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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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.
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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.