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. © Copyright 2014. Jenn T. Grace | Professional Lesbian 3 of 15 2. How well do you know your target market? 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.