Category: Ethical Marketing Philosophy

Diversity and inclusion often starts in marketing – in efforts to look diverse and look inclusive – but if you want to prioritise diversity and inclusion then you need to look beyond your marketing at attitudes and biases across the business. Most importantly, you need to listen to your employees and learn from their wisdom so you can make marketing decisions the whole team can get behind.

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In today’s video, I talk about how making sure that your marketing is inclusive is about a lot more than putting a diverse group of people in your ads.

If you haven’t subscribed to my YouTube channel already, please do – it will help me loads, and if you click the bell you’ll be notified when I release new videos.

Inclusion and Diversity in Marketing

Inclusion and diversity often starts in marketing for a lot of businesses – I don’t think it’s the place where it should start but it often does, because many companies think that it’s really important to look diverse and look inclusive by putting women, Black people and LGBTQIA+ people in the foreground of their marketing.

I’m not saying that’s necessarily wrong – there are definitely times when you should be shouting from the rooftops and demonstrating your commitment to diversity in marketing. I think that’s really important. It’s a place you can start, but I don’t think it’s even the ideal place to start – and it’s definitely, definitely not where you should stop in your efforts to prioritise diversity and inclusion.

When organisations realise they have been recognised as being a diverse and inclusive brand, some feel as if their work is done – they decide they don’t really need to work that much harder, and they forget to check whether unconscious bias exists in their organisation and is undermining their work. However, to remain a diverse and inclusive brand, you need to prioritise diversity and inclusion across the business, including through your marketing efforts.

Inclusive or Non-Inclusive? It’s Not Always Clear

A friend of mine is a marketing manager at a very male dominated company in a very male dominated industry. She is a woman, although there aren’t many women in the office, and one day her company started work on a new marketing campaign. The campaign’s main phrase was “Got the horn?” It was meant to be funny – cheeky, without being too offensive – and even my friend thought, “Yeah, it’s not that offensive, it’s great – it’s kind of funny!”

However, there were other women in the office who felt that the language was non-inclusive because to them, “got the horn” suggested getting an erection. I didn’t think that, and my friend didn’t think that either – she was of the view that women can get the horn too, so it couldn’t be that non-inclusive – but after she looked into the meaning behind the phrase, she realised that it did indeed originate from getting an erection. Whether or not that language has now changed, or is perhaps up for debate, the fact remained that there were women in the organisation who were willing to stand up and say that the phrase felt non-inclusive – which should have been a signal that the campaign was at least worth revisiting. Unfortunately, the management didn’t agree and they went ahead and used the line anyway.

Listen, Hear and Act to Prioritise Inclusion

Even putting aside the management misstep of failing to manage their employees’ expectations and comfort, the fact that there were some women in my friend’s organisation who felt that this phrase was not inclusive means that there will be women in that industry who feel the phrase is not inclusive when they hear it.

By choosing to use the line anyway, the company’s management has taken a conscious step to ignore the fact that women in a male dominated industry may not feel included by this marketing campaign. No matter how many women they put in the campaign materials, if they use the phrase “got the horn” then it’s going to feel uncomfortable for some of the women in the industry.

If your employees are willing to stand up and say that something feels non-inclusive, and if you choose not to listen to them – not to hear them, and not to take action – your employees will feel as if their words don’t matter to you. And if you don’t care about that – maybe because you decide there aren’t enough women in your particular industry to care about – then I’m sorry to say it, but you are part of the problem.

Consider Your Whole Audience

That’s the bottom line, really – if you’re willing to not care that you’re not being inclusive because there aren’t enough people in your industry that will be negatively impacted by your lack of inclusion, then you cannot claim to be a business that prioritises diversity and inclusion. If diversity and inclusion are a part of your business value system, then you need to – at the management level, at the marketing level, at every level – be willing to listen to the people who are being excluded, hear what they have to say, and make the changes required to make them feel more included.

Everyone has different perspectives and experiences, which is why it’s so important to listen to people from across your business and your industry to ensure that you are including everyone and considering every perspective. If you would like to find out more about getting diversity and inclusion right in your marketing, please do get in touch.

