01/12
Realign with who you are
Revisiting your brand strategy, where are you now and what was/is your plan is an important first step of understanding your position in the current market. Ask yourself who are your customers today? What is their age, gender, lifestyle? What is impacting their lives and their decision making? What are their favourite brands, habits and hobbies, etc? Zoom into the details to set yourself up for success.
02/12
Build a strong and diverse team
A great team will not happen overnight but it will make the difference in how successful you will be on the inclusive brand journey. Having a diverse team in marketing is crucial but you also want to have diverse teams working on the product, policies, processes, brand strategy etc, etc. Not only will it enrich your offering but it will helop you avoid costly mistakes.
Are you up to date with the current trends around inclusivity? Belonging and inclusion will forever evolve, what was relevant in 2020 is actually very different today in 2025 and that pattern will continue for the foreseeable future due to society slowly dismantling deeply ingrained ideologies, systems, structures and behaviours. Only research can help you understand what is happening and how you can be a part of it.
04/12
Know the customer beyond the demographics
The old paradigm for customer insights was looking at demographics and using that information to make marketing decisions. The new paradigm is psychographics, looking beyond age and location to inform your strategy, instead looking at behaviours , lifestyle and values.
05/12
Build a robust and well thought out communications strategy
A communications stratgey is far more complex today as we are using so many channels and platforms to share our messages. Build a robust and well thought out plan that utilises all your channels but also considers how you communicate through those channels.
Cultural norms and stereotypes are often confused (norms are the agreed‐upon expectations and rules by which a culture guides the behaviour of its members in any given situation), but understanding the cultural norms for your markets will help you cut through all the noise that is marketing in 2025. What are the cultural norms for your market/s? Think about local articulation and the nuances between each market to achieve reach your customers.
07/12
Competitor landscape
What are your competitors up to? Are they making decisions that are also relevant to you or are they making decisions based on whats trending. Either way dedicate time to regularly access what is going in your industry and what your competitors are up to, so you can respond and plan appropriately to make sure that you don't lose your share of your market.
08/12
Visuals are everything
You will probably spend most time on your visuals and if you're not, then you should. Casting decisions are very important, each cast member represents a person and the people who identify with that type of person. An Adobe survey found that 62% of respondents said that a brand’s diversity, or lack of it, impacts their perception of their products or services.
Not enough brands, even the big ones use storytelling to connect with their audience and it is one of the best skills a brand should leverage. Crafting stories that are relatable allows you to connect with people regardless of identity. A key part of inclusive marketing is not always being visually representative, but rather using narrative to connect.
Language is critical to your identity and to your inclusion goals. Language has the ability to divide, connect or even empower, so knowing how to use it will set your campaigns and your brand apart from those who don't.
I don't have much more to say to this guide except that testing is vital, especially when you'r trying to be more inclusive. There are so many things that you can get wrong when starting out that not testing is a risk that you should never take. Qualitative testing will be your best friend and it will help you understand the small minute details that you may have overlooked.
This is a new step in my guide, because I noticed that many brands are no longer paying attention to how they are using their media buy to reach and convert their customers. The wrong media buy will not only be a waste of money but can also cause more harm than good. For more details on how that can happen, download E-book 1 where I go into more detail
