make sure the you have performance you can't have one without the other and they can't succeed without each other right so yeah brand is kind of like planting the seeds and performance is like harvesting the crop right so you can't really you know find success without kind of those initial and crucial stages and for me to be successful in performance you have to understand like when can you pull the levers to harvest mh and when you need more of those seeds planted to kind of like get that base yeah so that's how you really balance it all out together i love that i love that i don't have a ton of experience on the performance marketing side but i i know i've talked enough about this and i'm curious from your perspective before you we move on to the next topic have you seen any real like as you're digging into the data because i do know that it's very data driven and you mentioned that are you seen differences and how brands need to optimize this is more general right but from time to time are there differences in how brands need to optimize for different identities based upon different journeys experience questions that they might have that would help them take the next step forward with a brand yeah i mean i think in general right like understanding that every community has its own unique cultural heritage their own nuances right so taking that into account is gonna be crucial like we cannot see all audiences as a broad segment you have to really think about how consumers behave and like even if you take cultural context out of this like a person who's buying an x product versus a person who's buying live product like those are two different experiences that you're gonna give this person when it comes to what type of that how do i wanna speak to this person how do i want to you know re engage with this person like those are all different and very unique journeys that you're taking each consumer through now you add on the layer of you know cultural influence and kind of what nationality plays and kind of ethnicity and all of those things you're just adding those elements into it so everything in my opinion to be successful is you have to see individual consumers as unique cases and you have to speak to them in that manner for it to be as successful as possible full yeah no i love that you say that i think it totally makes sense because none of us are exactly the same right there might be different trends or categories but yeah totally get that and he's okay i've got another podcast recommendation for you it mistakes that made me hosted by ema ism and is brought to you by the hubspot podcast network the audio destination for business professionals mistakes that made me is a podcast that asks extraordinary business owners to share their biggest stake so you know what not to do on here road to success i was a guess a little while back on this show and i had really great time talking to y on i have listened to so many epic episodes of this show they are really juicy really meaty and it's just beautiful storytelling throughout here's an episode that you might enjoy putting all your client eggs in one basket with steve fallen listen to mistakes that made me wherever you get your podcasts accessories that you have where you've seen brands really hone in on thinking about different communities or different identities of consumers specifically and then sort of incorporating that into their strategies as relates to performance marketing you know what i actually just saw i think this came out this week so it's very very recent but gap released a new ad it's called better and denim i don't know if you've seen it but it's yeah yeah i think it was for me it's an example of brand that really listened right it was a brand and an ad campaign that really listened you know there was some backlash right it's of another brand who did a denim campaign and yeah know i think it it learned from that right it it understood you know what is the key demographic that they wanted to lean into and they kind of like check the box of like tiktok s challenges right like i think that's gonna really be a success back here but in addition to that is thinking about like how do we utilize like diverse groups and they brought in cat's eye right very very popular on trend demographic is on trend in terms of like diversity and inclusion so it's really speaking to kind of the mission that they're trying to set forth and i think in the campaign itself they even talk about promoting individuality and self expression and uniqueness and even how to build community so i'm like this is one of the ones that like i feel like hit all the marks and i was like this is this is great i think they spoke to the audience appropriately yeah when you think about it from a brand from a brand perspective i think it's very successful when you think about it from a performance perspective it's like how are they gonna use this data now to now further saturate in the audiences that they're hoping to reach right really connect with the underserved ones and try to tie that messaging appropriately i think that's where they're gonna take it to the next step is like how do we now convert into sales by connecting into all those different audiences now that we've kind of let this like brand layer go out so yeah i think i think for for me like that one just i was like i think that one hit yeah yeah it was a really cool ad i i was it made me smile on and i enjoyed seeing it and i enjoyed seeing the reaction to it so it's nice to know that the data is there as well to support it okay let's switch gears a little bit you mentioned that you are on the board of agents and advertising and can you tell us a little bit more about that organization and how we as marketers can tap into and learn from the great work that you all are doing yes of course agents in advertising we're a five zero one three nonprofit we are over eight thousand global members and so we've grown tremendously since you know our inception and we're really here to support the a in hp community anyone in the advertising marketing media and creative fields we also are really open to educating allies and you know industry adjacent individuals as well but we're really built around supporting career growth personal development it's really about building community and advancing agents into leadership roles so we host events like speed networking we have our annual breaking barrier summit we have a c suite panel really like trying to unlock skills and how to really reach that level and kind of break that bamboo ceiling we also fund a leader's career coaching program and we also offer a mentorship program so we're trying to create community we're trying to build bridges and we're trying to provide opportunity for everyone in the community and so yeah you can follow us on linkedin on instagram or even find out more information on our website agents and advertising dot com well i love the work that you are doing and i was so excited whenever i stumbled across you all in the conference and i was really excited to see it so thank you for the work that you're doing there i'm curious what would you say is the states of inclusion and representation of asian consumers in advertising today like our brand's making progress so they doing a good job is there still a lot of work to to do yeah i think all of the above right i think there's some progress that's being made but i still think that there's some gaps right you know i think more brands are starting to feature asian faces and ads which is which is amazing i think it's great it's made a lot of movement but the representation currently i think tends to lean on stereotypes right or really like surface level inclusions rather than authentic storytelling which you know i know we've discussed a few times but i will give an example so i recently saw backlash for an ad campaign that was released by swatch i don't know if you saw this one but it not really spoke to kind of like yeah it's like inclusion in a token aspect right but really not reflecting audiences authentically right so the brand unfortunately they featured an asian model so in their mind they're like check check diversity inclusion right but then in the ad the model is now holding a sla of digest which is absolutely offensive it is counterproductive to the inc of the community so you know i think where brands can do better is going beyond just the visuals it's really involving you know asian authenticity asian mindset asian stories right it's really tailor that message i think the other key thing that we still have a lot of work to be done in is really treating asian audiences as like a rich nuance group and not just a single monolith there are so many countries right and so many different cultures that are part of this asian community so it's really understanding the differences there and kind of speaking to them appropriately yeah i was doing an interview with someone and we were talking about the hispanic community and they talked about i think and i i might get the number wrong they said it's twenty seven countries or national represented and so often in advertising it's just lumped as it just one big group without that nuance so i imagine it's a very similar thing of what you're describing there's a lot of countries yeah exactly exactly and they're all different they all have their own language they're own culture of their own right so it's like really understanding the nuances there for sure for sure alright tell me about a time when a brand made you feel like you belonged yeah i think for me it's not just like one brand or one example i think it's more like how does a brand make me feel right like was it meaningful in those moments where it was so memorable that you know for sure i did not have a visceral negative reaction like that's key right you have to like some of those examples i gave earlier like those are things that are gonna stick in my mind right so it's truly when an ad really targeted so appropriately that it evo the right feeling and i think like those are the moments that i think resonate most with with myself but also with kind of you know just the community in general but i think it's more