Podcast: Play in new window
Subscribe: RSS
Today we are talking about how confidence impact your LGBT marketing approach. I’m bringing this question to you because I’ve had two conversations with prospective clients in the last couple of weeks, and both of them – with two very different businesses were both asking similar questions around this topic. Here are my thoughts on how confidence does impact your LGBT marketing approach and what you can do to boost your confidence!
Would you prefer to read the transcript than listen to the episode? No problem! Read the transcript below.
AUDIO TITLE: Episode #72
How Does Confidence Impact Your LGBT Marketing Approach?
Jenn T Grace: You are listening to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast, episode 72.
Intro: Welcome to the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast, where you’ll learn how to do business with and market to the LGBT community in an authentic and transparent way. We’re talking about an $884 billion lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. We’ll help you grow your business, gain market share, and impact your bottom line. And now your host; she teaches straight people how to market to gay people, and gay people how to market themselves. Your professional lesbian, Jenn- with two N’s, T. Grace.
Jenn T Grace: Well hello and welcome to episode number 72 of the Gay Business and Marketing Made Easy Podcast. I am your host, Jenn Grace, and today is Thanksgiving. So if you are listening to this live, the day it comes out, Happy Thanksgiving to you. If you are listening to this at a later date, I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving.
Anyway, today I want to answer one simple question for you. And that question is how does confidence impact your LGBT marketing approach? So that is what we are going to cover in today’s episode, but of course before we get into that there’s a couple of things that I want to make sure that I mention to you at the top of the show, and then we’ll get right into the meat of the episode.
So the first thing that I want to bring up is that I mentioned this in the last episode, but I do want to mention it again because it is timely. So again, if you’re listening to this I guess within a week or so of it becoming live, please check out the LezBiBuy, which is on December 5th. And in episode 71 of the podcast I had mentioned that it is done by www.AfterEllen.com, and what they’re trying to do is create a directory of lesbian and bisexual women owned businesses, and putting them in a directory that makes it easy for other LGBT consumers to find and buy from on December 5th; and of course I’m imagining any other day of the year, but they’re trying to put an emphasis on December 5th for small business- basically the LGBT version of Small Business Saturday. So I wanted to mention that again because I think it’s a really cool idea, and I’ve submitted my business, and I’m hoping that if you are L, B, or T, and you want to put your business up there, that you’ve already done so. And again, if you’re listening to this live you still probably have a little bit of time to go ahead and do that. And I know that they still have the list on their website from last year when they did it, so it looks like your information will live in Internet eternity if you do so as well. So that’s really what I wanted to mention just really quickly because I think it’s cool and it will help your business.
The second thing that I wanted to mention quickly is again, in episode 71 of the podcast I had mentioned that I am sending just a small token of thanks to those who are on my mailing list. So if you have not yet received your physical mail thank you, please join my mailing list, and when I see your name pop up I will make sure that I request your mailing address so I can actually send you something physical via snail mail. So you can sign up pretty much all over my website. I have them everywhere, so if you just go to www.JennTGrace.com you will see someplace to put your information in. I know that there’s one right up front that says ‘Sign Up’ right on the home page, but if you get to it by going to this blog post for the podcast or what have you, you’ll see other opportunities on the right hand side or at the bottom. And it doesn’t matter which one you sign up for, it will be in there to ask you for your information. So again it’s just my way of saying thank you, because I really do appreciate you, and it is Thanksgiving after all, and I want to make sure that you are acknowledged and thanked year round for just being part of my community. So I really do appreciate it.