In times of financial pressure, it’s tempting to focus your energy on profit rather than the wider concerns that underpin your business, such as your ethical standards. But these standards are essential to helping your business stand out from the crowd for all the right reasons. Finding creative solutions can help you balance profit with maintaining the standards you choose to operate by.

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In today’s video, I talk about the ethics around focusing on the profit-making part of your business, especially when you’re under financial pressure.

If you haven’t subscribed to my YouTube channel already, please do – it will help me loads, and if you click the bell you’ll be notified when I release new videos.

Avoiding the Slippery Slope of Profit Versus Ethics

Recently, I met with a customer who’s experiencing a little financial pressure in their business. They wanted to talk about some useful strategies to help manage this – what they should focus on to help ease the financial pressure, and how much energy they can divert to the things that they want to do but that are not yet ready to make their business much money.

The temptation at such times is to focus on the activities that make the most profit – which eases the financial pressure. However, for this particular business, the activities that were making the most profit were not focused on their ultimate goals for the business – the meaningful societal goals that embody the mission of the business as well as its ethical standards.

The desire to focus on the profit-making part of your business – especially when you’re under financial pressure and in ‘survival mode’ – seems logical, and there’s no denying that profit is important to any business. I’m sure that focusing on profit is what most business strategists would suggest you do in this situation, too – get the money and survive first, and then you can worry about your ethics later.

However, I would argue that it’s a very slippery slope you’d be sliding down – before you know it, you could find yourself immersed in a process of running things in a way that doesn’t fit with your ethical standards. One day, you may find that you’re at the head of a business that isn’t aligned with your values because you’ve focused too much of your energy on the bit that makes money.

Remember: Profit Is Fuel, Not Purpose

When I first sat down to do freelance marketing, I developed a set of marketing principles, and one of these principles is that profit is fuel, not purpose. It is important to emphasise that while profit isn’t something you should ignore, it’s also not something that you should prioritise.

This naturally raises the point that was troubling the client I mentioned: “But what happens when you’re under financial pressure – that’s what matters the most, the profit!” My view is that it is at times of financial pressure when you should be especially careful NOT to focus on profit because it is at that point that you will be making decisions that affect the rest of the business – perhaps even the lifetime of the business. Businesses that focus entirely on profit often start from a place of surviving by focusing on profit.

If you’re under financial pressure, take a moment to step away from thoughts of profit, and consciously bring forward in your mind the ethical standards that you don’t want to compromise on. Remind yourself of that boundary and re-establish that boundary – and from that point, you can start to look for other solutions rather than sacrificing your values and your ethics to make that profit.

Finding Solutions without Compromising Your Ethical Standards

The customer at the heart of this story edits a lot of content. The business has a number of video editors, and so the question that needed to be answered was: “How long are the video editors spending on our content, and is it worth them spending all that time editing the videos and getting things exactly the way they want it to look? Are we making money from that?”

As we explored the situation further and looked towards the company’s standards, we noted that the video content is the business’s art, and so the question became: “Is it worth it to make the art the way we want it to be?”

Our discussion concluded with the decision to organise a meeting with the other video editors so that they could come to an agreement about the real question for them: “What’s the creative standard that we don’t want to compromise on – what’s the minimum creative standard that we’re going to meet in order to publish a video?” We identified the question they needed to answer to ensure that standards were never compromised in the pursuit of profit.

Shaping Your Business Around Your Ethical Standards

Earlier in my career, I came across this phrase that really didn’t sit well with me:

“Employees need to shape themselves around the business, rather than the other way around.”

I really disliked that turn of phrase and that attitude. In my view, the business should shape itself around your standards, not the other way around! A more useful phrase to keep in mind is:

“The business should shape itself around your standards, and not the other way around.”

I invite you to think about that phrase when you’re considering what the ethical standards are in your business – what are you unwilling to compromise on, and what will you find creative solutions for in order to make sure that you maintain those standards?