about focusing on that and i think that's where brands can find the most success yeah where can people find you if they wanna learn more about you and your work yeah you can find me on linkedin under laura lee or also on my website it's team l l consulting dot com okay i will link that up in the show as well laura any parting words of wisdom for marketers and business leaders who wanna do a better job of in ent inclusion into their performance marketing efforts yes i just wanna double down on what you know we talked about earlier you know asking questions is key having curiosity for education is far more meaningful than relying on a quick assumption we don't wanna try to over include or exclude right so really allow inclusive communities to be part of the discussion it will really allow you to go that much further and so yeah i i really believe in that and i think that will really make make a lots of improvement there laura this has been fantastic thanks so much for stopping by i learned so much and i really enjoyed our discussion thank you so much for having me i really appreciated so much of the things laura had to say and i hope you did as well now if you found value in this conversation i would so appreciate it if you would share it with a friend a colleague and your network anyone who you think would benefit from hearing this conversation let's not gay keep the learnings and i'd just like to think that this means more people will be able to practice inclusive marketing more brands will be able to grow and more consumers will feel like they belong a win win win all around a quick question for you are you getting the inclusion and marketing newsletter if not like really what are you even doing we talk about this every week each week i send news resources insights commentary voice of the customer all kinds of goodness to help you attract and retain a bigger more diverse and fiercely loyal customer base go to inclusion and marketing dot com slash newsletter to get signed up and i will also drop a link for you in the show notes below until next time remember everyone deserves to have a place where they belong let's use our individual and collect power to ensure more people feel like they do thanks so much for listening talk to you soon

so i'm sure you've already heard the restaurant cracker barrel decided to change its logo though backlash was swift customers complained social media lit up and the brand even doubled down on their decision to change the logo then president donald trump weighed in soon after the brand reversed course and returned to its old logo who for marketers the saga is more than an interesting design debate it's a case study in values strategy and decision making in today's polarized marketplace and it leaves us with three overlooked lessons every brand leader needs to pay attention to so we're gonna get into those three lessons after this short break alright did you know that most businesses only use twenty percent of their data that's like reading a book with most of the pages torn to or paying for a coffee that's just one fifth full point is you miss a lot unless you use hubspot their customer platform gives you access to the data you need to grow your business the insights trapped in emails kellogg logs and transcripts all that un unstructured data that makes all the difference because when you know more you grow more and when you get a full cup of coffee you can do more too but i digress visit hubspot dot com today right so the first lesson and if you've listened to this podcast at any point in time you've probably heard me say something very similar to this and that's said brand values drive consumer decisions cracker barrel attempt at a new logo was to modernize the brand while staying true to its roots it worked hard to reassure consumers who were vocal about their dislike for the logo in various ways but for many who spoke up about their dislike for the change the new logo symbolize cracker barrel moving away from its core values and the meaning behind it no matter how often or how hard cracker barrel attempted to reassure irate consumers that it was maintaining its values and all the elements customers really cared about people couldn't get behind it values hold a lot of meaning for consumers one study from the harris poll show that eighty two percent of consumers want to buy from brands who share their values that same study showed a large percentage of customers have no problem leaving a brand if they feel their values are no longer aligned now as a result of this flip flop more consumers are asking what was the true reason cracker barrel reverse course after having already dug in their heels and for those consumers who are asking that it raises a red flag and signals that there is a values mis since changing back to the old logo cracker barrel has also removed diversity equity and inclusion and employee resource groups and pride pages from its website the lesson for marketers and business leaders is this brand values matter now more than ever everything you do communicates your brands values so make it clear what your values are communicate regularly how you're living those values and don't be afraid to stand firm on those values and what you believe is right even in the face of opposition the second lesson is all about who drives strategic direction for a brand now since spring of two thousand twenty one sales of cracker barrel have been in decline share prices were significantly lower and the brand needed to make decisions to improve its financial standing and began to grow again those changes were underway including a redesigned of stores a new campaign with country music star jordan davis and the logo change was a part of that the third quarter sales showed a small increase rather than a loss which signaled that the change the brand made were starting to work so with all the backlash and focus on the new logo and even more people complaining about the new look of the stores it brings up a very important question what voices should drive strategic direction of a brand of course brands should embrace what consumers have to say however there isn't always alignment between what consumers say on social media and actual consumer behavior julie fell mass casino is the ceo of cracker barrel here's a brief clip of her talking to michael str from good morning america about the feedback that she'd been hearing about the change in the stores for cracker barrel asked this question i actually got bright know to answer what if all the customers are coming at you hard enough about the look at the restaurant and they wanna go back to the old way would you do it honestly the feedback been overwhelmingly positive that people like what we're doing i'll give you another sound bite i actually happened to be in orlando last week with all of our managers we bring them together and once i every other year and the number one question that i gotta asked michael was how can get a remodel when can i get a remodel how do i get on the list oh really so because the the feedback and the buzz is so good not only from our customers but from our team members they wanna work in a in a wonderful restaurant so we're doing everything for our guests and our team members in that same interview she also mentioned that much of the work that brian had done was a result of direct feedback and collaboration from both consumers and employees now i believe that all the careful planning and strategy that went into executing the core steps involved in the turnaround cracker barrel where what caused the company initially to double down on keeping their revised logo where what caused the company initially to double down on keeping their revised logo while reassuring consumers that all the things they loved about the brand were remaining turning a business around does require listening to the voice of the customer like i mentioned and it also requires looking at data looking at your business holistically market pressures resources and other factors to identify what the right strategy should be it appeared as that the brand was working hard to maintain control of its own narrative as well as its approach to turning the business around not all that appeared to change once politics got involved president trump made a post on truth social saying that cracker barrel should change the logo back and admit they were wrong a day later cracker barrel decided to change logo back and after deciding to change logo back someone in trump's cabinet post on x that the leadership at cracker barrel had spoken with the administration and in cracker barrel response on x to this person in trump's cabinet they reiterated that they wanted president trump to know that they changed the logo as a public we don't know if that conversation weighed directly on cracker barrel decision to go back to the old logo or not but the post itself and cracker barrel response to it raises questions at what point are brand decisions based upon politics and the influence of leaders in a political realm again politicians don't have a view of the brand's financials strategy customer insight work or other data doctor anastasia carolina gabriel is a culture expert in author of cultural intelligence for marketers gabriel says that brands are descending deeper and deeper into a dangerous territory in this political climate in regards to the federal government which exceeds online commentary from everyday consumers with this in mind businesses must think not only about balancing research with potential backlash but also about how their values align or not with the political machinery of our time gabriel went on to ad that brands have choice to make about how they will run their businesses she says the balance is no longer just about strategy but about comp simplicity whether businesses accept their role as instruments of political power or stand against being c opted into political agendas and continue making business decisions that are data driven in commercially sound regardless of politicized narratives attached to them so the lesson for marketers and business leaders is this proactively decide how the political climate and political pressures will