The next thing I want to just briefly mention is that the next episode, I’m hoping it will be episode number 73, it could be episode 74 so one of the last two episodes of 2015 I want to do an episode that is the LGBT events in 2015 that have changed history. As anyone listening to this podcast, you know that 2015 has been a huge, huge year of LGBT events that have just really shaped everything. So I feel like it’s really appropriate that I dedicate an episode to really just kind of covering the highlights of the last twelve months. And in doing so I’m really hoping, it’s not a guarantee yet but I’m really hoping that I will have my dear friend Sam McClure on the episode to do the year-end review with me. I feel like she’s the perfect person for it, and we’re just trying to work out our schedules as of right now. But if you don’t remember her, she did one of the 30 Days, 30 Voices podcast a while back, but she is the Vice President at the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce and just a dear friend of mine. So I’m hoping that we get Sam on to share her wisdom, especially from a national advocacy point of view of business equality, and just LGBT equality across the board, because so much has happened that it would be amazing to have it all kind of distilled into one sixty minute podcast episode. So Sam if you’re listening to this, which I know you do, let’s make sure that we don’t lose sight of getting a recording on. So again it might be in episode 73, it could be 74, it’s just really going to matter- it’s really just going to depend on our calendars and when we can make sure that we can touch base. So I hope to bring that to you, the listener, toward the end of this year. And then of course we’re going to go into 2016 with a bang, I assure you of that. So one of the episodes I will make sure that I kind of talk about what’s to come in 2016 as far as this podcast goes, and just a couple of interesting new things and developments that I am working on in my business.
So the final thing that I do want to mention is I want to give you a little bit more information about my group coaching that is coming in February. So this is I believe the third episode or so that I’ve brought up group coaching, and I’ve just been giving you a little bit of information here and there. And as I mentioned in the last episode, I had talked about how I am in a kind of data collection mode, and really just talking to people and validating that this is a need that people have, and I have certainly had the idea been validated many times over by a lot of different people. So I’m really excited to be more in the throes of fleshing out the content, what that’s going to look like, how the program’s going to be structured, and all that kind of great stuff. So the couple of new pieces of information that I want to share with you is around basically the structure. So I had mentioned that it’s going to start on February 1st, I’m hoping the enrollment will begin sometime maybe late December, but it will definitely be early January, and I’m shooting for a small intimate group of folks in this first round of the group coaching to really just make sure that you are getting the value that you need from your peers, and then making sure that we can kind of work through any of the kinks. So it’s basically going to be a pilot launch of the group coaching in February, and as a result it’s going to be at a reduced price. So anyone who’s willing to kind of jump aboard in the beginning with not knowing how everything’s going to unfold, I’m going to basically give you a drastically reduced rate just to get you in there, and to get your feedback, and we can kind of work through the kinks together and figure this all out. Because ultimately my goal is to help you as a business owner succeed, and the group coaching will focus primarily on marketing, but you can’t really do marketing well unless your business- the foundations of your business are in order; so your house is in order if you will. So we will focus partially on getting the house in order, and then really focus on the marketing, and focusing from a personal branding perspective. So how can we collectively work together to make sure that your personal brand in whatever industry you are in, or in whatever capacity you want to build your brand in, that it is the best brand possible. So part of the coaching is going to be around content marketing, how to really create proper content schedules, and calendars, and identifying what the best opportunities are for you. So is it doing videos on YouTube, is it podcasting, is it blogging. So we’ll really dive deep into all of these different things. So I do have the outline of what we will cover coming along, it’s getting there. So I’m hoping by the next episode I’ll be able to share a little bit more about the outline itself. But it’s going to be a three month program, so it will go from February 1st through April 30th, and the purpose of the three months is that it takes ninety days to really kind of develop new habits. So I want this to be a ninety day program where we decide in the beginning together what your goal is going to be over that ninety day period. And then we are going to bust our humps in that ninety days together to make sure that you are actively achieving that goal, and then maybe even more than that goal. So it’s not just going to be a lackadaisical group coaching, ‘Hey let’s chat and not get anything done.’ But I’m pretty certain I’ve talked about this on the podcast before that I do have the loving nickname by many as the Dark Lord because I’m known for getting shit done. So when I work with people I want to make sure that I am helping you get shit done. So the group coaching program, really going to be structured around how to tactically execute, how to get it done, how to see results, and really grow your business. So that is the end goal, that is absolutely what I want to help you with, and I would love to hear from you. So if this sounds interesting to you, I would love for you to go to www.MeetWithJenn.com and schedule time on my calendar for us to talk about it. And it’s not for me to try to hard sell you on the program, but rather I would just love to get to know you, find out more about your business, see if there’s any resources that I can provide for you, and then see if the group coaching program might work. Group coaching and coaching in general is not for everyone, and I totally get that. So I just want to have an opportunity to talk with you to find out what it is in your business, and what your pain points are that this program might be able to help you with. And since it’s a new program, and it’s going to be the first time out in February, there’s a lot of flexibility to changing the content as we go. I’m going to have an agenda and a timeline of sorts as we go through it, but if I have ten people in the program and everybody’s raising their hand and asking for something that’s not on that agenda, I’m absolutely going to make sure that we take care of it. So that’s kind of going to be the benefit I think of this first, first go around in this pilot program, is that a lot of it is going to be completely customizable to your individual needs as part of this group. So I’m really looking to get ten people in. I don’t want to go completely crazy, just looking for ten right now. So it’s going to be a very limited seating, but I’m hoping that we can really knock this pilot program out of the park. So many, many additional people in 2016 can take advantage of it as well.
