For inclusive marketing to be executed well, customer experience must incorporated from the beginning.
The customer experience you deliver is the vehicle with which the people you serve determine whether or not they belong with you. The better designed the customer experience, the more they will feel that what you offer is for them.
The challenge for many brands when implementing inclusive marketing is that they often implement it in a silo, without thinking through how it fits in to the broader customer experience.
In a series of inclusive brand audits I conducted, it became clear that brands of all sizes hadn’t thought through the user experience for the people they were serving. So even though the brands had invested time and other resources to make components of their offering inclusive, the customer experience the brand delivered made it hard for consumers with different identities to even get to the parts designed of the experience for them.
One consumer, a Spanish-speaker went to a website of a popular auto brand. The company had taken the time to translate the site and have it available in Spanish. However, the placement of the link to translate the site was all the way in the footer, a place the consumer expressed he would never look. He told me the brand putting the Spanish-language link in the footer made a clear statement to him that Spanish-language consumers “weren’t important.”
Another consumer who was hearing impaired, wanted to check out a popular podcast. The podcast version of the show didn’t provide a transcript, so she couldn’t engage. The video version of the podcast did provide high-quality captions, however the opening 30-seconds of the video which served as a “trailer” was so visually busy, it negatively impacted her ability of to focus on and read the captions.
The negative experience from the first-seconds of the video, made it so she clicked away, causing her to miss out on the remaining 90-minutes of the interview, where the visuals weren’t chaotic.
Another consumer who follows a gluten-free diet went to a restaurant website to review the menu to see if their were items safe for her to eat. But she couldn’t find any details about what items were ok for gluten-free people on any part of the navigation for the website. She had to go back out to her search engine and type the name of the restaurant with the words “gluten-free” to get a PDF version of the gluten-free menu to find the information. That friction in finding the details she needed impacted her desire to want to eat at the restaurant.
Other common forms of friction include lack of representation in visual imagery, the options given for gender on marketing forms for people in the LGBTQ+ community, and lack of products that tailor to people from minority communities within the beauty industry.
It is a good thing that more brands are being inclusive with their marketing. But if you actually want to convert consumers from underrepresented and underserved communities, it is important to remove the friction from your customer experience.
Friction prevents consumers from getting the information they need from you. Friction prevents consumers from exploring what you’re offering. Friction prevents consumers from buying from you.
When you decrease the friction in the customer experiences you deliver, your conversions will increase, your sales will increase, and your customer retention will increase.
Here are a few ways to minimize the friction in the customer experiences you deliver from an inclusion standpoint.
Bake Customer Experience Into The Planning Process From The Beginning
Anything that is left to consider at the last minute or after you’ve already done all the heavy lifting, is bound to have some friction in it. When you consider the customer experience you’re delivering for all the people you serve, not only will deliver better experiences with less friction, but you’ll also save time, resources, and energy.
As you think about the experiences you want to deliver, be clear about who the end users will be. Consider their identities, the needs they have, and what they will need experience wise to achieve the kind of success you desire with what you produce.
When you know who you’re designing experiences for, you’ll also get clarity on what other voices you need to have at the table.
Build A Diverse And Representative Team
This is common and simple advice, but it makes a big difference. People who share the lived experiences of the people you want to serve will enable you and the rest of your team to better consider the plight and nuances needed to minimize the friction you’re delivering.
If you aren’t in a position to bring new team members on now or to diversify who you have on staff, partner with consultants and contractors who share the identities of the customers you want to serve.
Complete User Testing For Diverse Consumers
Lots of brands invest in user testing and conversion rate optimization to ensure that the experiences they are delivering get more of the people they want to serve to take the actions they desire.
But a general population approach to user testing and conversion rate optimization won’t work for all your consumers. Different consumers have different needs, different elements that are important to them, and different criteria to make them feel seen, supported, and like they belong.
As you’re doing your testing and optimization, be sure to include various identities, and also to probe for specific identity-based points of friction that you can address. In many instances, the changes that need to be made to eliminate the friction for diverse consumers, will have little to no impact on your broader customer base.
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