D&I improves your marketing, sales and CRM

The profitability of D&I is most evident where business is done directly: In the market, with the customer, through sales. Surprisingly, D&I has so far been used very little here.

Marketing and sales are primarily oriented towards consumer-relevant criteria. It therefore seems all too obvious to many that age, gender or culture can at best complement product, price or promotion strategies. In addition, the mantra applies that the target group of the future is size 1. This would allow marketers to fully individualise their offerings. From a D&I point of view, however, we should ask the other way around: How many products or communication messages are meant for everyone and yet passed by many?

The ‘average consumer’ does not represent any customer

The desired clarity of marketing messages often ends in unattractive failures: wicked stereotypes or exclusionary offers quickly emerge when the ideal consumer or the average buyer serve as protagonists. Those who have a different identity in terms of age, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, constitution or origin, feel hardly or not at all addressed. Furthermore, the ‘dream worlds’ praised by marketing actually have repulsive effects, case studies show.

“The traditional mass marketing is a single giant bias.” Michael Stuber

Diversity & Inclusion: The Propelling Performance Principle in Marketing & Sales

Beyond fragmented target group marketing, diversity in marketing and sales offers various levers to cover the entire breadth and depth of the market.

  • Diversity as a theme: When marketing explicitly shows the diversity of the entire market, D&I becomes a marketing theme and helps to fully tap into market potential.
  • Openness as a value: When marketing uses open-mindedness or unconventionality as a brand attribute, it appeals to the biggest part of the market at large and implicitly leverages D&I.
  • Inclusion as a mechanism: Addressing diversity without falling into stereotypes – this is the basic idea of inclusion in marketing. If the conscious avoidance or even breaking of stereotypes is successful, for target groups and the mainstream are equally reached.

Recognising the entire market – leveraging all of diversity

Marketing studies as well as analyses of individual campaigns show that the growing diversity of markets is hardly taken into account. The importance of diversity and inclusion in the successful handling of complex business relationships is also growing in the B2B sector. How well does your company make use of the opportunities offered by differentiated marketing?

D&I serves as an impetus for future-oriented marketing that leverages social development for business success. ENGINEERING D&I

Information about our marketing research projects can be found in our research compendium.


Further Reading

Global Study about Diversity in Marketing

Diversity in sales Retail battle for customers with autism

Marketing: Between cliché and Diversity

A gift or a stereotype trap? – The case for diversity

Top
de_DE