Marketing is, at its core, about adaptation: Your brand has to produce multiple ways to speak to its audience, which is bound to contain numerous sub-audiences. Not only will you have different levels of customers, but you’ll also have different types of customers—people from different backgrounds, cultures, and more.
Part of being a successful marketer is ensuring you can include these people in your campaigns. Whether you’re a copywriter, an affiliate marketer, or a designer, you should be implementing forms of diversity in your completed work. This can be achieved by including the characteristics of your diverse audience to considering the differing ways in which they think, believe in, and see the world around them. Why is this important? Because research shows that diversity benefits businesses, as the increased perception of inclusiveness allows people to become more engaged and think more critically about content, all while heightening the feeling of being part of a collective community and culture.
How do you incorporate diversity into your marketing approach? There are numerous ways, but, with a considerate approach, it can be done naturally.
How to Diversify Your Audience?
1. Identify Who You Want to Reach
Before you can begin speaking, you need to think about who it is you want to talk to—who you want to include to diversify your audience. This involves outlining the demographics of people you want to understand and then doing your research. Ask yourself: What is it that has stopped this group from becoming a part of my audience prior? What roadblocks have I created, and how I can remove them?
2. Understand How you Fit in with your Audience
Part of incentivizing a target audience to become part of your brand involves seeing yourself as part of that collective. Your brand shouldn’t be viewed separately from the groups you want to include; rather, you are an equal part of their community. Find ways in which you can relate to one another to make that onboarding easier. Furthermore, take the time to learn about that community so you know who they are and what their lives are about.
3. Respect what Your Target Audience has to Say
Part of diversifying your audience requires listening. If you’re looking to increase the bandwidth of your audience to include the American Latin population, as they were underrepresented before, you’ll have to consider why they were not counted, to begin with. Speak directly with them, particularly community leaders, to determine what it might be that’s keeping them from trusting your brand. By gaining an appreciation for their beliefs and behaviors, you can work toward crafting a message that entices them.
4. Set Out with A Plan and Structure Communication
Crafting a trustworthy diversity campaign requires some structure. This includes understanding what it is that needs to change within your company’s outreach while understanding what your target audience wants to hear.
By setting goals for yourself and committing to completing introductory research, you can work toward developing your program to meet the needs of your target audience. Once you have an established set of languages and methods outlined, you can move on to creating campaigns, eventually implementing them to bring in your diverse crowd.
5. Find Avenues to Communicate with your Target Audience
Part of diversifying your audience involves knowing which platforms and means of communication are best fit to spread your message. For affiliate marketers, this might involve investigating different social media apps and a diverse set of influencers present on each; for a more intimate business, this could include conducting in-neighborhood visits and becoming involved with community events and organizations to show their company’s commitment to diversity.
Whatever the decision is, it should be related to whatever way makes it easiest for a company to reach its target audience, without making it have to go out of its way to find you.
6. Tailor your Communication Style
Your language must be considered when it comes to inclusiveness and diversity. Does this mean making yourself sound exactly like your audience? Not always, but it can involve interpretations of it in multiple forms. Examples of tailored language include:
- Offering translated webpages, bilingual emails, or regular tweets written in a second language.
- Incorporating figures of speech and culturally relevant signals from the communities you want to communicate with.
The efforts you put in don’t have to be complicated, either; nor do they have to feel like you’re trying too hard. It should feel natural to anyone reading your content—that they are being invited into your brand by you reaching out a welcome hand.
Making a more diverse workplace is just one way of working toward this goal, as you’ll foster an environment of varied opinions, beliefs, and cultures, which will trickle down to other parts of your business. Moreover, a move as simple as hiring a bilingual customer service representative can go a long way, as a customer looking for support will feel comforted by being given the option to speak to someone in their first language.
7. Utilize Partnerships and Collaborations
Whether you’re a social media marketer or an affiliate marketer, you know the benefits of promotional partnerships. Marketing in the modern age is as much about collaboration as it is about branding. If you can incorporate influencers from diverse communities, you’re already off to a good start.
While you still need to lay the groundwork for success, which involves crafting your brand into one that is more diverse and inclusive, you can benefit from getting trusted members from diverse communities. Their inclusion with your team is a surefire way to receive some legitimacy. Again, while it shouldn’t be the first and only step, it is a great way to give your brand some necessary credentials.
8. Foster Rather than Pander
Diversifying your audience doesn’t have to devolve to pandering or relying on stereotypes—such actions cause more trouble than they do good. Rather, take it slow and be considerate; think about the communities you want to bring into your brand’s audience and work to entice them. Foster a place where they feel comfortable and welcome—a part of a new community.