So I’m really excited about this, I would love to hear from you. As I said, check out my calendar. You can also just shoot me an email if you’d rather do that and it’s Jenn@jenntgrace.com, and yeah we can just basically take it from there and have a conversation, it’s really what I’m looking for.
So now that we’ve chatted about these couple of announcements, let’s dive into today’s topic. So today’s topic is as I said answering the question how does confidence impact your LGBT marketing approach? And I’m asking this question, and then going to help answer this question because I’ve had two conversations with prospective clients in the last couple of weeks, and both of them- this conversation, it kind of twisted into this direction about confidence. And I feel like if these two folks, these two businesses, very, very different businesses are both asking similar questions, chances are you, my loyal listener, are probably thinking the same thing. Or it may have crossed your mind at some point before. So let’s just kind of start with confidence.
So in my opinion it’s really easy to get things done well when you’re confident in your abilities. So it doesn’t even necessarily matter what the task is. If you feel confident, you’re going to do a better job at whatever the task is because you’re confident. Versus someone who might be self-conscious, or maybe a little bit more timid and not as bold. And because of that, they might make different decisions, or have a different frame of mind. So I say this because if we look at LGBT marketing, and whether you’re part of the LGBT community, or whether you are an ally to the LGBT community, this affects both of you equally. So what I mean by that is that LGBT marketing in some ways there’s a lot of common sense to it. There’s a lot of things that you would just do in any of your marketing approaches. However there are a lot of LGBT marketing approaches that maybe they’re less obvious, or maybe you don’t necessarily know how to approach it in a way that makes you feel confident.
So let me just share with you the first meeting I had recently that this kind of came up in conversation. So I was meeting over lunch with two women, and they are both allies to the LGBT community, and they are both in senior care, senior living type of businesses- I guess the senior care industry if you will. And they were both sharing with me that they recognized that there’s a need for elderly LGBT people to be cared for in a respectable way. So if they’re trying to do an intake meeting for example, and they are trying to determine if someone that they’re speaking with is part of the LGBT community, they weren’t really sure how to go about that. They knew that they wanted to convey the message that their establishment was very LGBT-friendly, but at the same time they didn’t want to be completely over-the-top and obnoxious about it. So of the two women that I was talking to, one of them had basically said to me that she has- I believe she said her brother was gay, and she has just a plethora of LGBT people in her life, and being LGBT really has- she could care less. It has nothing to do with her day-to-day, she doesn’t care if someone is or is not part of the LGBT community; she really treats all of the people who come to her establishment the same way. And honestly that’s typically my approach, right so it’s a matter of just being very inclusive. So she even used the word inclusive. She specifically said that she’s very inclusive of everybody, and she’s recognized recently that the intake forms that they have don’t provide an opportunity for LGBT people to identify themselves. So not to say like, ‘Hey are you gay? Check here.’ Like that’s not what I mean. Moreso it says, ‘Husband or wife’ on the form, ‘Spouse and spouse.’ So it’s a matter of making your forms more inclusive, and this is problematic for a lot of people in the healthcare industry. I’ve worked with a handful of people in healthcare, and I’ve seen this over and over again, and it’s very simple, just change it to ‘Spouse’ or ‘Partner’ or ‘Parent or Guardian’ if you’re working with children in any way. So that way that your forms are more inclusive. So she was saying that she had already recognized that that was a problem, and has already addressed it. So she was saying specifically in terms of her conversations with people, she said that she noticed herself, that she herself wasn’t confident in how she was communicating. So communication is so incredibly important. So much so that I did write a book about it, and it’s my second book that I wrote which is ‘The Seven Mistakes Preventing You from Selling to the LGBT Community.’ And now if we look at those seven mistakes, they’re all communications based mistakes. So it’s a matter of how you’re addressing someone, and knowing those kind of key phrases and topics not to say. So for example, saying to an LGBT senior in this instance, “Oh I don’t care about your gay lifestyle.” Now there’s a lot of reasons why saying ‘Gay lifestyle’ is not a good idea, I’m not going to go into all those reasons here, but you can certainly check out my website and actually just type in the search field ‘Gay lifestyle’ and a couple of articles will come up and you can get information on that specifically. But my point for this is if you say something like that, and you say it in a way that you feel timid, so you yourself don’t feel like you’re articulating it in the right way. Number one you’re already saying something that you shouldn’t technically be saying, like it’s just not going to land well. So first if you educate yourself on knowing what say, and what not say, that alone is going to boost your confidence. And then secondarily if you focus on how you say it, and how you communicate it, it’s a matter of using confidence in your approach itself. So she specifically said that she had her brother who was gay, and she has plenty of friends that are part of the community as well. So it doesn’t matter to her.
So it’s a matter of when she’s having those intake meetings, asking questions that will draw out somebody to essentially out themselves. And you don’t have to do this, and you want to make sure that you’re doing it in a delicate way, but you could say something as simple as, “What does your spouse do?” So that’s a really simple phrase. If the person feels comfortable with you, and they say, “Oh my husband does-” and they’re a female. Or they say, “Oh my wife does-” and they’re a female, then you immediately know whether they are or aren’t part of the community. Somebody might just say, “Oh my spouse does-” and fill in the blank. Or somebody might follow up and use a pronoun by saying, “He” or “She” or “Her” or “Him.” So if you leave the canvas blank in asking the question, by just very inclusive and saying, “What does your spouse do?” Or, “What does your partner do?” Because there are a lot of non-LGBT couples that say ‘partner,’ so it’s not specific to LGBT. So by doing so you’re immediately showing that you are inclusive by just slightly changing the phrasing, rather than making the assumption of, “What does your wife do,” talking to a man. Or “What does your husband do,” talking to a woman. So it’s just a matter of just kind of opening up, and showing that you’re inclusive. The person on the other side of the table may out themselves to you, maybe they don’t, and it’s not necessarily for you- your end goal to be, ‘Oh I think this person’s gay, let me get them to tell me that.’ But it’s a matter of making them feel comfortable enough with you, that if it does come up naturally in conversation, they’re going to be okay talking about it.