influence your decision making politicians have their point of view consumers have their point of view and as a leader be clear about what will and what will not influence your decisions about how to run your business so after this short break we're gonna get into the last lesson that marketers should take from this saga okay i've got another podcast recommendation for you it's mistakes that made be hosted by ema ism and is brought to you by the hubspot podcast network the audio destination for business professionals mistakes that made me is a podcast that asks extraordinary business owners to share their biggest mistake so you know what not to do on your road to success i was a guest a little while back on this show and i had really great time talking to y on i have listened to so many episodes of this show they are really juicy really meaty and it's just beautiful storytelling throughout here's an episode that you might enjoy putting all your client eggs in one basket with steve fallen listen to mistakes that made me wherever you get your podcasts alright so the last lesson from this whole cracker barrel logo saga is all about market research versus social listening so one of the ways brands can minimize surprises about negative reactions to what they produce is by involving the people you want to serve in the planning and creation process another way to get a read on how consumers feel is to test messages with a representative sample of the people you are trying to reach it appears that the cracker barrel team did all that at least with their store redesign process git mentioned they spent a lot of time talking to consumers talking to their employees to figure out what changes were most needed and yet still they face an onslaught of frustrating comments from consumers on social media so should a brand ditch everything they heard during market research if what is said on social media is vastly different and negative bryant is chief consultant at site set a customer insights consultancy bryant said that brands should be evaluating what consumers are actually doing such as whether or not they're still eating at cracker barrel and shopping at the stores brand leaders should also take the time to evaluate if what is being said on social media is a reflection of what they're seeing in sales numbers and other standard metrics brian added the research may actually be sound but it may be that the biggest issue is that they're framing their market research effectiveness through the lens of social media so the lesson for marketers and business leaders is this decide in advance how to measure the sense of a campaign and what the appropriate lenses are to evaluate feedback that you get on a campaign or a particular product or experience social media commentary may or may not be or a reflection of the opinions of the consumers of brand wants to reach so if what the brand is doing isn't causing harm isn't culturally inappropriate in some way to specific communities then taking the time to base decisions on data is worthwhile alright i wanna hear from you what are your thoughts on this whole cracker barrel logo saga send me an email shoot me a dm let's talk about it on social i wanna hear what you're thinking what your thoughts are in what lessons you've taken away from this whole thing another quick question for you are you getting the inclusion and marketing newsletter each week i send news resources voice of the customer commentary on important lessons you need to know all designed to help you attract from and retain a bigger more diverse and fiercely loyal customer base go to inclusion and marketing dot com slash newsletter to get signed up and i'll also drop a link for it in the show notes below until next time remember everyone deserves have a place where they belong let's use our individual and collect the power to ensure more people feel like they do thanks so much for listening talk to you soon

customer acquisition is a core parts of any brand strategy and that's why it's also core to inclusive marketing but even though acquiring customers is foundational to growth too many brands struggle to reach and convert the people they most want to serve here's why they take a passive approach it's the build it and they will come mindset but today's consumers especially those from underrepresented and underserved communities don't show up where they haven't been invited think about it do you just show up to places where you haven't been invited for instance my uncle always says my parents you're always welcome to stop by my house but my parents never do but the moment my uncle invite them over for dinner they gladly go and they have an amazing time the same holds true for your customers avail all our welcome isn't enough people need a clear invitation and that's where most brands miss the mark so if you wanna grow you've gotta be intentional about inviting people to be your customers so in this episode i'm sharing seventeen proven customer acquisition strategies that you can use to win more customers including those from communities that are way too often overlooked we're gonna get into those seventeen strategies that are broken down by five key categories after this short break hubspot makes impossible growth and impossibly easy for their customers and here's the perfect example and i'm really excited to bring this example to you as an h graduate because this one is from more house college which is also an h more house college needed to reach new students with fresh engaging content but with a massive and nine hundred page website even the tiniest updates took thirty minutes to publish breeze hubspot collection of ai tools helped them write and optimize their content in a fraction of the time the results thirty percent more page views and visitors now spend twenty seven percent more of their time on their site which i like to think means that there are more visitors who are considering going to more house this h ready for more impossible growth like this visit hubspot dot com okay so the first bucket of customer acquisition strategies is all about visibility and ensuring that the ideal customers you've identify that you want to serve know about your brand and that it is indeed for people like them so the first one is influencer marketing that reflects the community it's all about working with people who are trusted by the communities you want to reach to introduce your products and services to them i recently got caught up in the love island usa season seven craze and two of the stars of the show who came out as a couple nick land that's nick and have been hired as influencers in campaigns for nick's professional makeup colon ken that's a line of swimwear and au i know i personally hadn't heard of colon keen or au fear prior to seeing the social media posts and promos promoting the brands from nick and el land accounts now i now follow both colon kin and appear as a result and have been peru their product lines so focus on choosing influencers who have the audience that includes one or some of the identities that your ideal customers want to reach the influencers you partner with don't have to be mega influencers either you just have to work with people who have and engaged audience of people who were parts of the ideal communities or have the identities of the people that you want to reach alright the second approach in this category is all about strategic partnerships and collaborations and specifically partnering and collaborating the people who are relevant to your ideal customers is also a very smart way to acquire new customers so keeping with the nico example cosmetics brand next professional makeup collaborated with them to launch the nico land lip combo consumers who bought the combo were able to get access to an exclusive live virtual fireside chat with the duo where they could ask their questions live in that nick lip combo sold out and just five hours so i believe that nick's cosmetics is very happy with their strategic partnership and collaboration and helped them acquire a whole heck of a lot of new customers as a result levi's also collaborated with mega entertainer beyonce for a series of campaigns around this time of her cowboy carter album and tour the third customer acquisition approach is targeted media placement it's another really smart way to get visibility in your journey to acquiring new customers and i specifically want to highlight media placement with minority owned media minority owned media has a really unique place in the hearts and minds of people who are parts of underrepresented and underserved communities and it's a smart way to reach a very targeted audience of people who have the identities you want to reach toyota corolla did this recently when they partnered with son a latino focused media company to create a sponsored podcast series targeted to reach latino consumers there's so many forms of media these days and it isn't only about reaching general market audiences anymore from radio to podcast podcasts to youtube in so much more take the opportunity to experiment and find different forms of minority owned media that align with the identities of the consumers that you want to reach consumers really love seeing the brand's investing in their communities so when you place your media and channels where your ideal customers are already tuned in they will certainly pay attention i personally pay more attention to brands that advertise on black owned media channels i watched the podcast the other day it was baby this is k palmer and i distinctly remember that it was sponsored by airbnb that kind of recall does not happen often with me but i really respect the fact that airbnb took the time to invest on that minority owned platform alright another customer acquisition approach that you can take is creating inclusive and localized content no one likes feeling like an afterthought and also people have a really hard time connecting with content that doesn't feel like it was made for them and their specific identity or their are specific needs that's why creating content that is inclusive and feels like it is designed for the specific identities you want serve because it is