Growth is the mandate for brands each year. One way to grow? Create offerings that appeal to a wider group of people. That’s where inclusive marketing comes in.
Inclusive marketing is all about acknowledging the many ways people are different. Brands that do inclusive marketing well authentically infuse the identities they’ve chosen to serve throughout all parts of their marketing mix to ensure those consumers feel like they belong and that the brand is for “people like them.”
With eight years of experience as a consultant, I know that each brand’s approach to inclusive marketing looks different, tailored to its audiences and its products. So, I wanted to share how role model companies have created strategies that win. Let’s dive in.
Inclusive Marketing Strategies from Top Brands
1. Zumba focuses on building a diverse team.
When brands struggle with inclusive marketing, I recommend that they look at the demographics of their teams. If everyone comes from the same background, you may be missing valuable insights. A diverse team will be more representative of the consumers you want to serve, helping you better understand their needs.
One of my favorite examples is Zumba. This popular dance fitness program trains instructors in 160 countries and has more than 15 million people who take their classes worldwide. With a global audience, Zumba needs instructors who can teach in different languages and understand different lifestyles.
“Now, what’s important to know is that those instructors come from all walks of life. So, you have people taking their certification for a variety of reasons,” says Carolina Moraes, chief marketing officer of Zumba.
According to Moraes, the diversity of the brand’s instructors helps attract a wide range of customers.
She further explains, “So, as you can imagine, that brings in a blend of a very diverse community of instructors where you have lawyers, teachers, firefighters, hairdressers, chefs, all kinds … taking these trainings together. And, they bring in their students who very often are from the same universe. So when they start teaching, their class very often looks like them.”
While having a diverse team can help you expand your perspectives, your hiring practices alone don’t guarantee success. You can only benefit from your employees’ unique insights if they feel safe enough to share their experiences.
That’s why brands need to build an inclusive culture and focus on psychological safety. When employees feel like they belong, they can bring their lived experiences and what makes them unique to the work they do.
Zumba builds this environment by working with education specialists who train new Zumba instructors and get them steeped in the brand’s inclusive culture.
“Now, they are the most diverse group you will probably see. They are a direct reflection of the brand. And when they hold those sessions, not only is this diversity spoken about in the actual training, but it’s also brought into the product and how the product is delivered,” Moraes says.
Pro tip: Building and empowering a diverse team within an inclusive culture will help you attract a bigger and more diverse customer base.
2. Wistia features diverse talent in its communication.
Like Zumba, video marketing platform Wista focuses on amplifying diverse voices. The company features diverse talent in its promotional videos — both in the form of internal team members and external influencer partners.
Taylor Corrado is the senior director of brand marketing at Wistia. She explained the benefit of showcasing a diverse set of experts in the brand’s content.
“If you’re building a team that’s inclusive and diverse, you’re going to be able to infuse it more into your marketing… When you realize how much you can use your team to be in content and to be the voice of the brand, but also visually represent groups, it’s really impactful,” Corrado says.
The data backs this up. I ran a survey of 1,000 customers about inclusive marketing. Of respondents, 46% wanted the brands they engaged with and bought from to have internal staff and leadership representative of their customer base. I also found that 41% of consumers wanted brands to work with representative influencers and spokespeople.
Pro tip: Put your team front and center (without using tokenism), as a reflection of your brand’s commitment to inclusion. Consumers want to see that you walk the talk. They see the team you hire and feature as a reflection of your values.
3. Michael Graves Design builds accessibility into its product.
The most successful companies bake inclusion directly into their products. That’s why I love Michael Graves Design.
CEO Ben Wintner told me that the brand’s ethos around accessible homes centers on “the decisions you make within a home that are going to allow the widest group possible to live the way they want to live, and most importantly with independence and dignity.”
To achieve this mission, the brand works to build products for the people who have the most specific needs, including those who are disabled. Wintner says the brand builds its products with novel functional enhancements. Design teams are equally focused on “blending safety, style, and accessibility.”
