From promoting company values to customizing your alt text, here are 12 answers to the question, “What are your best tips for improving inclusive marketing efforts?”
- Aim for Social Impact
- Ask for Feedback
- Incorporate User-generated Content (UGC)
- Develop a Policy for Being More Inclusive
- Pay Attention to Visuals
- Ensure Accessibility
- Focus on Inclusive Language and Imagery
- Keep Context Top of Mind
- Diversify Your Social Proof
- Avoid Stereotypes
- Create Discussions
- Use Descriptive Alt Text
Aim for Social Impact
Inclusive marketing is not only about being ethical and giving every customer value; it also has a social impact. The more inclusive your marketing efforts, the better you promote the values of your company.
Many companies have adopted this idea and made their marketing campaigns more socially responsible. The easiest way to do this is to choose a cause and promote it to your audience. It can be any cause that your company believes in. You can donate some of your earnings to the cause, organize charity events, or highlight your involvement in social issues in your marketing campaigns.
Matthew Ramirez, CEO, Paraphrase Tool
Ask for Feedback
One tip for improving inclusive marketing efforts is to solicit feedback from diverse groups and consider their perspectives when creating marketing materials. By actively seeking feedback from people with a range of backgrounds and experiences, you can ensure that your marketing efforts are more inclusive and better resonate with a broader audience.
Additionally, partnering with diverse influencers and organizations can help you reach new audiences and demonstrate your commitment to inclusivity.
Brenton Thomas, CEO, Twibi
Incorporate User-generated Content (UGC)
By incorporating user-generated content (UGC) into your marketing efforts, you can highlight a diverse range of perspectives and experiences that can help to make your brand and marketing more inclusive.
To do this, you can create a branded hashtag or run a social media contest to encourage customers to share their experiences with your brand on social media. You can also use UGC on your website and in your advertising campaigns to highlight the diversity of your customer base and different points of view.
People are more likely to trust content that comes from their peers and other consumers, so using UGC can be an effective way to build trust and authenticity with your audience.
Johannes Larsson, Founder and CEO, JohannesLarsson.com
Develop a Policy for Being More Inclusive
Establishing a company-wide policy on inclusion can help ensure that all employees, customers, and stakeholders are treated with respect and given equal opportunities. This could include expanding your target audience to different demographics, using diverse imagery in marketing materials, and providing language options for non-English speakers.
Additionally, you should provide training to help employees understand the importance of inclusion and how to effectively implement it. Finally, make sure that your policies are publicly available and easily accessible so everyone can stay informed.
Matt Teifke, CEO, Teifke Real Estate
Pay Attention to Visuals
Visuals represent people of different ethnicities, races, identities, religions, backgrounds, and with disabilities. You should not target a particular type of audience; it will narrow the search for customers and ultimately affect the growth of your business. When your business is open to customers irrespective of their race, religion, gender, and any other basis of discrimination, it leads to a huge influx of traffic.
Visuals play a crucial role in improving inclusive marketing. You must have seen some beauty brands; they don’t only present advertisements with fair-skinned girls but also with dark, brown, and black girls and boys as well. It shows that beauty doesn’t depend on color.
It generates respect for the brand and attracts more customers. The human brain processes visuals 60,000 times faster than text. So, content created with visuals is naturally more engaging for users. You can receive five times more engagement by paying attention to visuals.
Yogesh Kumar, Digital Marketing Manager, Technource
Ensure Accessibility
Focusing on the accessibility of your content is the first step to improving your inclusive marketing efforts. Consider repurposing your content and making it into different formats, including text, video, and audio, to make it accessible to all people. This initiative helps position your brand ahead of others in your niche in inclusive marketing.
Liam Liu, Co-founder and CMO, ParcelPanel
Focus on Inclusive Language and Imagery
Inclusive language and imagery refer to language and visuals that are respectful, representative, and welcoming to all communities.
For example, it’s always a good practice to use gender-neutral language. Use “they” instead of “he” or “she” when referring to an individual whose gender identity is unknown.
Nick Zviadadze, Founder, MintSEO
Keep Context Top of Mind
The only way you can wreak havoc on making inclusivity part of your marketing efforts is if it appears to be forced. We should execute as naturally marketing initiatives as possible to convey the right message, or your campaign will end up failing miserably.
A good example of this would be Dove’s body positivity. In 2017, they sold body wash in Real Beauty Bottle packaging. While the intention was good, the execution was bad because the quest for celebrating body positivity did more harm than good.
This marketing failure teaches that categorizing customers is not always a good idea, because rather than providing solutions, the approach only worsens the problem.
Becky Moore, Founder, Global Grasshopper
Diversify Your Social Proof
We can illustrate this by bringing on a broad range of experts and customers from different backgrounds to lend credibility to your messaging and show that your products or services are inclusive and accessible to all.
Diversifying your social proof sends an important message that you recognize and embrace the unique backgrounds, talents, opinions, or experiences of individuals from any culture or ethnicity. By doing so, you foster a stronger connection with various sets of customers who appreciate feeling acknowledged by brands.
Taimur Khan, Operations Manager, Liverpool First Aid Course
Avoid Stereotypes
Too often, advertisements and campaigns use images, language, or stories that will reach a certain demographic but end up alienating or excluding others. Avoiding stereotypes is important if you want your messages to be effective and resonant with people across unique identities.
Instead of casting performers based on an assumed gender, race, etc., put effort into finding diverse voices that accurately reflect the lived experiences of your audience. Doing this will show customers that you truly consider them when creating content, rather than viewing them as one-size-fits-all products.
Haya Subhan, General Manager, Leeds First Aid Courses
Create Discussions
As a marketer focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), my primary tip for improving inclusive marketing efforts is to create meaningful discussions with target audiences. Reaching out to communities of color and other marginalized groups to invite their participation and action gives a voice to individuals who don’t have the same platform offered by mainstream media.
Offering opportunities for feedback allows companies to better understand the needs and experiences of those they seek to serve, allowing them to craft a marketing message that resonates more effectively. Sharing content through direct dialogue not only encourages engagement at a deeper level than broadcast media but also provides invaluable insights into both customer satisfaction and advocacy that empowers organizations to make more informed decisions in the future.
Joe Troyer, CEO and Growth Advisor, Digital Triggers
Use Descriptive Alt Text
This is a brief description of pictures, videos, or visual elements that is read out to blind users by a screen reader. Inclusivity means creating accessible marketing.
By adding alt text, you are ensuring the blind population doesn’t miss your advertising efforts online. When writing the description, ensure you specifically and clearly describe what is on the picture, video, graph, or other visual media. Alt text also helps improve your SEO ranking, since search engines cannot ‘see’ images; they rely on text.
Dan Thomas, Sales Director, AIQuoter