If you would like to discuss the areas in your business you are unwilling to compromise on – and identify ways to balance your focus so that profit remains fuel, not purpose – please do get in touch.

In every industry, it’s easy to fall into the ‘minimum level of acceptable deception’ trap in your marketing, where you look around at your competitors and decide that their minimum level of transparency must be okay, so you can follow suit.

But what about your personal and business values? How can you make better ethical marketing decisions so you can go beyond the minimum and attract your target person to your business? Check out my video to find out more.

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In today’s video, I talk about a key aspect of communication ethics in marketing, which considers the minimum level of deception that you may be tolerating when you communicate with your target person.

If you haven’t subscribed to my YouTube channel already, please do – it will help me loads, and if you click the bell you’ll be notified when I release new videos.

Truth Leads to Trust, which Leads to Loyalty

In any industry, it’s easy to fall into the ‘minimum level of acceptable deception’ trap in your marketing, where you look around and see the level of truth-telling from your competitors and decide that this must be okay – because everyone else is doing it. You might say to yourself, ‘Well, our competitors are saying this, so we’re gonna do it too because otherwise, we’ll lose out on business.’ You can convince yourself that you have no other choice and that you have to live with this minimal level of deception – this low bar of truthfulness in your marketing.

Often, however, this minimum standard becomes the norm, so unfortunately a lot of businesses only end up doing the minimum – they don’t go above and beyond. But the truth is, if you do go above and beyond – if you actively try to do more, be more transparent than your competitors, be more ethical than your competitors – it becomes one of the key reasons that you stand out from your competitors, so it’s kind of a win-win. Not only are you practising your business ethically and practising your marketing ethically, but you end up having more loyal customers as a result!

Understanding Ethical Fading

What do I mean by ethical fading, and why mention it here? It’s actually very similar to what I mean when I’m talking about the minimum levels of deception – essentially, you’re avoiding the moral implications of a choice you’ve made, whether it’s telling a lie, allowing a lie to persist or pretending that misleading someone doesn’t matter. Like the minimum level of deception in marketing, it challenges your ethical values.

If you haven’t already taken a look at my ethical fading video, I highly recommend you do – and then I suggest you listen to the episode of Simon Sinek’s A Bit of Optimism podcast on ethical fading. This is a fascinating topic and starts a conversation that I think needs to surface more often when we consider how to market products and services ethically.

Going Above and Beyond the Minimum

What are the minimum standards that you have for yourself? Make sure that you’re going beyond your minimum and acting in line with your values, whatever your industry and whoever your customers are. I assure you that when you do, you will attract the right people to your business – the people who agree with you and who are aligned with your values – and your business marketing practices will become easier and feel more authentic.

The only thing that you lose on the way may be some of that profit, but do you really want to profit when you’re unhappy? When it’s difficult? When you’re possibly contributing to a worse world?

Putting Your Trust in Ethical Marketing

What are the values that you want to have in your business?

It’s something to think about. I imagine that many of you reading this blog or watching this video are already going well above your minimum, but it’s good to consider because sometimes it’s hard to see. Even though this is something I live and work by, I still have to question myself a lot of the time and ask myself, ‘Am I going beyond my minimum?’

If you’d like some help with exploring how you can go above and beyond to grow an ethical, trustworthy business that attracts loyal customers, please do get in touch – I’d love to help you out.

Most of the business advice you’ll find out there can become very obsessed with enhancing productivity, profit, and growth. This does make sense – a business needs to succeed after all.

But are there instances where it’s worth sacrificing some of the productivity and some of the profit in order to be kind?

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In today’s video, I talk about the value of being kind in your communications – and how your prospects for growing business productivity and profit may be enhanced by adding kindness to your business strategy.

If you haven’t subscribed to my YouTube channel already please do – it will help me loads, and if you click the bell you’ll be notified when I release new videos.

