If you are passionate about building equitable and impactful marketing strategies that resonate deeply with diverse audiences or targeted audiences from historically underrepresented groups, you’re likely among those of us who have been discouraged by the wave of DEI initiative rollbacks that have been underway in the past few months.

From total rollbacks to doubling down on DEI support to changing the language used to describe DEI initiatives, it’s been jarring for many, to say the least.

When AMA-Madison’s April panel, “The Power of Difference: Creating Inclusive Marketing,” was initially planned last fall, we couldn’t have known just how different DEI’s role would be in the corporate world and beyond come 2025.

But frankly, this context makes conversations like the ones our panel held this week all the more valuable and urgent.

Keep reading to get 5 actionable strategies for creating inclusive marketing from April 1’s panel featuring:

Panel Lineup:

• Bianca Martin, Host, City Cast Madison
• Ryan Haack, President & Founder of LivingOneHanded.com & Author, “Different is Awesome”
• Lorissa Banuelos, Community Engagement Specialist at City of Madison’s Common Council
• Aria Childers, Assistant Manager of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility at American Marketing Association

5 Actionable Strategies for Meaningful Inclusion in Marketing

1. Empower Your Audience Through Meaningful Engagement

Your audience wants to be seen, heard, and supported, and an effective way to achieve this is to let their voices be heard.

Lorissa Banuelos shared her own experience navigating the Trump Administration’s fear-based messaging surrounding topics like DEI as the Community Engagement Specialist at  City of Madison’s Common Council. To counter this message, Lorissa is working to change the sentiment by leaning into her constituency by going out into the community more than ever to have meaningful engagements. She explained that her intention isn’t just to listen deeply but to push empowering messaging to help Madison residents feel empowered, safe, supported, and inspired to be allies for one another.

At the end of the day, the people you’re trying to reach want to feel safe and supported, and that showing up for them in this way isn’t just the right thing to do, but it will pay off in the bottom line down the road. You just need to have the courage to build their trust. It’s a long road but a powerful one worth pursuing.

2. Don’t Just “Check the Box.” Do the Work.

One of the most common mistakes organizations make while trying to achieve inclusive marketing campaigns is viewing this endeavor as “checking off a box.” Often, this means the marketing leans on assumptions instead of working with or even asking the target audience in question. As a result, the efforts are often rushed, surface-level, lack authenticity, and come with a greater risk of accidentally reinforcing stereotypes.

To avoid this, we need to do the work.

Bianca Martin and Ryan Haack both evoked the phrase, “Nothing about us without us,” which succinctly speaks to what that work entails. As marketers, we need to involve members of the group of people we want to reach in the process as directly as possible, from brainstorming to creation to internal reviews.

3. Make Inclusive Teams an Ongoing, Long-Term Effort

On the topic of involving members of the group of people we want to reach in our efforts, the panel discussed the long-game effort that is building an inclusive marketing team. The panel agreed that you need to fill your table with a diverse range of professionals and, even further, make an active effort to listen to them. That doesn’t just mean taking their feedback seriously, but it requires inviting them to tell their own stories as they feel comfortable.

Aria emphasized that ingraining DEI into a team or organization should be a collective responsibility, not just the task of one individual. To make a profound impact, it needs to be everyone’s ongoing goal and responsibility to think through that lens.

The panel also agreed that it’s crucial to avoid being transactional in your efforts to include voices from historically underrepresented groups. Asking a person to give you their time and energy by participating in your initiative when you don’t have any kind of prior relationship is, unfortunately, a transactional gesture. That’s why the panel unanimously advocated for building strong long-term relationships with a variety of people in your community. You’ll learn from each other in an authentic way that only genuine relationships can.

4. Find Ways to Track Your Efforts and Learn from Them

If we’re going to get continued support for our inclusive marketing efforts and understand what is and isn’t working, we need to track our efforts’ impact.

While some inclusive marketing initiatives, like more traditional marketing campaigns, will be more straightforward to track, others will require more creativity. For example, if you’re adding closed captioning or other interpretation services, monitor how many people are using them.

Tracking our impact also involves getting feedback from our audiences and acknowledging times where we may fall short. Ryan Haack emphasized that when brands make mistakes, which is a given since it’s impossible to please everyone, no matter what space you’re in, it’s important to communicate where you were coming from authentically. Still, he explained that even more, you need to own your mistakes, fix them, and keep pushing to do better. It’s uncomfortable, but this emotional vulnerability comes with the pursuit of inclusive marketing, and it’s worth the effort.

5. Use Your Resources

If there’s one common theme across all the advice shared in this panel, it’s that creating meaningful inclusion in marketing and team-building is a long game.

But there is a notable outlier: The panel recommended using your resources and applying them. This can be as simple as reading an article about best practices for inclusivity in video production, and applying what you’ve learned to your video production process.

It’s a relatively quick win that can have an impact as we continue our overarching long-term initiatives towards creating more inclusive marketing.

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