Now if it does come up in conversation, you just want to make sure that you are not going completely overboard. So for example, if somebody does say, “Oh yeah, my wife does this.” That’s not necessarily the time to say something like, “Oh my God, I knew you were LGBT. That’s so great.” That’s not necessarily the time or place to just kind of make a bold statement like that, even if that’s how you feel. So even if you are just genuinely and sincerely trying to show that you’re supportive of the LGBT community, saying it immediately after maybe somebody outs themselves, probably not the most ideal situation. However if somebody then says to you, says that they are gay, or they are a lesbian, or whatever it happens to be, then you just respond like you normally would if somebody just said that they were straight. Like just keep it very calm and casual and general. Then later in the conversation- and this is really kind of around service-based businesses. So my whole business really is around service-based businesses, where a lot of times you have a longer sales process, and even though this conversation stemmed from talking with women who were in senior living, this is kind of applicable across the board. But if part of your intake process is finding more out about the spouse, then just use whatever terminology they’ve used with you, and mirror it back to them. So if somebody said ‘wife,’ say ‘wife’ back. If somebody said ‘spouse’ or ‘partner,’ say ‘spouse’ or ‘partner’ back to them. Just mirror whatever it is that they’re saying. And you can start to ask questions that are relevant to what you’re doing. So if I’m a senior and I’m looking for senior living, I know one of the things that they particularly brought up was around having children.
So it’s really easy to just basically say, “Do you or your spouse have children?” Or “Do you or your partner have children?” Or “Do you or your wife have children?” Depending on what they said to you first. It’s not rocket science and it doesn’t have to be crazy. For some reason when I was talking to them, they were getting a little bit tripped up in asking that question. And primarily because a lot of times somebody not even LGBT will be offended as to, “Why are you asking about my children when I’m talking about senior living?” And their reason for wanting to know was to know who next of kin is, or to know who they need to contact in case there’s an issue. It has nothing to do with questioning someone’s lifestyle or whether or not they’ve had children.
So it’s not that they’re coming from an ill place, but because they don’t realize that talking to an LGBT person is really most of the time no different than talking to anyone else, then for some reason they kind of get tripped up in that, and all of a sudden their confidence bubble is a little bit burst when it doesn’t need to be. So I would say that confidence really impacts your LGBT marketing approach in so many different ways, because if you’re getting tripped up in your own mind and your own thoughts, then it’s going to come through not necessarily weak per se, but it’s going to come through in an inauthentic way when that’s probably the exact opposite thing that you’re trying to convey to this person.
So if you are working with an LGBT client, or trying to really get to the bottom of whether or not somebody is LGBT, and then they’ve outed themselves to you, just treat them like you would any other customer. Like there really does not need to be any difference in how you would treat and approach them.
Now two additional caveats and/or tips that I would add onto this are just say what you would say to others, however if you find yourself kind of stuck in a place where you’re basically digging yourself a grave which happens to a lot of people, and there’s nothing wrong with it. So we all say things that are inappropriate, do things that are inappropriate, don’t realize they’re inappropriate, try to back out of it, and then just dig ourselves a deeper hole. It happens in many, many instances. However with this specifically, what I would advise you to do, and I wrote a blog post on it, and you can go to my website. The blog post title is ‘How to Recover from Sticking Your Foot in Your Mouth,’ and if you just go to www.JennTGrace.com/foot-in-your-mouth, you will get to this blog post. And in that blog post I basically just share an incident that happened, and I was at a conference speaking and somebody basically said “I’ve gotten myself into these predicaments before, and I don’t know what to do and I just freeze. And I know that I’ve said something wrong, and I know I’ve said something inappropriate, or I know I’ve offended somebody, but I don’t know what to do.” So what I basically say is that you have to own it. That is the only way you can get yourself out of the situation, is just own it. So if somebody is offended by what you said, and you can visibly tell that you’ve just offended them, it’s not a big deal. All you have to do is stop in your tracks and say, “I’m sorry, did I say something that offended you? I really didn’t mean it, I apologize.” And as long as you’re sincere in what you’re saying, you’re totally fine. So I think that a lot of people get really tripped up in this, is that they know that they’ve really offended somebody and they don’t know what to do, so they freeze, and then either they don’t say anything at all, or they make it worse. So if you just seriously apologize for having said or done whatever it is that you said or did, it’s not a big deal.