Kindness Is at the Heart of Great Service

Recently, I saw a LinkedIn post by facilitator Adrian Ashton, who had conducted some keyword research and concluded that most people value kindness from the consultants they work with and the people that are supporting them. This got me thinking, and I realised that this idea could be extended much further. I believe that everyone wants kindness from pretty much everything, and that businesses and their customers are no exception.

If you think about why your business exists, you’re probably serving someone – most businesses provide a service of some kind. What if kindness is the main thing that people want when they’re being served? Whatever the product or service on offer – whether you’re selling moisturiser or serving food in a café – I think that everyone wants kindness to be part of the transaction.

Kindness Is Hard to Measure

The problem with kindness is it’s really hard to measure. As marketers, we love to measure things – and in business we use measures such as KPIs to track productivity and profit – but you can’t measure kindness, so it’s really hard to get a complete sense of how kind your business is towards your clients and customers.

It’s easy to focus on your productivity and your profit when you’re moving your business forward, but be careful not to leave kindness behind.

Are You Sacrificing Kindness for Profit?

Look out for red flags that suggest you’ve been sacrificing kindness for productivity and profit. One of the biggest indicators relates to how you communicate internally. If your internal communication to your own employees is often sharp and to the point, there’s a good chance that you haven’t been radiating kindness to your clients or customers.

In the drive to achieve productivity and profit, kindness may be one of the first things that gets sacrificed. Internal communications provide valuable insight as to whether your business may be tipping towards this point because it’s much easier to inadvertently sacrifice kindness to your internal employees – you’re relying on the fact that they’re being paid to work for you, so if you’re not super kind to them the warning signs may not appear straight away. They are still getting paid and you are still seeing productivity and profit.

Conduct a Kindness Comms Check

If you know your business is really focused on productivity and profit – the “go go go!” approach – it may be time for you to do a quick kindness comms check: pause, check and reflect. Conduct a good audit of your systems, especially your customer service systems, and consider whether your communications output suggests you’ve been sacrificing kindness for productivity and profit.

If all signs suggest kindness has been sacrificed along the way, aim to make being kind – internally and externally – a significant part of your business strategy. While I can’t guarantee this will further boost productivity and profit, I do believe you’ll be running a better business, you’ll have happier employees, and you’ll be contributing to making the world a better place – and I think that these should be some of your goals as a business.

Be Kind… Be Ethical!

Questions about kindness and supporting your employees can be just as important to answer as questions about productivity and profit – and when you consider these together, you are tapping into the heart of running an ethical business.

I love talking about business ethics and ethical marketing; in fact, I’ve already started some discussions on these topics and I’m sure I’ll do more in future. If you’re interested in finding out more, please do get in touch and I’ll happily point you in the right direction.

Is your customer “businesses” (i.e. do you work in “B2B”)? Even if you’re B2C, have you been talking about who you target as your “Target Market”? Well, then you probably need to hear this.

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In today’s video, I want to talk to you about how even if you’re a B2B business you are always selling to people.

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Are You Selling to “Businesses”? Or to a “Market”?

So, a lot of people who are in the B2B space – selling to other businesses – think that “I’m selling to businesses, and I’m not selling to people. I need to sell to this whole business.” And you think of your customer as the business.

And even people who are selling B2C, where they’re selling business to customer, they think they’re selling to a ‘market’, to a ‘target market’, to an ‘audience’. And these are really, really bad ways to think about your marketing.

You Are Not Selling to a Target Market

Because ultimately in marketing you are not selling to a group of people. You’re not selling to a business. The person buying from you is not this amorphous group.

The person buying from you is a person. And they have feelings. They have motivations. They have wants, needs, fears, and frustrations. Those four things that I put into that target person exercise, the “step one”. Understand your target person and really understand them deeply and emotionally because they are who is buying from you.

And it’s the reason I call that step one target ‘person’ and not target ‘audience’. You are selling to people. You are selling to individuals.

Put Yourself Into Your Business

And so, it means that everything you do – EVERYTHING you do – is personal. So, please, go and put yourself into your business. Put your values in. Put your culture in. Bring it out to the forefront. Make it clear who you are as a business and who the people are in your business and who the people are that you’re serving.