actually designed for them will increase the likelihood that they will see it and consume it and move them forward and taking the next step with you in the journey to become your customer hubspot implementing multilingual ling content strategy to reach consumers who have the problem their brand solves but part of their identity is that they speak a different language this has enabled them to acquire a significant number of new customers in different markets around the world alright and the last example in this category is all about user generated content from the community and specifically leveraging it a couple of weeks ago i was on tiktok and i saw a video from a mom who was instantly calling out or should i say calling in pampers for their baby wipes and how their functionality wasn't practical for many parents who are holding or stabilizing a baby with one hand while trying to change a diaper with the other now this involves of course trying to pull out a wipe with one hand from the package now with pampers pulling out one wipe meant pulling out five or more wipes which definitely wasn't ideal the comments were filled with parents agreeing and sharing in this creators frustration you know who else was also in the comments of that post the brand ras they make baby wipes they leaned into the content from this creator who only has like fifty thousand followers on tiktok and they leverage her video to make more content of their own they use it to do wet her original video which now has more than twenty four million views and they made a series of other tiktok on the same theme showcasing that their product does exactly what she wanted the pampers product to do and what she was calling that brand out to address eventually the brand collaborated directly with that creator as an influencer as she effectively evaluated and reviewed the products that they gifted her it was a beautiful and organic moment that this brand totally capitalized on purely from a user generated content and they want a boat load of new customers as a result i mean i'm not even sure if i'd even heard of ras before this but based upon their usage of user generated content to show how amazing they are i would seek them out if i ever have the need to use baby wipes in the future lead hard into user generated content as a way to bring attention to your brand and acquire exactly the kind of ideal customers you want to reach alright so the second category of customer acquisition that you should be leaning into that does a really great job in inviting people to be your customer is about community and culture and it really helps you build trust in a sense of belonging with the communities that you're trying to reach so the first approach on this category is all about elevating communities stories brands who engage in this customer acquisition approach really take the time to uplift the communities they want to reach which is especially meaningful to marginalized communities in doing this brands are intentional about telling nuance stories to bring to life positive and perhaps unknown stories about specific communities and finding smart ways to connect those stories to the brand smart brands elevate marginalized communities as the hero of their stories rather than the brand and as a result of doing this brands are able to instill an even greater sense of pride nostalgia and wonder about their communities and educate other consumers who don't share those identities in the process ralph lauren has done this recently with two special edition collections the first was with naomi glasses in which the brand highlighted the rich weaving traditions of native american tribes in the us they did it again most recently with the ralph lauren oaks bluff collection that even had an accompanying documentary but highlighted the rich history of the oaks bluff community on martha's vineyard and its place in american history and black history and culture as a result of this campaign i saw so many people on tiktok talking about how they wanted to go and visit oaks gloves how they wanted to send their kids to oaks bluff and in particular how it reign ignited an intention for them to pay attention to what ralph lauren was doing and to buy some of the clothes in the collection alright the next approach you can take is sponsoring community events and being present locally in the communities that you want to reach a lot of time consumers and especially those from underrepresented and underserved communities will feel that brands don't really care about them they feel like brands are just doing the bare minimum or just giving a bit of a engine so consumers will just buy their stuff so a great way to combat that they don't really care about us point of view is to demonstrate that you actually care about the people you want to serve and their identities for instance sponsoring local events local sports teams like little league teams volunteering for local charities and causes all those types of things go long way to establish your presence participation and support and uplifting the community i had a client i was working with a while back that was trying specifically to reach a certain ethnic group and one of my recommendations for them was to show up in the community and participate in be present in and engage in the culture as a result of doing that a lot more people within the community that they were trying to reach became aware of the brand and they became their customers as well alright another approach that you can take is acknowledge heritage and cultural celebrations there's no shortage of elements that are core to different people's cultures and even official types of celebrations that are standard on the calendar for different communities to observe when brands acknowledge the heritage of the people they want to serve in meaningful way it is a natural invitation from brands to the customers they want to serve sprinkles cupcakes does this really well at different times of the year the brand introduces special edition cupcakes that have names and flavors unique to different cultures they have ko cupcakes in december giving a nod to puerto rican culture they introduced vietnamese coffee cupcake and a cuban coffee cupcake featuring flavors that give a nod to heritage especially at its time when other brands don't acknowledge it causes consumers to take notice and into feel seen welcomed and invited into your business ikea also acknowledged cultural celebrations with a line of products where consumers could use for their dew wall celebrations and i've seen a number of videos of people flock to ikea and showcasing there dew wall ikea halls as a result of being invited in by the brand okay so the ninth customer acquisition strategy that you can use is all about standing up for causes that matter to the communities you want to serve increasingly consumers are making buying decisions based upon their values one study showed that eighty two percent of consumers want to buy from brands that share their values so make it clear what your values are and then live your values proudly in what you talk about the type of activism you engage in and even the causes you support and work to make a difference in ice cream maker ben and jerry's is very vocal in terms of identifying the causes that are important to the brand and then taking clear actions to educate consumers about those causes offer ways to support even taking very clear action to make a difference in those causes i know people choose ben in jerry's ice cream solely because of their values and how they live them to be clear i'm not recommending performative activism what i really wanna make sure that you take away here is don't be shy to speak about the causes that are important to you that are related to your values the people you want to serve won't know about your values and how you live them if you don't let them know about it and the people who are aligned with those values will flock to you as a result of what it is that you're taking a stand on alright so the last customer acquisition approach in this category is responsible marketing now one of the tenants of responsible marketing which is a component of inclusive marketing is solving real problems for communities you want to reach solving a real problem that is unique to a particular identity or community is a tremendous way for you to invite them to be your customer because you're are basically helping eliminate specific barriers that they have that other consumers don't that prevent them from achieving success at the same rates as other people mastercard true name card is a great example of this by allowing transgender and non binary customers to use their chosen name on cards they moved a barrier for consumers who wanted to use a credit card to make a purchase where their visual identity didn't quote unquote necessarily match the image that's a person comparing the name might have thought it would solving that real problem was an invitation not just through words but through action alright so after this short break we're gonna get into the remaining three categories and the remaining customer experience approaches associated with that oh okay i've got another podcast recommendation for you it's the ops authority hosted by natalie gin and it's brought to you by the hubspot podcast network the audio destination for business professional each week on the ops authority you can discover actionable strategies to move your business forward and transformational stories of powerhouse business owners who value operations whenever you are thinking about making your marketing more inclusive and confusing inclusive marketing into the way in which you operate just on a daily basis your operations are going to be an important part of helping you do that consistently i highly recommend that you have a listen episode number two hundred and seventy seven how i have cultivated a remote team that stays listen to the ops authority wherever you get your podcasts okay the next category of customer acquisition methods you can use is all about products and customer experience and how you're conserving consumers in very real and meaningful ways so the first approach is all