Most companies I’ve seen design products for the masses. They later go back and figure out how to adapt offerings for underrepresented and underserved communities.
Michael Graves Design breaks that mold. By focusing on building a product that works for consumers with the most specialized needs, while considering the wider needs of its larger customer base, the brand delivers a product that actually works for the widest group possible.
I’ve seen this work outside of the design space. Take a restaurant I regularly visited while living in Buenos Aires. The menu was designed for people who followed a gluten-free and Paleo diet. However, the food was delicious and focused on popular dishes that people in Buenos Aires love to eat.
The result? The majority of people who ate at the restaurant were not gluten-free or Paleo; they just came for a delicious meal. The restaurant was also frequented by people who had those restricted diets, because there weren’t a lot of available restaurants for them. And, the restaurant could serve a wide range of diners. It’s a win-win-win.
Pro tip: Design for the consumers with the most specialized needs, so you have a product that works for the widest group possible.
Tune into my full conversation with Ben Wintner on this episode of the Inclusion & Marketing podcast.
4. Lysol prioritizes identity-based research to improve effectiveness.
Customer intimacy is at the heart of any effective inclusive marketing strategy. The team at Lysol prioritizes engaging in research to ensure they understand their consumers at a deep level, all while crafting communication that strikes the right tone.
Gary Osifchin is the chief marketing officer and general manager at Reckitt U.S. Hygiene. He told me that the brand had effectively engaged African-American and Hispanic consumers by authentically representing them in the brand’s marketing. The key here, according to Osifchin, is basing all promotional campaigns on consumer insight.
Osifchin shared they captured insights from “a lot of rich quals, a lot of in-home, a lot of upskilling, and ensuring that we actually are speaking to diverse consumers to gain insight.”
Osifchin explained that when the team evaluates their efforts, they know how consumers will receive their communications.
“Are we actually delivering a better fragrance experience with our Lysol brand new day products amongst the target consumers of African Americans and Hispanics? The answer is yes, we are, because we developed it based on insight, and then we tested it to ensure that we’re delivering against it,” Osifchin says.
Pro tip: Move beyond superficial content that doesn’t resonate with consumers from underrepresented and underserved communities. Invest in getting the insights you need and testing them to ensure that what you create resonates.
5. HubSpot acquires more customers through multilingual content marketing.
People in more than 135 countries use HubSpot. Not all those customers speak English. Even if they do, they may prefer to engage with educational content in a different language. So, as a means to reach more of its ideal consumers, HubSpot leans into multilingual marketing.
The brand creates localized original content and funnels different languages, such as Spanish and French.
Selim Damani is part of the French growth marketing team at HubSpot. Damani told me that the brand takes a very strategic approach to gaining consumers in different markets. The strategy goes beyond just translating existing content.
“We have to accept that the original market or the U.S. market is different from international markets. But they [other markets] are also all different and unique, and we cannot have just the one strategy we roll out for every other country,” Damani says.
According to Damani, American companies in France need to adapt their marketing campaigns so they resonate with French audiences. Without steeping campaigns in the local culture, potential customers will assume that the product won’t meet their unique needs.
“If all the examples that I’m shown are about an American delivery company, American fast foods, American train systems, booking systems that don’t exist, I’m like, ‘Okay, it works. But it won’t work for me,’” Damani explains.
The solution here, Damani continues, is to speak to the customers and show that “your market is not an afterthought of my strategy, but that you are the center of the regional strategy.”
Pro tip: Your inclusive marketing efforts will be more effective if you don’t try to force a one-size-fits-all strategy to work. Know your diverse customer identities, and find ideal ways to serve them.
Get Ready to Grow With Inclusive Marketing
Each company that I featured above took a different approach to inclusive marketing. However, each brand reaped the same reward: They could genuinely serve a wider range of customers by meeting their unique needs.
More brands are realizing that inclusive marketing is both the right thing to do and incredibly effective. By understanding diverse perspectives in your audience, you can create inclusive campaigns, design more accessible offerings, and expand your reach.