Center your business around people and people will respond to it.

Simon Sinek’s “A Little Bit of Optimism” podcast episode on Ethical Fading got me thinking about how this applies more specifically in marketing…

If you liked this, you might want to join the Ethical Marketing Discussion on 12^th August at 3pm! It’ll be fun! Register here.

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How does ethical fading apply in marketing?

Hi I’m DJ from Rainbow Dragon Digital and in today’s video I want to do a little marketing ethics video on a concept called ethical fading.

If you haven’t subscribed to my YouTube channel already please do it will help me out loads and if you click the little bell you’ll be subscribed to hear when I release new videos.

What is Ethical Fading?

I was listening to a podcast by Simon Sinek called “A little bit of Optimism” that he released during the first lockdown for obvious reasons and one of the episodes was about something called ethical fading.

The idea of ethical fading was that when something is in the business or is in the system we tend to just go along with it. Even though it directly opposes our personal ethics, because it’s just the way things are, we consider that not something we can do something about. And we then just completely ignore the fact that it completely opposes our ethical standpoint.

How Ethical Fading Applies to Marketing

And this was really, really interesting to me because the way I practice marketing, the way I’m wanting to practice marketing, and when I come against those roadblocks where it’s just the system is really hard to fight when you’re a single person. And there’s a lot of things that are very ingrained in marketing, let alone in racism, and prejudice and all sorts of other things and it’s really hard to see past it, or see a world where it doesn’t exist, or see how it could work without that system in place.

So I’m not going to go into a huge video about this because obviously there’s there’s lots of facets about it but I would really encourage you, if you think that that’s something that might be getting in your way, that there are ethical dilemmas that you constantly face when it comes to your marketing, then I would highly recommend you actually listen to that episode about ethical fading.

Where Are We Making A Stand?

I think it’s really useful to think about and to think about where it is that we are making a stand. Where it is we are consciously looking at the places where we’re not meeting our ethical standards and trying to do something about it and not shying away from the fact that we haven’t been able to meet our own ethical standards.

Let’s not shy away from that. Let’s not pretend like it’s not something that you can work on and instead start finding ways to work on it.

I realise that’s super vague and it’s and there’s a reason for it in that it can apply to so many things and there’s so many ways that this could be discussed or talked about and I would love to start talking about it more so, let me know if that’s interesting to you and I might start a conversation at some point with more people about ethical marketing. I think it’s just fun to talk about.

There are some irrefutable concepts in consent in the context of personal relationships – especially when it comes to sex and romance.

I was thinking, though, could some of those steadfast rules about consensual behavior apply to marketing and sales contexts as well?

This could be a really important consideration if you want to practice your business and your marketing ethically.

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Are you getting an enthusiastic yes in your pricing strategy?

Hi I’m DJ from Rainbow Dragon Digital in today’s video I want to talk about the concept of consent and how this might apply to sales.

If you haven’t subscribed to my YouTube channel already, please do. It’ll help me loads and if you click the bell you’ll get notified of new videos.

Consent: An Enthusiastic Yes

I was thinking the other day about the concept of consent.

In sexual and romantic contexts what we’re talking about when we talk about consent is about making sure that we get a real, enthusiastic yes. Not just silence or a nod, we’re getting enthusiastic yes, from our partner, about doing what we’re doing to them is still welcome.

My thinking was, do we do this in pricing? When we sell things to people are we making sure that when they click buy, when they give us their money, are we sure that they’re really, really saying yes?

Or has your marketing convinced them to say yes and they’re not really on board?

It’s a thing to think about as an ethical business.

Consent: We Can Change Our Minds

The other conversation that comes up with consent is that people can change their minds. And in the sexual context, we always say that at any point during this process, you’re allowed to change your mind and say you no longer want it.

Do we do this in pricing? Do we do this in our sales strategy? Is your sales process giving people the ability to regret their purchase and go back on it?

Now, I completely get that this does not apply to all businesses, especially things like you know retail or food, where you can’t really take it back. But even in food in a restaurant, the waiters come by and ask if everything’s okay and that sort of thing.