about designing products for them this is one of my favorite customer acquisition strategies especially when it comes to inquiring consumers from underrepresented and underserved communities it's all about designing products and services specifically for them it is the ultimate signal that a brand is for you because it took time to design products with you in mind of course that doesn't have to be the entire product line but something that communicates we see you over the weekend me and my family we went to a restaurant cooper's hawk for my aunt's birthday and when i say the gluten free menu was extensive it was extensive i told my husband that we needed to go there again and probably again and again again because they have so many delicious gluten free items on the menu this isn't an exclusive gluten free restaurant but the fact that they took the time to create so many many items and bread like really good gluten free bed for the table standing ovation the abundant gluten free menu is definitely a strong customer acquisition lever the brand pulled and it's working game maker's mattel did it whenever they made their games including uno color blind accessible those accessibility features were a clear invitation to the color blind community to come and be their customer another customer acquisition approach you can take is defining experiences that are tailored for the specific communities that you want to reach this one is similar to designing products for them and that it helps you divine specific experiences with your ideal customers in mind and in particular people from underrepresented and underserved communities who might need different things to achieve success at the same rates as other people walmart did this by implementing sensory friendly hours in all its stores across the us and puerto rico from eight to ten am every day they adjusted the environment for the store to accommodate people with sensory processing disorder so they could come in and shop in a calmer environment similarly some check cheese locations offer sensory sensitive sundays on the first sunday of every month where they open at a specific time solely for families and children who have autism and other special needs by providing them a less overs stimulating environment during that time period alright so the next customer acquisition approach is all about personalized outreach and experiences now i've have joined a few programs over the past few years because a person running the program reached out to me directly to invite me to be a part of it one was a paid mastermind another was a mentorship program now perhaps i would have joined on my own perhaps i wouldn't have but the personal invitation made me take a harder look at the program and consider if it was right for me more so than just reviewing their marketing materials on their own would have done depending upon this type of product or service you have when it's the right fit do the same reach out to consumers you already have some type of relationship with when you genuinely feel that something that you are offering is right for them and can help them solve a problem you know they want to address alright so the next category of customer acquisition tactics is all about representation in voice and so the first approach that we're gonna talk about in this category it's all about employee advocacy and representation and we know representation matters and it matters more than most marketers think it does so whenever you have the opportunity to represent people in your visual imagery you put forth throughout your customer journey it quickly sends the signal and communicates an unspoken invitation to the people that you wanna serve that i see you you are welcome here please come check us out a wi a video marketing platform has done a really great job of using their own team members who have a variety of different backgrounds and identities they include them in their educational videos trainings and ads the the cross section of identities makes w ideal consumers from a broad range of identities if you like the brand is for people like them another approach in this category is all about c creating with the community if you invite me to create something with you are much more likely to participate in the c creation and then of course support what we created afterwards c creation with the communities or the people who are part of the communities you want to reach is best practice and inclusive marketing as well as in customer acquisition for one it helps you create a product that meets the unique needs of a community in an authentic way and taking the time to get it right by involving them in the process shows a degree of respect and that you are taking the time to include the community in what you produce for them it clearly signals that the brand values the opinions and lived experiences of the community now hair care brand got to be does this they have an advisory council of beauty influencers with different identities and from different communities that they use to c create marketing promotions with and to get ideas about specific product offerings alright and so the last category of customer acquisition approaches that you can take to invite people to be your customers is all about incentives and like very specific things that help improve conversions the first one they were gonna walk through in this category is all about offering relevant incentives recently luna started kindergarten and on the first day of school as we were leaving the school complex a store manager from chick f a walks in the middle of the line of a long line of cars handing out free coupons for free breakfast sandwiches now a new chick f a store had just opened up about a mile or two from the school complex it was a really smart move to give an incentive for parents and caregivers who are going to be in the area frequently drop off and pick up their kids to stop in the store the manager gave us three coupons that day now both jonathan and i are both gluten free and can't eat any of those breakfast sandwiches otherwise we would have used all of them which of course would have resulted in us buying even more look for opportunities to provide tangible incentives the people you want to be your customer to give them a little push to check you out and the last customer acquisition approach that we're gonna walk through today is it's all about proactively answering identity based questions this really does goes a long way from an seo standpoint to help you acquire more other people that you want to serve this customer acquisition strategy is really overlooked but it's one that will really help you reach people who are part of underrepresented and underserved communities particularly those that have specific needs that need to be accommodated for instance people who have mobility issues such as being in a wheelchair will often want to confirm before going to a place that it is wheelchair accessible and they will be able to maneuver the way that they need to too many brands don't have that information readily available and easily accessible online so taking the time to answer those types of questions with content you create on your website answering questions on your google business profile or even blog posts videos can help you acquire your ideal consumers who need to get confirmation a few things before moving forward to being your customer remember your ideal customers need to quickly and clearly have this question answered for them before moving forward with you will this product service and or experience work for someone like me taking the time to proactively answer questions that demonstrate people like you are welcome here will help you acquire more of the people you want to serve so there you have it seventeen proven customer acquisition strategies to help you win more customers especially those who may have felt overlooked in the past now before you wrap up i wanna give you one additional reminder the smartest brands don't just do these strategies they also make sure they're working that means measuring how much it actually cost to acquire each customer tracking which strategies bring in the people that you want to serve and optimizing along the way so as you put these ideas into practice make sure you have all the systems in place whether that's a crm analytics or referral tracking to measure learn and keep improving that's how you'll maximize the roi of each approach that you try to bring new customers in if you are enjoying the show i would so appreciate it if you would leave a rating and review for it and your podcast player of choice it really does go a long way towards helping more people discover this show and i like to think that helps more people be inclusive and helps more people feel like they've long another quick question for you are you getting the inclusion in marketing newsletter if not what are you even doing each week i send news resources what's happening in culture commentary and other goodies to help you attract and retain a bigger more diverse and fiercely loyal customer base go to inclusion and marketing dot com slash newsletter to get signed up until next time remember everyone deserves to have a place where they belong let's use our individual and collect the power to ensure more people feel like they do thanks so much for listening talk to you soon

