(LGBT) Community Requires a Plan. Positioning Yourself As the Go-To Pers

Marketing to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community requires a plan. Positioning yourself as the go-to person for the community in regards to business transactions requires a strategy and a plan as well. You have to be logical in your approach. You can’t just put a rainbow sticker in your storefront and hope LGBT clients will walk through your doors. You have to put yourself out there and get involved in your local community (or national if that’s your market). I can respect a well placed rainbow sticker or an HRC (the blue and yellow equal sign) sticker on a front door, business card, website, commercial, etc. but you need to do more than just that.

To create your plan ask yourself the following 5 questions.

1. Who am I trying to market to? If your answer is the LGBT community you need to be more speciﬁc. ie. gay men ages 35-50 who need retirement planning or lesbian mothers who need estate planning.

2. How will I position myself differently than the competition? Marketing to the LGBT community can be a crowded space. You’ll always see plenty of ﬁnancial planners, lawyers, accountants and realtors looking to work with the community. So ﬁgure out what makes you different. Find out by asking those you already work with. What is your hook that gets people to know, like and trust you?

3. How will I begin my LGBT outreach efforts? This is where you will need to do some research to determine the best place to start. Is there a local LGBT Chamber of Commerce in your area? Do you have a pride center nearby? Is there a professional networking group geared towards the LGBT community?

4. What steps will I take to start building relationships? Think about what strategies you will use to make yourself known in the community. Will you place an ad in the local LGBT media? Will you attend a big gala in your area? Will you volunteer for a local LGBT non-proﬁt organization? To build quality relationships and get a solid reputation within the community you need to be active.

© Copyright 2014. Jenn T. Grace | Professional Lesbian 1 of 15 With step 4, be speciﬁc. Put it down on paper. • By November15th – I will have talked with my current LGBT clients to see why they continue to do business with me. • By November 28th – I will have joined the local LGBT Chamber of Commerce or pride center/community center in my area. • By December 30th – I will have LGBT speciﬁc marketing material created to use in my outreach efforts.

5. How will I measure my progress? Measuring your goals is critical. The best way to measure is by making your goals SMART (speciﬁc, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely.) Check out my friends at the INUS Group for more information on SMART goals.

Remember: Sometimes the plan is messy and you have to make changes. It also requires a bit of flexibility. If you start something and find it’s not working, switch gears and go down a new path. There’s no saying you can’t veer off the path once you get started. That’s how you’ll find the secret sauce that works for you and your business.

Having a solid plan can be applied in almost any situation. For example, in a previous life I worked in retail. I managed an outdoor apparel department (think skiing, cycling, hiking, hunting, etc.) for a sporting goods company. One of the things I liked the most was rearranging the visual displays for maximum effectiveness. One day I had a vision for how I wanted a certain display wall to look. I dove in, tore the existing display apart and made a catastrophic looking mess. Good news is it was all back together and looked awesome within 2 hours. I had a very speciﬁc plan in mind, I knew exactly what I had to do, how long it would take me to do it, and what the end result would look like.

However, my working style can occasionally resemble that of a Tasmanian devil. So to the outside eye it seemed crazy what I was up to. My point is – it doesn’t really matter how crazy your plan may seem to others at the onset. With a solid plan and a vision of what your end result will be, you can accomplish anything.

So go for the gold. Get out there and be a Tasmanian devil. Execute your plan and become the business professional every LGBT person would be lucky to do business with.

© Copyright 2014. Jenn T. Grace | Professional Lesbian 2 of 15 In this part we are going to do a deep dive into defining your target market. In part 1 we discussed the 5 questions to ask yourself to help create a solid plan. In that post the first question was “Who am I trying to market to?” Any marketing professional will tell you that the key to all of your marketing activities whether they be online or offline first starts with understanding who your audience is – your target market. Below are 4 key questions with action steps to help you on your way to defining your target audience. (If you want to dive even deeper into defining your target market, check out my training on how to do just that, click here.)

1. What are the demographics of your target market?

Knowing the demographics of your target market is an absolute ﬁrst step. These are things such as their age, gender, martial status, sexual orientation, education level, income, among others. For the sake of this post we are going to use one continuous example throughout – I Heart Computers. The owners of I Heart Computers know the following about their customers; • they are professionals in their late 30′s to early 50′s • they are primarily college educated lesbians • they are married with no children

This is the demographic makeup of the majority of their business. Serving this niche of married, college educated lesbians outlines exactly where they should spend their advertising dollars and marketing efforts. So for example, if they were approached to sponsor a gaming convention and they learned the demographics of the convention where college aged men with an interest in gaming, then they could easily determine that this is not the right sponsorship for them.