So, I think there really is something to be said here about the ethics of the way we sell stuff.

Service Businesses Should Put Consent Front and Centre of Pricing and Sales Strategy

I think in service businesses this is especially important and something that really should be front and centre of your pricing strategy and your sales strategy.

You should be making sure that you have an enthusiastic yes, when they accept your proposal or your quote. And you should be giving them the ability to completely change their mind if they’ve decided that you aren’t right for them anymore.

And this is exactly what I do. I offer my clients a package where there is a zero minimum for an hourly rate, and I only charge them that month for work that I’ve actually done with them or the number of sessions that I’ve actually had with them. And that way I’m earning every single penny that I am charging for, and it means that the client is in full control of how much they’re paying and how much they’re getting me to do.

I also offer different, fixed packages for clients that prefer that way of doing things to fix in their budgets.

Ethical Businesses Have a Responsibility to Offer Control to Customers

I think this is this is an important thing for all ethical businesses to think about. How are you making sure that your customers are in control of their buying decisions? Because this has much wider cultural effects as well in terms of what we’re convincing people to do with their money.

Now I realise this is a really complicated issue and I could go down so many different paths with this! If you’re really keen to discuss this kind of thing, I’ve had so many great type chats with people about this sort of thing where they have just messaged me separately, so please feel free to do that on LinkedIn or even send me an email about it, I’m really happy to discuss it.

I love talking about this stuff and if it will help you run your business in a more ethical way, if it will help me run my business in a more ethical way, I’m really open to it!

This was a really simple mindset thing that came up during a client session and I just had to share it. It’s such a short video because well, it really is that simple!

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Stop spending so much time creating great marketing.

In this video, I talk about how marketing can become super easy just as long as you’re talking about what you’re doing.

If you haven’t subscribed to my YouTube channel already please do! It’ll help me loads, and if you click the bell you’ll be notified when I release new videos.

A Simple Mindset Matter

This is going to be a really short video. It’s a simple mindset thing, it’s a simple phrase thing that came up with a client the other day where we talk about how marketing should be about practicing what you preach but actually I think it’s just about preaching what you practice.

And what I mean by that is that if you spend 80% of your time doing the work that you are doing, serving the people that you want to serve, your marketing becomes easy because all you’re doing, in that other 20% of the time that you’re doing your marketing, you’re just talking about all of that stuff that you’re doing. As long as you are actively doing something that is good for your target person, your marketing is easy.

It is literally just that Marketing is Education, Not Deception, my first principle, it is literally just that you are literally just trying to describe what it is you do.

If It’s Not That Simple For You, Let Me Help!

It really, really is that simple. And if you’re finding that it’s not that simple, please feel free to get in touch. And I can assure you I’ll be able to tell you exactly how it is that simple and how you can probably be simply preaching what you practice.

Writing email subject lines is the bane of most people’s existence. Honestly, it’s not just you – even experienced marketers stress out about how to write the best email subject line.

In this video, I talk a little about the mindset I think you should have when writing subject lines, and present some formulas that could help if you’re struggling with coming up with good subject lines for your emails.

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How do you write a good subject line?

If you haven’t subscribed to my YouTube channel already please do it will help me loads and if you click the bell then you’ll be notified when I release new videos.

Subject lines ugh!

These are the bane of most marketers’ existence. Believe me, it is. You think it’s just “Oh, you just need to write a line.” It’s difficult. Anyone who’s written a subject line knows this. It is super difficult.

I’m gonna use this video to show you a few formulas that you could use but also just to make sure you’ve got the right mindset when you’re sitting down to write your subject lines.

First: Test & Measure Everything

The first thing I need to make sure that you really understand is that you need to test and measure everything.

Take every advice you hear about subject lines with a pinch of salt because it will all have been tested and measured on something that isn’t your audience, that isn’t your product, and, most importantly, is not at the time that you’re using it.

People respond to subject lines so dramatically differently at such different times and events in the world will change the way people react to subject lines. So you need to test and measure it for yourself.