most brands are losing customers before they even start marketing to them why because they skip a very important step it's the one step that makes every other marketing effort work harder to reach the right people if you don't do it you'll spend more convert less and watch your competitors scoop up the customers that you wanted that step it's all about getting crystal clear on exactly who your brand will serve not just in demographics but in culture values and lyft experiences when you do marketing becomes magnetic to the people who matter most now this is the first episode of the new rules of customer acquisition and we're starting with rule number one a step that also happens to be the foundation of inclusive marketing so after this short break we're gonna get right into it hubspot makes impossible growth and impossibly easy for their customers and here's the perfect example and i'm really excited to bring this example to you as an h graduate because this one is from more house college which is also an h more house college needed to reach new students with fresh engaging content but with a massive and nine hundred page website even the tiniest updates took thirty minutes to publish breeze hubspot collection of ai tools helped write and optimize their content in a fraction of the time the results thirty percent more page views and visitors now spend twenty seven percent more of their time on their site which i like to think means that there are more visitors who are considering going to more house this h ready for more impossible growth like this visit hubspot dot com as a marketer it's important to know and understand that your ideal customers are both subconsciously and consciously looking for an answer to this fundamental question whenever they are considering buying from you that fundamental question is will this product service or experience work for someone like me and as a result your job is to quickly and clearly communicate to your ideal customers that yes this whatever product service experience is for you now there are a number of ways that you can do that and we'll cover some of those today and we can go more in endeavors if you like in another episode but ultimately because this fundamental question needs to be addressed by your brand it is absolutely critical that you are clear about defining who your ideal customers are in other words you have to be crystal clear about who the identities associated with quote someone like me are so that you can effectively answer the question in your marketing mix and customer journey so let's examine this a little bit more for each component of the marketing mix now one of my favorite examples for the products aspect of the marketing mix comes from the technology space specifically let's use smartphones as an example i have an iphone my husband jonathan has a samsung phone i use my phone in english he uses his in spanish each of these brands decided in advance when they were creating these phones that their ideal customers included people who spoke different languages so whatever psycho graphics soc economics or other factors might be associated with the consumer being a great candidate to buy your product not these phone companies they had that profile but they also knew that that meant that many of their ideal customers would speak different languages so the brands have baked the ability to customize phone usage by language into their product design as parts of their marketing mix my daughter luna had a play date with one of her friends and her mom was showing me something on her phone and everything was configured in russian which is her primary language the brand is making intentional decisions about its marketing based upon the various identities its ideal customers have both that first finding that their ideal customers speak various languages and live in various countries these cell phone companies ability to acquire customers would have been limited to only one language alright so let's look at the price part of the marketing mix and then is another way that brands can communicate whether or not a product is for quote quote people like me pricing at lower price points make sure product more accessible to a broader range of people payment plans also make products priced at higher levels accessible for a broader range of people and higher price points communicate who a brands ideal customer is as well i mean there have been plenty of times when i've looked at products that i've been interested in wondering if it was for someone like me and then how to look at the price tag and realize nope this isn't for me at all alright the third component of the marketing mix that we're gonna examine is promotion so with regard to promotion this is a really big one of how brands communicate whether or not a product is for people with a specific identity and this becomes even more relevant when the distinction in product and price are less obvious now i can't tell you the number of times that i've been in a buying mood like ready to go credit card in hand only to look at a brand's promotional materials and see no one who looks like me and then second guessing or canceling the whole thing i personally need to see people like me having success with the product to feel like it can work for me too representation is a big aspect of answering that fundamental question through promotion another way that brands can answer the fundamental questions through promotion is by creating specific campaigns designed to see feature an uplift certain communities kit kat canada did a promotion for the muslim community during rama to show them that the brand is indeed for them as well they combined promotion with a limited edition kit kat bar that was a big hit that enabled the muslim community to feel seen also promoting to different identities doesn't always need to be about specific campaigns sometimes it's about creating messaging that makes it clear that people from certain identities feel seen supported and like they belong i remember i was looking at google reviews and i came across one where a person was reviewing a product that was a software and the reviewer mentioned that it was easy to use for someone who isn't tech savvy like me so messaging that clearly and quickly speaks to the non tech savvy person in this instance works well to answer that question and that goes for other identities as well alright so let's look at this last component of the marketing mix which is place and that's where your distributing your product plays a very large role in helping your ideal customers recognize whether or not something you produce is for them earlier this year there was a live in person conference on the topic that i was very interested in however i did not have any interest and getting on a plane or even in my car to travel to the conference now i was really excited when later on i saw virtual tickets were being offered that sent through replay of all the conference sessions that i could watch from the comfort of my own home on demand i did not hesitate to make that purchase because that choice made it clear that this conference is for people like me and in that instance people like me was people who were interested in the topic but did not want to or could not travel to attend it live alright so after this short break we're gonna continue further along in exploring the number one rule of customer acquisition okay i've got another podcast recommendation for you it's the ops authority hosted by natalie gin and is brought to you by the hubspot podcast network the audio destination for business professionals each week on the ops authority you can discover actionable strategies to move your business forward and transformational stories of powerhouse business owners who value operations whenever you are thinking about making your marketing more inclusive and in confusing inclusive marketing into the way in which you operate just on a daily basis your operations are going to be an important part of helping you do that consistently i highly recommend that you have a listen episode number two hundred and seventy seven how i have cultivated a emo team that stays listen to the ops authority wherever you get your podcasts okay so now that we see how answering the fundamental question could play out in different ways in your marketing mix and why it's taking the time to choose which identities you will focus on answering that question for let's get into where brands struggle with this so let's talk about what happens when your customers don't get an answer to the fundamental question is this product for someone like me basically it causes friction it makes people hesitate in buying from you and it encourages them to explore other options if the brand doesn't answer quickly and clearly that this product is for someone like them they'll go elsewhere or keep what they currently do as a gluten free person i can quickly see by looking at a menu whether or not a restaurant is for me or not but in other purchase decisions it might not always be so easy i did some user testing research one time with a gay man and he told me that when it came time to book hotels for a vacation he often needed to spend some extra time exploring whether or not hotel was safe and welcoming for people like him people who are parts of the lgbtq plus community one hotel that we explored didn't really have anything on their website and this is where some lgbtq plus friendly messaging would have been great to have to communicate clearly and quickly at the hotel was for people like him eventually he saw some posts on the hotel instagram account that showed them at a pride parade so he got his answer that hotel was for people like him however you should not expect that consumers are going to go through all this effort to find the answers that they need that's why it's important to clearly and quickly let consumers know whether or not whatever it is it's you're offering is for people like them or not another consumer i interviewed was looking at an instagram profiles of photographers and within fifteen seconds and it might have been sooner she knew the photographer was not for her because she didn't see anyone who looked like her on her profile which was full of clients and she was not going to spend any more time trying to find out if perhaps deeper in their profile she could have found someone like her in her customer portfolio what she saw in that first fifteen seconds was more than enough for her to make a decision to go elsewhere so if your goal is to acquire more of your ideal customers focus your efforts on making sure that you communicate to them clearly and quickly the your brand is for people like them when you do that you will acquire more of the customers you want but here's where brands fall short in doing that because i fully believe that in their minds many marketers and brands do feel like they've taken the time to define who their ideal customers are but in reality most of them have not done this job sufficiently enough