Action step: Go through your current client database and ﬁnd the commonality. If a few different themes start popping up make 2-3 groups of target markets. It is okay to have more than one.

Building upon question one, let’s dive even deeper into your target market. How well do you know them? Have you ever surveyed your customer base? In the above example we know college educated, married, lesbian professionals between late 30′s and early 50′s is the target demographic. But what else do you know about them? What types of professionals are they? Are they lawyers, doctors, accountants, bankers or college professors? When your clients are coming to you are they bringing in their personal computer problems, work computer problems or a hybrid of both? The more you understand about them the better you can serve their needs. What if you do a survey and ﬁnd that a large percentage of your lesbian clients have children? You made an assumption that they didn’t. Perhaps they have children who are old enough to have computers. You could use this to your advantage and offer a special deal when they bring in their computer to be ﬁxed they get a credit for their kids computer next time it needs some TLC. By having this data you can really focus on who you are serving and doing it well.

Action step: Create a short survey to have your current client base answer. Give them an incentive to do it. If you are a service based enter all who ﬁll it out into a drawing to win their next service for free. If you have products or coupons you can offer give them to those who ﬁll it out. If you don’t have either purchase a gift card to a local establishment.

3. Where do your target customers spend their time and hang out?

Where exactly can you find more of your ideal target customers? The best way to find that answer is to ask your current customers. Ask them where they do their networking or which social networks they prefer to hang out on. Gathering this data will help you focus specific outreach efforts. For example if the owners of I Heart Computers surveyed their current client database of 400 and more than 50% said they were on Facebook, you should consider creating a Facebook page to stay top of mind for them. If they tell you that they aren’t on social media but 50% of them listen to the classic rock radio station in your geographic location, then perhaps you should look into advertising on the radio.

Action step: Adding on to the previous action step. Include these questions in that survey you’ve already begun compiling.

4. What problem are they trying to solve and how can you help?

What are the concerns of your target customers? Look at this from an aerial view. Using the I Heart Computers example, are their concerns based around fear that their computer is going to crash? Or are they computer novices and this is just a source of stress for them? If they have the right data, they may have determined that a high

© Copyright 2014. Jenn T. Grace | Professional Lesbian 4 of 15 percentage of their clients are female doctors who only use the computer when they absolutely must therefore they aren’t familiar with its capabilities and it stresses them out. Knowing this information you might be able to offer an intro to computers class for the busy doctor or medical professional. Not only would you be serving the need of your existing client base but word would begin to spread that you are offering this and it could help bring in new business that are part of your ideal target market.

Action step: Find the commonality between your existing client base. If you have a high percentage of doctors or college professors or students, create a program or product geared speciﬁcally for them.

Final thoughts…

The number one thing to remember is that this is not about you. This is about your target market. Everything that you do should be focused on their needs. If you don’t know how to serve their needs, ask. Do not assume you know who your target market is, dig deep and find out. Do not define your target market based on who you would ideally like to be selling to. Define it based on who wants to buy from you. There could be a big difference here. Be strategic in your approach. By truly identifying who your target market is, you can begin to think like them, act like them and be where they are to best serve their needs.

© Copyright 2014. Jenn T. Grace | Professional Lesbian 5 of 15 In this part we are going to answer the question, “How will I position myself differently than the competition?” To help you determine what makes you stand apart – you need to ﬁrst understand your business and the competition. The ﬁrst step is to do a SWOT analysis. This process will help you determine your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats as a company.

Let’s go through each part of a SWOT analysis brieﬂy. What you want to do when answering each of these questions is answer them from both your perspective and your customers perspective. So let’s jump in.

1. What are your Strengths?

Take a look at what your company does. Where are you really strong? Are you in an industry that has fully automated customer service and you are one of the few that still provides live customer service? Is the customer service you provide out of the park outstanding and your customers rave about you because of it? Those are some examples of strengths. Don’t forget to look at this from the customer stand point too. Find out from them what they think makes you strong or better than the competition. It might be something you hadn’t thought of.

2. What are your Weaknesses?

Just like the ﬁrst question, take a look around and see where your company is weak or could use improvement. Perhaps you are the company with poor customer service and your competitors are running laps around you. Perhaps your brand name isn’t as strong as some of the other players out there. Or perhaps your product costs more to produce than the competitor so you have a higher price point. Find a way to turn a negative into a positive. For example, if you have a higher price point than your competition, position yourself so that your company is so good and your customer service is so amazing that the price point is not the sole thing your customers ﬁxate on. Rock star style customer service will go a long way.