And your audience is completely unique to everyone else’s. Your product is unique to other people’s. So, test and measure. Test and measure everything that’s the first thing you need to know.

Test One-Word Subject Lines

The second thing I want to make sure you do is test one-word subject lines.

Now, this used to frustrate me immensely in my previous job when I used to work for business coaches. I used to work for Shweta Jhajharia and when we were doing our emails then, when the clients were doing emails, it was always one-word subject lines. Those were the things that worked really well.

There’s a lot of theory as to why that works. I think the most compelling of which is that in one word you can convey so little that people need to open the email in order to figure out what you’re talking about with that one word.

But one-word subject lines work. The open rates work. That’s my experience. And as I said at the start of this, take everything with a pinch of salt. If you’re thinking, “It won’t work for me,” test it. I think this is the first thing you should be testing if you’re trying to increase your open rate on your emails.

Of course, one-word subject lines don’t work for everyone. It doesn’t work for every audience, it doesn’t work for every product. It doesn’t work for everything that you’re trying to do in email. But it is the place to start if you are concerned about your open rate.

Formulas to Test Subject Lines

What I’m going to give you now is a formula that I think you can use to test your subject lines.

I kind of like to stay away from the gimmicky things like ‘add numbers’,  ‘add pound signs’, you know ‘use clickbaity headlines’ – that kind of thing. It may work, you may want to test it, it’s all over the internet if you really want to find it.

But I think to distill down to the thing that I think you should really try is to use a subject line that really speaks to your target person. And these formulas might help you do that.

The PAS Formula

The first formula is the one that I’ve seen a lot, that I learned a lot when I was first starting in marketing which is PAS. Pain, Agitate, Solution.

And the whole point of PAS is that you’re trying to dig down deep into the pain that you are solving as a business, you want to drive a little bit harder, and then you want to present your solution.

And when it comes to subject lines you probably only need the P and the A in the subject line and then you need the Solution in the email itself.

And that’s the whole point of subject lines – you need to make sure that you’re giving a payoff. Please, please, please don’t use clickbaity subject lines that don’t give a payoff.

An example of this PAS type thing is that let’s say you’re selling vegan cheese and you are like okay… or you’re selling vegan pizzas. And your subject line might be:

“Cooking sucks, especially after a long monday.” So you’ve given this pain of cooking sucks, you’ve made it worse because it’s on a long monday. And then you open the email and it’s like, “You don’t have to cook, your pizza can come right to your door.” So then you’ve given the solution.

So that’s the PAS formula that’s pretty common.

Instead of PAS, Try BED

The reason I don’t really like the PAS formula is that it comes from pain. And that means your marketing starts to have a few negative words in it – which can be great, it can really drive people really well – but it can become a slippery slope into some really bad marketing that has some really bad unintended effects.

So I thought about it maybe we can flip this formula around and we can do BED, which would be Benefit, Enhance, Deliver.

And so you can do the same sort of thing you do with the pain and agitate and solution thing but instead, start with a benefit. Start with a reason why people would like the thing that you’re doing and then drive that home by making it even better and then deliver that result to them in the easiest way.

So going back to the vegan pizza example you can have the subject line as, “Vegan pizza that actually tastes like cheese – and it stretches!” And so you’ve got that benefit you’ve got that enhancing – it does the stretchy thing – and then when they open the email it’s like, “Delivered directly to your door within 30 minutes.”

That’s just a really simple example but it’s a great way to do subject lines in a way that has this ‘sell the next click’ thing and really delivers on that and really amps up the emotion inside.

Key Point: Be Emotive

And that’s the key thing I want to leave you on is whatever you’re testing, anything, any kind of test that you’re trying to do with your subject line, just try and make sure you’re looking at it from an emotive point of view and not just a descriptive. Your subject line is trying to create emotion or like stoke emotion and not just describe what is in the email.

So I hope that helps you with testing your subject lines if you need any help you want to talk it out have a little sounding board, I’m happy to have a little call with you and discuss what you’re doing what you’re trying to achieve and maybe I can help with some ideas.