and as a result their marketing and their customer acquisition efforts are nowhere near as effective as they could be so once you create a profile of the type of person you want to serve for your brand go one step further and write out the different identities of the various types of people who fit that ideal customer profile so let's say that you are a hotel and you want to do a better job of acquiring women travelers between the ages of twenty four and thirty five that covers a number of different identities it covers solo travelers people traveling with a partner people traveling with friends like on a girl's trip people traveling for work people traveling with kids people who are pregnant people who were part of the to lgbtq plus community smokers pet owners people who speak different languages people with dietary restrictions women with different body sizes and types women with disabilities women who have different religions women who are grieving meaning they may not be traveling for a happy occasion and the list goes on and on and on alright so if we know that these are the various identities of the different types of people who have the problem that your brand solves and they are your ideal customer i'm not saying that you have to embrace all of these identities and answer the question for them if you want to do that great go for it by all means do it but if you only have the resources to really focus and and support five of these identities select those five and then figure out what you would need to do for each of them throughout your marketing mix and customer journey to make them see clearly and quickly that your brand is indeed for people like them and when you do you will be so much more effective at acquiring more of these customers quick disclaimer for you though the other identities that you don't focus on doesn't mean that they aren't welcoming your business or that you don't want to serve them rather it just means that they might not see those clear signals in your marketing mix and customer journey that communicate and demonstrate that your brand is for people like them so rule number one of customer acquisition is make sure you identify and choose the different identities of the ideal customers you've chosen to serve and if few signals throughout your marketing mix and customer journey that clearly and quickly communicate your brand is for them you'll see a much greater return on your marketing resources whenever you do so i'm super curious have you already done this for your brand when you think about who your ideal customer is or if you think about your buyer personas that you have for the different types of consumers that you want to serve have you gone down and really define this by identity to ensure that you were able to communicate to them in a manner that speaks to them and makes it clear that your brand is for people like them as you're going through your marketing mix let's have a chat about it i'd love to hear more send me an email sonia at sonia et thompson dot com or let's continue the conversation on social lauren the dms i'd love to hear how you are thinking about this for your brand another quick question for you are you getting the inclusion and marketing newsletter if not like really what are you even doing each week i send news resources voice of the customer and lots of commentary and things that are happening in culture to help you attract and retain a bigger more diverse and fiercely loyal customer base go to inclusion and marketing dot com slash newsletter to get signed up also drop a link for that in the show notes for you so you can visit sit easily until next time remember everyone deserves have a place where they've belong let's use our individual and like power to ensure more people feel like they do thanks so much for listening talk to you soon visit

ai usage is on the rise especially in marketing data from hubspot ai trends and marketing reports showed that seventy four percent of marketing professionals use ai for their work and with so many marketers using ai it's important to acknowledge and solve for its known limitations particularly the biases that are baked into it now as an inclusive marketing strategist and consultant my eye is trained to see and recognize bias when i come across it whenever i'm reviewing materials and campaigns for clients one of the things i'm evaluating is whether or not bias or culturally insensitive or inappropriate messages have creeps into the communications but most of the marketers i've come across either don't get have this skill set or actively working on developing it many often don't pick up on biases ai produces which could prove detrimental to marketing efforts and brand reputation if published in the market so to help you use ai more responsibly and effectively today as you ups upscale and cultural intelligence i've created some prompts to help you cut out any extra bias that exists whenever you're using ai so after this short break we're gonna get into it alright so hubspot makes impossible growth and impossibly easy for their customers and here's the perfect example and i'm really excited to bring this example to you as an h graduate because this one is from more house college which is also an h more house college needed to reach new students with fresh engaging content but with a massive nine hundred page website even the tiniest updates took thirty minutes to publish breeze hubspot collection of ai tools helped write and optimize their content in a fraction of the time the results thirty percent more page views and visitors now spend twenty seven percent more of their time on their site which i like to think means that there are more visitors who are considering going to more house this h b c ready for more impossible growth like this visit hubspot dot com but before we get into the actual prompts it's useful to ensure that you are grounded in the fundamental question consumers especially those from underrepresented and underserved communities are asking as consumers are evaluating whether or not your brand is right for them they're seeking either consciously or subconsciously to answer this question is this product for someone like me every part of your customer journey serves as an input to producing an answer to this question so if any aspects of your customer journey including your ads headlines visual imagery which is of course photos and video and other content you create has any sort of bias in it it sends the signal to the people that you want to serve this product isn't for someone like you week now in most instances that signal isn't one the brand is intending to send so let's focus on how to use a eye to help you send the this is for you message for the people that you want to serve now what we want to do is focus on how to use ai to help you send this is for you message for the people that you want to serve joanne boys is an inclusive ai x expert and founder of include ai a tool that helps marketers with inclusive communication she told me that it's helpful to think of ai as very well trained puppy she explained it's like someone has already house trained the puppy and they're going to give it to you and you're going to customize it to your home customizing your well trained ai puppy means training it to ensure it communicates with your customers in a way that draws them closer to you rather than pushing them away because of any bias you can have a listen to my full conversation with joy and voice on episode number ninety five of this podcast navigating the effective use of ai for inclusive marketing i'm also gonna drop a link to that in the show notes for you so you can access it easily alright so let's get into the prompt so you can use ai to help you identify and remove bias whenever it's doing its thing alright so the first thing that you need to do is give it the right context the first step of course in using ai to help you identify and remove bias in ai is to give your tool the context with which it will be reviewing your content tell it specifically who it should be showing up as and the lens with wish it should be reviewing your content and providing feedback so right from the beginning i like to tell my ai collaborators that it is a highly skilled inclusive marketing strategist that works from a general standpoint for reviewing content on the whole and for broader audiences however if you want to be even more specific about the type of feedback you are looking for tweak the context for that point of expertise for instance if you want to understand whether or not an ad has any bias from the perspective of consumers over the age of fifty it's helpful to prompt your ai companion to review the content through the lens of a marketing expert who has expertise in that customer base as an example i asked ai to review a webpage page about anti aging products now i gave it the context that it was a marketer who specializes in marketing to consumers over fifty and that set the foundation for the lens with which it was able to give feedback so in that article the headline was really just anti aging products and then it kinda went into a lot of other different details about the specific products that it was looking for and so here is the first part of the feedback that it produced about language that wasn't inclusive in this particular web because it is so ai says potential red flags for fifty plus consumers number one overuse of the term anti aging and then it gave two bullet points some consumers see this as age negative implying aging is something to be fought or fixed and the second bullet is consider language like age well or healthy skin at every age skin renewal or pro aging instead if i haven't given that context it wouldn't have given me this type of feedback and so here are some of the recommendations that ai gave for how to improve the copy to make it more inclusive it suggested some inclusive messaging that resonates it says a firm natural aging while promoting skin health such as skinny vault with you next it said celebrate wisdom and beauty at every age rather than glorify youth and then the last thing it offered up was focused on results not age shame such as highlight