An example that I can actually give you, and this is like not even a business example, but when I was on my way to my half marathon in November, I was on- we were on the bus from the hotel to the expo where we were getting the race packets, and the information and whatnot. And my friend and I just started up a conversation with the woman on the other side of us. So the woman just starts sharing how she’s in from California, and this is exciting, and she’s here with her husband and her two kids, and just casual small talk, et cetera. And she starts saying that she has a seven and nine year old, and I said I also have a seven and a nine year old, and at some point in the conversation she had said something about my husband, and said something like maybe, “Is your husband with the kids right now?” Or something like that. And I just politely as she said it, I’m like, “Well my wife is home with the kids right now.” And she was like, “Oh I’m sorry,” and I’m like, “It’s not a big deal,” and then we carried about the business. So in that instance, had she not said, “Oh I’m sorry,” and then went about her business, she could have found herself in- and I’m not saying that she needed to apologize to me, it’s not a big deal and it was really casual, but if she hadn’t acknowledged that I just corrected her from husband to wife, it could have gotten really awkward and weird even though it was just a really casual conversation between two runners on their way to a race expo. So she just totally just said, “I’m sorry,” and we moved on. It’s the same scenario in business settings, except it’s even more important. Because if you’re willing to say, “I’m sorry,” and then move on from there, then you feel good that you’ve addressed the situation, and then the person that you may have just offended feels good that you feel confident enough that you’re okay being like, “You know what, I’m sorry. I really didn’t mean to offend you.”
So it’s not as scary as it needs to be. I think that that’s the moral of the story today, is that it doesn’t have to be scary. Confidence is a good thing, and the more educated you are on a topic, the more confident that you can be. I’m hoping that by being a listener of this podcast, that you’re already likely far more confident in your LGBT marketing just from the tips and advice that I’ve been giving to you for the last couple of years. And I know that there’s a lot of people out there that really have this down to a science.
But if you don’t yet feel confident, you just have to work on it, it’s like any other type of skill. You just have to gradually flex those muscles, flex your confidence skills, learn more about the LGBT community, really understand the do’s and don’ts if you will, and that way- and understand that it’s not the end of the world. So if you offend somebody, apologize, move on. It’s actually far more of a simple solution than you would imagine.
The second piece of this that I wanted to bring up as well is understanding why you’re doing this, or why LGBT is important to your business, or to your marketing effort, or to whatever it happens to be is equally as important to this equation. So if we’re talking about education plus understanding why you’re doing this equals increased confidence, that’s kind of the equation. So if we’re looking at why, I always advise to start with ‘why.’ And the second recent prospect meeting I had was with some photographers- was with a photography company that’s quite large, and they have a lot of people who are on the ground, who are taking advantage of reaching out to LGBT couples who might want to get married, and making sure that everyone is kind of on the same page. So when you have a big staff of people- and again, this doesn’t have to be a photography specific example, but it kind of goes across the board, but if you have a big staff of people, sometime it’s hard to make sure everyone’s on the same page. So an exercise that I work through with clients of mine which really helps people on the confidence side of things, is that I walk through a ‘What’s Your Why’ exercise. And if you go to my website to www.JennTGrace.com/why-hot-sheet I have a hot sheet which is basically a PDF download that shares this information in more detail. And it’s a free PDF, but it’s really kind of a step-by-step guide of understanding why a ‘why’ is important if that makes sense. And what I mean by that is why are you marketing to the LGBT community? Think about that for a second.
So you might have just said in your mind, “Well I’m marketing to the LGBT community because I recognize that there’s more money to be had.” You might be saying, “I recognize that there’s a big void in the market for what I do in reaching the LGBT community because no one else is doing it.” Or you could have said that you are marketing to the LGBT community because your son’s gay, and you’ve seen a lot of discrimination that’s happened to him.
Any one of those three responses is perfectly fine. The first one being monetarily focused and revenue focused is not bad in any way, shape, or form, because you are a business and that’s what you’re here to do, is to market to the LGBT community. But saying to an LGBT customer that you want their money because you hear they have more of it, is not necessarily a marketing approach that is going to go over well.
So what you need to do is from a company ‘why’ perspective, figure out what your company’s story is. What is the story that you are telling your LGBT customers, or potential LGBT customers, around why you’re involved with the community. And once you’ve articulated that story from a company ‘why’ perspective, you can take it a layer deeper and talk about that personal perspective.
