Why you should make sure your Marketing images are inclusive

Why you should make sure your Marketing images are inclusive

Welcome to episode 29 of The Determined Mom Show. I am your host, Amanda Tento. Today, I want to encourage you to think about your marketing and how you portray your business. So what I’m going to talk about today is including women of color in your advertising and marketing.

I am not a woman of color, but I have the whitest skin you’ve ever seen, and I come from the middle of nowhere, Pennsylvania. I have three daughters, and they are all of mixed race. My husband is from Cameroon, and my daughters are Cameroonian American, as I refer to them. I want them to have these images of women of their color or any color in their sphere of influence. So I think it’s important that children growing up see themselves in desirable positions.

I was reading some information on marketing and advertising last night and having African Americans in marketing and advertising. It seems that only in the 1960s were they starting to be positively portrayed, but that was only in magazines like Jet and Ebony and things like that and things that were geared only towards other African Americans. I think it’s essential that we take the reins and hold each other accountable for using people of every race and every gender in our marketing.

When it’s appropriate for my marketing, I wouldn’t include a man because I only market to women, but that’s a different topic for a different day. So I want to encourage you when you’re doing your marketing. Consider making sure that you include women of color in your marketing or men of color, children of color, or anything, depending on your marketing.

You know who your target audience is because you are shaping the future of marketing by doing this. So whenever you put together an image on Canva or an image for Instagram or wherever, instead of including stock photos with the typical white American lady or male, stop and check yourself and think about that and change it, change the future.

The other thing that I wanted to talk about is that it has come up from two different women I consider influencers. I’m not going to use their names, but in one conversation, there was an instance where this woman was the guest speaker at a conference. I think it was exclusively for African American women; she is an influencer in a particular social media outlet. So she’s an expert in this outlet, and she was hired to speak, and she realized that she didn’t have anyone in her slideshow that reflected the audience she was speaking to.

So she had no black women in her slide, and she was frantic, and she ended up having to do this last minute, and it made her stop and think like, Oh my goodness, I’m not doing this right. So I’m very proud of her for stopping and thinking about it, choosing to be different, and thinking about her influence and what she’s doing with her marketing.

Another instance is a conversation I had with someone on the phone last week who was also an influencer in her field. She has a huge Facebook group, but she has found herself accused of not marketing toward black or people of color in any way.

So she has gone out of her way to create a solution for that and create topics that include this in her teaching. So I think that it’s really important that we stop. We evaluate who we’re attracting, why we’re attracting them, and what we can do to be more inclusive of every race and every gender because we don’t choose to be born where we’re born or from whom we’re born, and it’s just literally circumstantial. It’s not something we choose, and it’s an external factor, not an internal one.

It’s not reflective of who anyone is, and it’s very important to look at people not by their skin color but by their experience. Another factor that comes into my marketing, in particular, is that I have a lot of family in Africa, and I want them to see themselves in my marketing. So I want them to see that they are the person I’m targeting so that they know they can start their own business.

I know they can start where they are and get to wherever they want. So I think sending that message to everyone, regardless of race, is important. So remember that you have the power to make people feel special, included, and like they can do anything. I hope you have a wonderful week.