Think of it this way – your competitors weaknesses become your opportunities. If your competitor is ignoring an entire market segment of people that’s an opportunity for you. Set up a speciﬁc campaign and target the audience they’re missing (Ah hem – the LGBT market!) If your competition has terrible customer service, that’s an opportunity for you to blow them away with amazing customer service. Remember, if you are viewing your competition’s weaknesses as opportunities they are doing the same towards you so don’t make it easy for them.

4. Where are the threats?

You must be constantly assessing the threats around you. You need to keep your finger on the pulse and know what is happening in your industry and what your competitors are up to. If your competitions market share keeps rising but yours is flat – find out why. What are you doing or not doing that is causing this to happen? If your competitors have exceptionally happy customers, don’t ignore that. You don’t want your customers jumping ship to be with them – make sure you are keeping them just as happy, if not more.

Break it into two

If you are feeling really adventurous you could do two separate SWOT analyses. One focusing on your perspective and another focusing on the competition. The benefit to breaking it out is that you can have separate team meetings (if you have a team) with very specific agendas. The first to go over the competition. Find out from your team what they think about the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of the competition. They may see things you missed. You can focus the dialogue around how to be better and do better for your customers. Then you could take the other SWOT that is focused on your company and have a separate meeting to discuss efficiencies within the organization. How to save cost, produce a better product or keep your customers happier.

This is really a broad overview of how you can use a SWOT analysis to help uncover ways to improve your business and your marketing efforts. If you came to me with this information already thought out and said “We need your help,” it would make my job (or any other marketers job) a bit easier because you’ve done some of the legwork. This is a great start for creating an all-star strategy. Putting together a marketing plan doesn’t have to be super scary, you just need to take it bit by bit and try not to become overwhelmed by the task at hand.

© Copyright 2014. Jenn T. Grace | Professional Lesbian 7 of 15 By this point you’ve determined that marketing to the LGBT community is the right thing for you and your business. Now it’s time to do the research to determine the best place for you to start your outreach within the community.

Here are 4 questions to think about -

1. Do you have a LGBT Chamber of Commerce in your area?

As a business owner, the LGBT Chamber of Commerce should be your #1 place to go. LGBT Chamber’s are the backbone of the LGBT economy in a particular city, county or state. There are over 40 chambers across the United States and 10+ internationally. It’s possible there is one in your area. You can click here for a list of current chambers.

Here’s the thing – there may not be a chamber close to you geographically. Don’t let that deter you. Check out those that are within a comfortable radius to you. You can still get value from a chamber even if you cannot physically be at all of the events. Read my post here on how important and life changing LGBT chamber’s have been for me.

2. Is there a pride center nearby?

Pride centers are a great hot spot for activity within the community. Often they will offer support group, mix n’ mingle happy hour events, poetry slams, art classes, yoga, educational seminars, etc. You’ll also see many of the pride centers offering advertising for friends or supporters of the center. You can advertise in their newsletters, on their website or bring your materials into the physical location.

Pride centers are a place where you will meet many walks off life and will likely ﬁnd people with similar interests to you. Remember, as a business owner, everything you do is an opportunity to network. You shouldn’t look at networking narrowly. If you are at a party, softball game or the annual pride center awards gala – there’s an opportunity to build relationships and network.

Professional groups are awesome. Think about your industry, are you in travel, journalism or the legal industry? There are plenty of professional/industry/trade organizations out there that are speciﬁc to the LGBT community. Two great examples are;

• International Gay & Lesbian Travel Association • National Lesbian & Gay Journalist Association

Also, going back to the LGBT chambers for a moment. Many of them have industry speciﬁc groups. I know the Connecticut chamber has groups speciﬁc to real estate and legal. These are great places to network, if available to you.

4. Is there a LGBT speciﬁc non-proﬁt in your area?

Here’s where you can get really creative! No matter what your interest is, there is probably a non-profit within a reasonable range for you to be involved in. For example, in the state of Connecticut alone there are LGBT specific groups for; film festivals, children in foster care, HIV, aging seniors, gay men’s chorus, health collectives, etc. I’ve seen groups in other states such as youth mentoring groups, paganism, athletic groups, ministries, speaking, among many others.

Find something that is of interest to you, start volunteering, then get on the board of directors. This is good for you because it gives you access and exposure to the constituents the organization serves. This is the best way to get your name out there and start building your reputation within the community.