So in the case of the folks that I was talking to recently, their company ‘why’ easily could have been that, “Hey we’re in a conservative marketplace. We understand that there’s a big need for photographers who understand LGBT people, and are confident in how to communicate with LGBT customers. Therefore we want to make sure that we are providing the best damn service we can to those LGBT customers.” It could be something as simple as that from a company ‘why’ perspective, that there is a big void in the marketplace for serving this particular niche market in their area. And individually- so if we’re talking to somebody who might be the person who’s responsible for all of the intakes- using that word again, right? So if this person’s responsible for all of the intakes of weddings for all of their business, it’s a matter of making sure that that point of contact is really confident in what they’re doing.
So if we’re talking about that she sits there and- or he sits there and has a conversation with every couple that they’re going to do a wedding for, and make sure that that couple feels like they’re not being discriminated against; so it doesn’t take a lot to not discriminate against people, some of it again is common sense, but making sure that he or she who is having that conversation just feels confident in what they’re doing. So if you have forms or documents that say ‘Husband and wife’ or ‘Bride and groom’ in this instance, make sure that they don’t say ‘Bride and groom.’ Let’s make sure that you have ‘Bride, Groom’ ‘Bride, Groom’ on each side so people can circle Groom and Groom, or Bride and Bride if that so happens to be the case.
I remember specifically when my wife and I were filling out our marriage license we were so excited to see the fact that it said ‘Bride and Bride’ ‘Groom and Groom’ so that way you could circle which was applicable. And we got married in 2011, and LGBT- or same-sex marriage became legal in 2008. So Connecticut had a couple of years kind of ahead- a couple of years to get themselves sorted out, versus the location where I was just talking to these folks, and same-sex marriage was part for them, part of the federal ruling that happened earlier this year. So this is really, really new to them. This is only less than six months into the game for them. So it’s a totally different scenario.
So it’s a matter of making sure that anyone in the organization that’s going to have some sort of public or client facing role feels confident in what they’re doing, and part of that is knowing why the company is doing this, and additionally why they themselves are doing this. Because when you can articulate those things, then you’re going to automatically feel more confident because you’re going to gain the respect of the LGBT customer on the other end when maybe they ask you a question of- and this is something I would ask because I just talk to all businesses, even if I’m the customer in the business. I’m always saying, “Oh well why are you doing this?” Or, “What made you think to market to the LGBT community?” Or any number of things like that. You want to make sure especially as a business owner that the people that they’re interacting with have a really clear answer for that because stumbling out some kind of non thought out response could end up doing far more damage than good. So you just want to make sure that you’re being proactive, and it’s just going to inherently increase the confidence of those who are interacting with your future LGBT customers.
As I mentioned, all of this start with your ‘why’ information is on my website in that hot sheet that you can download. I also have a course on my website that you could purchase that kind of walks you through the exact equation of how to formulate the ‘why,’ and it’s also in my book. So there’s a lot of different ways in which you can find this information.
So I think I’ve beaten this horse to death in terms of answering the question of how does confidence impact your LGBT marketing approach, and the short answer is that is absolutely impacts your approach because by being more confident you’re going to communicate stronger and more clearly with your LGBT customers.
So I think that wraps up today’s episode. So again, for those of you listening live, Happy Thanksgiving, I hope you have a wonderful holiday. For anyone after the fact, thank you for being here, and I hope you too also had a wonderful holiday. I do look forward to talking to you again in episode 73 of the podcast where I may or may not be talking about the LGBT events in 2015 that have changed history. If not that episode, I will be talking about it in the following one. But regardless, please reach out to me, please let me know if you have any information that you want me to talk about, if you just want to say hi, I really would just love to connect with you. And if you heard me talk about any particular links in today’s episode, you can get them on the blog at www.JennTGrace.com/72 for episode number 72.
Thank you again for listening, and I will catch you in episode number 73. Have a great one!
