Intersectionality: (n.) the interconnected nature of social categorizations such as race, class, and gender, regarded as creating overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantage. – Oxford Dictionary
How It’s Applicable to Digital Marketing
Intersectionality is a lens for digital marketers to understand their target audiences and frame their campaigns and content around.
Individuals, aka your customers, have complex identities that inform their purchasing decisions. To illustrate this, let’s look at Joe Jones. While Joe may shop from your men’s wear collection, Joe is not a buyer persona, stereotype, or just a man shopping for trousers. Joe is a middle-aged, new father, who loves to hike, and has a preference for clothing made with organic fabrics. He works in a corporate office and spends 2 hours a day on socials. While he is a high-earning individual he is still paying off his college loans and with a new baby, his discretionary spending budget much less than it used to be. Joes’ preferences, needs, and limitations are unique to him thus purchase preferences will reflect his various identities.
Building campaigns that are relevant to your target audience requires diving deep into the nuances of multiple identities and perspectives of your target audiences. This extra effort allows you to create campaigns that will stand out from your competitors and better communicate your bands’ values. Furthermore, by creating thoughtful, personal campaigns you have a higher probability of relating to your audiences.
Takeaway & Tips
- Digital marketing is not just a marketing channel, it is a tool to connect and engage with current and future customers.
- There is no one-size-fits-all solution to digital marketing. Your brand is unique. Your customers are unique. So take a personalized approach, designed to resonate with the multiple identities of your audience.
- When creating your marketing materials consider who may be adversely or positively impacted, who is being alienated and who is being included.
For example, let’s say you are creating text ads to market a kitten-heel shoe. This type of heel is traditionally worn by women and is commonly seen in officewear. That being said working women are not the only consumers to wear kitten heels. This is why you want to create a variety of text ads that calls out elements of the product that are universally appealing, such as the comfort, the fit, the durability, the perceived quality, as well as ads that specifically speak to specific groups of consumers.
Once you have launched your marketing campaign review the results and consider how your marketing campaigns can be better designed to align with your target audiences.
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