Remember – allies can do this too. You don’t need to be LGBT to be active in these LGBT organizations. If you are an ally who is interested in working within the community, you can get yourself engaged and involved and it will do your reputation wonders.

This is a really fun topic for me as I am always connecting with new people and matchmaking those I know would be a good ﬁt for one another. The excitement for this topic may be partially due to my position as an executive director of an LGBT chamber of commerce for 3+ years. In that capacity it was my job to be a connector and to be a builder of relationships. I learned a great deal about business in that position and I have a few tips to share here.

The most important thing I am going to say here is – You have to view your relationship building approach from a strategic lens. Most of us in business have heard of the “Know, Like and Trust Factor,” but have you ever given thought to how people come to know, like or trust you? Below I’m going to provide some tips and advice for becoming that person.

Know

How can you expect people to know who you are if you aren’t out networking? Networking is the name of the game in business. But you have to have a vision and a purpose when you are networking. Going to an event and being a wallﬂower, talking with people you already know and not actively searching for new people to connect with isn’t going to expand your reach and build your database of connections.

So how do you change this? You need to step outside of your comfort zone. Yes, it can be scary. But to grow your skills and grow your business, you just have to do it. Find a wing-man or wing-woman who is good at networking and ask them to attend an event with you. Observe what they are doing and then jump in. You may feel anxious, but remember the person you are walking up to could be feeling the exact same way you are, regardless of how well polished or conﬁdent they may seem.

So, how do you get people to like you? This is a question some people have been asking themselves since the dawn of time. I’m here to tell you there are simple ways to help you accomplish this. In a business setting the number one thing I ﬁnd that works amazingly well to getting people to like you is by focusing on what you can do for others and not what others can do for you.

Being that pushy person who is handing out hundreds of business cards at an event without having a real meaningful conversation is a sureﬁre way for people not to like you. Or at the very least not return your calls or e-mails when you reach out. Focusing on how you can be of value to someone else makes you a resource. Being a resource and a connector can serve you well in business. I am always making introductions and connecting people I think will be a good match together. It doesn’t cost me more than a few minutes of my time to make the introduction and if they are a good match, they will remember I’m the one who connected them. That leaves a positive image of me in their minds.

Trust

Trust is a big one. People need to feel like they can trust you. Have you ever been to an event where you can immediately ﬁnd the gossip in the crowd? Yep – that person. Don’t be him/her. Business associates and colleagues need to feel like they can trust you, but you need to demonstrate that they can. Remember actions speak louder than words. You can do this by not talking badly about your competition, past clients, past relationships, etc. The last thing you want is for people to think you are the engine in the rumor mill. If you talk like that to them, how do they know you aren’t talking about them to others?

On any given day sensitive information comes my way. I’ve opened my lines of communication and trust with people because they understand that telling me something means that I’m not going to repeat it. Simple as that. It may seem like pretty common sense but you’d be surprised at how many Negative Nancy’s there are out there talking badly about those in the community around them. Make note of how you talk to other people and what you say. If you find yourself going down the gossip trail, make a conscious note of it and try better next time. Over time you’ll find more people confiding in you for being the person they feel they can trust.

So, now that you have some basic tips to get you started – let’s think about what strategies you can use in your outreach to the LGBT community. Ask yourself some of these questions – Will you place an ad in the local LGBT media? Will you attend a big gala in your area? Will you volunteer for a local LGBT non-proﬁt organization? To build quality relationships and your reputation you need to be active. You could be volunteering, putting an ad in the local LGBT media and attending a big gala, all in one shot. Most gala’s have program books and volunteer committees.

© Copyright 2014. Jenn T. Grace | Professional Lesbian 11 of 15 These are 3 good ways to get your name and face out there. Becoming a regular for any particular group in your area is a good start. Be consistent and be regular. Showing up to one thing every 3 months doesn’t keep you top of mind for anyone. Find ways to have your name always in front of the people you want to do business with.

Let’s take it to the next level – go grab a piece of paper or open up a Word document. Now, make yourself a list. Write down these 3 steps.

Step 1

Write down a date two weeks from now. Next to it – make a list of ways you can get more involved. Such as; talking with current LGBT clients and finding out why they do business with you. Learn what makes you unique. Now use that new found information and determine where the best use of your time is. Get involved in the community through a business organization, a non-profit that correlates to your field of work, or even by becoming a mentor to an LGBT college student. Research the different ways you can become involved.