When you’re trying to figure out your target person (or niche), you may find that you’re targeting a community that has historically faced oppression.

So how do you then make sure you’re selling to this community without furthering their oppression and the disadvantages they face? Doing so might appear like taking a hit to your bottom-line, but doing this may well also increase your sales as you genuinely support the very community you’re selling to.

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Don’t like videos? Here’s the text version:

What are the ethics around targeting a systemically oppressed community? Hi I’m DJ from Rainbow Dragon Digital and in today’s video I want to talk about that really difficult gray area of where you are trying to sell to a community that has been historically and systemically oppressed.

If you haven’t subscribed to my YouTube channel already please do it will help me out loads and if you click the bell you’ll be notified when I release new videos.

When Your Target Person is in a Oppressed Community

So step one, in you know the marketing strategy that I have based my entire website around is Understanding Your Target Person. And for a lot of people, their target person will be a member of an oppressed community, such as the LGBTQIA+ community, such as black people, such as persons with disabilities. These are all- you know there are lots and lots of communities that have faced historic oppression, that have faced and continue to face systemic oppression. And it becomes really difficult as a business as an ethical business to think how do I market to this community without contributing to that systemic oppression.

Now as an ethical business you really don’t need to panic if you discover or realise that your target person is actually a member of an oppressed community. It is actually a super great marketing opportunity to not only do the right thing and be a great ethical business but also to get more customers. And here’s how you do it.

How to Make This An Ethical Marketing Opportunity

The first thing you need to do is go back to that step one, understand your target person and that means understand their oppression. Not only understanding the oppression that’s happening today but understand the history of the oppression. Go back, do some reading, do some learning, really understand who it is that you’re targeting and where they’ve come from as a community – not just as individuals but as a community. If you can really understand the history of their oppression you will already be miles ahead of your competition in terms of making sure that you are actively helping this community.

Be Actively Against Oppression

Which brings me on to the second thing that you need to do which is not just not be discriminating or not be oppressing but you need to be actively against oppression. What I mean by this is is exactly the conversation that’s been had and continues to be had around BLM, the Black Lives Matter movement, which is we need to stop just being not racist but we need to be actively anti-racist. We need to be actively acting against oppression especially if you, your business, and your own community is in a position of privilege, you need to be using that privilege to act against the oppression that other people are facing.

Now, in the business context, in your marketing context, this is only beneficial to you. Because if your target person is in this oppressed community and you as a business are taking an active stance to support that community, to act against their oppression, this only benefits you because those people will therefore like your brand more will want to buy from you more and you will be serving your ultimate purpose, which is to serve that community.

And so, actually as a modern ethical business, serving a community that’s systemically oppressed – it should be easy. It should actually be the easiest thing.

But What About When You Serve A Privileged Community?

The real difficulty comes when your business perhaps doesn’t serve an oppressed community. Maybe when your business actually serves a privileged community. What do you do then?

Well, in my opinion, and this is just my opinion, I think if you are conscious that your target person is a part of a privileged community then you need to really observe who it is that that privileged community typically is exerting systemic oppression on. And the people that that community is exerting systemic oppression on, you need to start taking an active stance in dismantling that systemic oppression.

It can be really difficult as a business to take the decision to be anti-oppression and take the hit to your bottom line that that entails. And if it doesn’t take a hit to your bottom line then there’s a good chance that you’re not actually doing anything anti-oppressive and you’re doing something that’s more performative.

But I think if you did take that step and you did take that hit to the bottom line, I think your customers, you know the ones that are actually ethical, they’ll appreciate it and it will be better for your business overall, as long as you’re playing the long game and you want to build a business that is ethical and continues to last.

I hope that helps with you using your marketing to help break down systemic oppression. It’s something that I’m really passionate about something that I hope that more businesses will become passionate about and I think we’re seeing it happening. So, I hope you get on board with that train and you are helping to break this stuff down so that we can live in a better world together.