texture tone hydration and barrier supports the goal of course is to prevent publishing content that has bias in it however there will be times we you'll need to reevaluate and improve on something that is already in the market so here's a prompt to help you win creating new content and one to help you improve what has already been produced so the prompts for creating you can say you are a copywriter that specializes in marketing to consumers over their age of fifty please brainstorm ten headlines for this care webpage that delivers on our product goals while making our ideal customer including people over the age of fifty feel seen supported and like they belong with our brand in a prompt for reviewing existing content as an example you are inclusive marketing strategist that specializes in marketing to consumers over the age of fifty please review these headlines and let me know if there is anything i should be aware of that would rub consumers who were interested in the product the wrong way i'm particularly interested in anything that would be offensive culturally inappropriate or just not inclusive okay so the second thing that you should do to help eliminate bias from your ai is to give it specificity about your consumer one of the challenges that many marketing communications have when it comes to being inclusive is that the brand hasn't effectively defined who their ideal customer is for instance a brand might say they are targeting women from twenty five to thirty four who are looking to advance their careers however even though there is specificity about age gender and even aspirations there's still so much context missing that could influence the way the consumer receives messages you create for them as such whenever you're working with ai where possible steer clear from treating it like it's talking to a general market audience instead give your ai companion additional details about who you want to communicate with doing so will help it better tailor the messages it has for the audience you are targeting so instead of saying you're creating landing page copy for women who are twenty five to thirty four who are looking to advance your careers add in details about their identities that will support your ai companion and crafting messages that have a less bias in them based upon your audience some of the identity based details about your ideal consumer to include in your prompt could be something like racial and ethnic makeup sexual orientation religion family status such as married whether or not you have children economic status where they live because racial differences can impact word choice somebody who is from australia speaks differently from someone who is from the uk speaks differently from someone who's from canada speaks differently from somebody from the us right and one other thing to consider is whether or not this includes people with disabilities and neuro divergence so given all this context a prompt to draft copy for a landing page could look like this this is a prompt to create the audience for this landing page includes women twenty five at thirty four who want to advance their careers this includes black latin latino and asian women some are married some have young children at home all have at least a bachelor's degree and they live in the us canada australia and mexico and thirty percent of them are neuro most of them don't yet own a home please drop the landing page for them that takes their identities and needs in mind and it prompt for reviewing could be please identify anything in the copy of this landing page that would prevent people with in an whatever their identities are from feeling seen supported and like they belong with you oh in that particular prompt don't forget to add the context of who they are are they inclusive marketing strategies for instance so they're making sure that they're looking at this content with that lens alright so after this short break we're gonna get into the third example of prompts that you need to be using things to help stamp out bias and the ai tools that you're using okay i've got another podcast recommendation for you it's the ops authority hosted by natalie gin and is brought to you by the hubspot podcast network the audio destination for business professionals each week on the ops authority you can discover actionable strategies to move your business forward and transformational stories of powerhouse business owners who value operations whenever you are thinking about making your marketing more inclusive and in confusing inclusive marketing into the way in which you operate just on a daily basis your operations are going to be an important part of helping you do that consistently i highly recommend that you have a listen episode number two hundred and seventy seven how i have cultivated a emo team that stays listen to the ops authority wherever you get your podcasts okay the last area that we need to focus on is being direct about the type of bias you want to stamp out there are a number of entities the consumers you want serve can have and there are also several aspects of inclusion that you should be on the lookout for when it comes to ensuring that the marketing you're producing makes the people that you want to serve feel like your products and services are for people like them that's why it's important to give your ai tools some guidance as to what type of content you don't want to include when it comes to identifying and removing any biases that exist when i'm doing audits for clients brands from an inclusion standpoint some of the things i'm looking for include inclusive language power dynamics representation stereotypes and identity based friction in the customer experience so being this specific is especially important because if your ai tool is just focused on one area it can make it easy for them to miss out on other areas that are problematic in this example i asked the ai tool i was using to evaluate a blog post for cultural bias it missed some problem areas i would have flagged and when i asked it why it didn't pick up on those problems here's what it had to say so i wrote do you have any ideas on why you didn't pick up on that phrase initially so the ai responded that's a really thoughtful question and you're right to flag it here's why i likely didn't pick up on that offensive phrase initially number one high level summary versus line by line audit when i reviewed the article i focused on the overall framing such as lack of a eight v attribution over simplification rather than doing a detailed line by line linguistic sensitivity check that phrase is subtle but very telling and it deserved more scrutiny here's the next thing that ai said it said subtle racism often slips through in quote unquote neutral language phrases like as the black speak which was an actual phrase that was included in this article that i was questioning the ai tool about are written in a way that may appear formal or neutral to an un critical reader even though there's steep and outdated object language it's an example of coded or institutional bias that hides in plain sight and the last reason that ai gave for why it didn't pick up on that term as the black speak as offensive initially whenever i asked it i'd flag anything that was problematic it said automation trade offs the initial scan prioritized structural analysis in parentheses who's being centered what's missing over harmful syntax and phrasing especially when content is accessed through a technical summary layer such as versus full human parsing but ultimately this was a blind spot and it's on me to call it out when it matters so based upon the specific type of communication you are having ai help you write be sure to include in your prompt specific instructions key things that you'd want or don't want it to include as it is creating and reviewing alright so here is a prompt for whenever you are creating says here your ai tool and this is of course assuming that you've given the appropriate context about who your ideal customer is as well the prompt could be please create some images we can use for this social media ad that are reflective of our ideal customers ensure adequate representation of the different identities of the consumers we serve that is free of common stereotypes and cultural biases on the prompts for reviewing work that's already been created ai or otherwise could be in this ad please highlight any areas that would be considered problematic from an inclusion perspective take into account inclusive language such as is there any aa included in aa is african american for vernacular english are there stereotypes associated with any of the images we are highlighting the better you can focus your ai can companion on how to design or evaluate the assignment you are giving it you'll make it more likely to get the outputs that aren't filled with bias alright so it's time to get rid of the bias that is built into your ai the sooner you retrain your ai tools to work in a manner that is in keeping with your brand and the different identities that you want to serve the sooner you'll convert more of your ideal customers if you are using more and more ai in your day to day work i would love to know how are you working to get rid of some that bias that's been baked into the tools already how are you working to reach train your ai puppy so that it picks up the good habits that you want it to have that are in keeping with your brand your tone and how you want to engage with your customers let me know let's him continue to have the conversation i want to hear all about it tag socials send me an email slides my dms let's have a conversation another quick question for you are you getting the inclusion and marketing newsletter each week i send news insights resources voice of the customer and also serve other goodies to help you attract and retain a bigger more diverse and fiercely loyal customer base go to inclusion and marketing dot com slash newsletter to get signed up until next time remember everyone deserves to have a place where they belong let's use our individual and collect power to ensure more people feel like they do thanks so much for listening talk to you soon