Step 2

Write down a date one month from now. Next to it – make a list of the speciﬁc organizations you previously researched that you have decided you want to be involved in. Whether it’s the local LGBT chamber, pride center, professionals group, etc. Do some additional research, narrow down the organization that best suits your needs and reach out to the main contact at each organization and schedule a meeting.

Step 3

Write down a date 6 weeks from now. Next to it – make a list of ways you can market your business to the LGBT community. Can you develop a marketing piece, a brochure or postcard of your products/services that is speciﬁc to the new organization you are involved in? Can you create a new website positioning yourself as the go to person to do business with? For example, if you are a lesbian realtor – you could get the domain name of “YourLesbianRealtor.com.” Be creative – there are a lot of opportunities for you. The key here is to be speciﬁc and focused.

Combine the 3 steps outlined above with the previous work you have done in building your strategic LGBT outreach plan and you are well on your way to success and recognition in your community.

© Copyright 2014. Jenn T. Grace | Professional Lesbian 12 of 15 Wow, we are ﬁnally at the conclusion of this 5 part series. In the last part we talked about the foundation of relationship building and now we are going to talk about how to be SMART in measuring your progress. There’s no sense in having a plan if you aren’t going to measure and track it!

Throughout this series we’ve talked about planning, having a vision and a mission but now this is where the rubber meets the road. We need to make sure you have S.M.A.R.T. goals in place to maximize your success.

Your goals must be Speciﬁc, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely. Think of a sporting event like football. You have two teams with one common objective – to beat the other team. Each team has different people, different coaches, different strategies and a recipe for success to win. What they also have in common is that they are SMART about the end results they are looking for. If they weren’t smart and strategic, why would they even be on the ﬁeld trying? It would be like playing the other team blindfolded. It’s the same thing in your business.

Are your goals designed blindfolded? Or do you have a clearly deﬁned objective at hand? Maybe you have an end goal in mind and a clearly deﬁned objective, but are they SMART?

An example

Let’s run through an example together. Let’s analyze how SMART this goal is.

“My goal is to increase registrations for my training course over the summer.”

Speciﬁc

Is this goal (S)pecific? Is ‘increase’ registrations, specific? Nope. Is ‘over the summer’ specific? It’s okay, but it could be better. The goal should read like this -

“My goal is to get 100 business owners to register for my training course from June- August.”

Measurable

Is this goal (M)easurable? Yes, it’s absolutely measurable. The goal is 100 business owners. That is something that can be tracked and measured. If we went back to the orignal statement of “My goal is to increase registrations for my training course,” then it would not have been measurable. The word increase is relative.

Attainable

Is this goal (A)ttainable? Only you will know the answer to this question. Are you shooting for the moon with absolutely no idea how you will get there? Make your goal attainable. You can always change your goal later and bump it up if you’ve hit your targets. I’m not suggesting that you don’t make your goals lofty. I am all about making a goal something you need to reach for, what fun would it be if they weren’t, right?

Realistic

Is this goal (R)ealistic? Realistic in this case really means is this doable? Is this goal something you are capable of doing? Is the learning curve on this project straight up or is it a gradual incline you can handle? In the example above, the goal is to get 100 business owners to register for the training course. Would it be realistic if my goal were to get 1,000 people to register? Would this be something I could do. While it may be doable, it wouldn’t be a realistic goal. Would I be capable of serving the needs of 1,000 people at this very moment, probably not. Could I pull it off, yes, but would I want to, no. You need to be realistic with yourself and your clients.

Timely

Is this goal (T)imely? Do you have a time frame built around your goal? Having a time frame gives you a goal to strive towards. Without a time frame what’s the motivation for putting some pep in your step? What’s your built-in incentive? Without time limits there isn’t much urgency to get the job at hand done. In the example above, the goal has a specific time frame attached to it. I didn’t just say the summer, I specified June-August, so three specific summer months.

Conclusion

I would suggest running through this exercise with the goals that are related to your LGBT outreach plan. By the end of the exercise you will have SMART goals which will make it easier for you and your team to execute on.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this 6 part series and were able to implement and execute on what we talked about. I love to hear success stories so if this was of value to you and you are having success with it, let me know. I’d love to highlight it in an upcoming podcast or talk about it on the next webinar!

© Copyright 2014. Jenn T. Grace | Professional Lesbian 14 of 15 If you want to learn more about creating an LGBT marketing outreach plan check out my online training course, How to Authentically Market to the Gay Community. http://authenticgaymarketing.com

Or read one of my books!

http://butyoudontlookgay.com http://nowaityoudolookgay.com

Visit http://jenntgrace.com for the most up to date information on how to make your LGBT initiatives a success!