Leading with Inclusion in B2B Marketing
By: Joseph Taiano
Tags: Diversity And Inclusion, Diversity, B2b Marketing, Leadership, Inclusion

“Diversity and inclusion” is a phrase just about everyone in business is now familiar with. The past twelve months in particular have shown just how essential these concepts are to customers, colleagues, investors, and society at large.

But what do diversity and inclusion mean in practice for marketers? In this post I want to share some of my experience embedding these concepts in B2B marketing — and explore how they can make your marketing programs better.

What does it mean to be diverse and inclusive?

The first thing to understand is that diversity and inclusion are really quite different things.

Diversity means having people with different racial, ethnic, socioeconomic, and cultural backgrounds at work. It mostly comes down to raw numbers. It’s about ensuring that a range of lifestyles, experiences, interests and ways of thinking are represented.

Inclusion, in contrast, is about creating a sense of belonging and a safe environment for everyone to be their authentic selves at work. It’s mostly about culture. So you don’t have to be from a marginalized group to exhibit (or indeed benefit from) inclusive behavior.

Think of it like this. If you were hosting a dinner party, diversity would be reflected in the different kinds of people who had a seat at the table. Inclusion would be about ensuring every guest felt that they belonged at the party and that their thoughts, opinions and interests were valued.

Lead with inclusion and grow

The important point about this distinction is that you need to flip the concepts around. Inclusion comes first. You need to foster a culture of inclusion to allow diversity to flow. That’s why at Accenture we refer to it as “Inclusion & Diversity” (or I&D).

There’s another important fact about I&D to consider: the impact on business performance. We know that companies dedicated to fostering an inclusive culture grow faster. The numbers that back this up come from Accenture’s Getting to Equal 2020 report and are eye-opening.

Companies led by executives who make inclusive culture an organizational priority as well as a personal goal grow more than twice as fast as their peers. What’s more, businesses with gender-diverse executive teams report sales that are 2.2 times higher — and profits that are 3.2 times higher — than their non-diverse counterparts.

Embedding inclusion in B2B marketing

To have a true culture of inclusion, every leader in every function needs to take on the I&D agenda as a priority. And B2B marketers have a particularly critical role to play.

Like other parts of the business, marketing has an interest in building a more inclusive, diverse, and effective working environment. But because we’re also the storytellers, the creatives, and the owners of the company’s image and brand, we have the opportunity to contribute to and benefit from I&D on a much broader scale.

Here are a few of the ways I’ve gone about doing that in my daily work as a leader in marketing and communications.

#1 Look for ways to connect internally

If your company has employee resource groups (ERGs) or affinity groups, these are a great place to start. When I first came out at work, joining Accenture’s LGBT ERG provided a critical connection with likeminded individuals who shared interests and a common cause. This expanded my personal network across the organization, providing a social outlet which let me get to know people outside the confines of an office setting.

It also gave me the opportunity to lead projects and gain experience beyond the scope of my day-to-day job. This meant everything from drafting internal communications to liaising with clients’ ERG groups on joint initiatives. I’m sure that the exposure to senior leaders that was required by doing this was an added benefit to my career growth.

It’s important to recognize that ERGs are open to everyone. You don’t have to be part of a marginalized group to be a member. Being an ally and showing support is just as valuable. And, what’s more, joining an ERG is a great way of getting a better understanding of the challenges faced by those groups and lending your expertise to further the cause.

#2 Know what you’re selling in I&D

As B2B marketers, we like to consider ourselves experts in our company’s services and offerings. But how many of us have taken the time to fully understand what our firm sells in the I&D space?

At Accenture we have a dedicated suite of offerings to help companies become more responsible businesses. And it’s easy to see why — I&D (and responsibility more generally) is fast becoming a key business imperative for all companies.

Nasdaq, for example, has proposed new listing rules relating to board diversity and disclosure. If approved by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, this would require all companies listed on Nasdaq’s U.S. exchange to publicly disclose consistent, transparent diversity statistics regarding their board of directors.

So whether it’s I&D workforce training or developing an overall I&D strategy, marketers need to be fully up to speed on what the company is offering. After all, we’re not just marketers, we’re also educators. And we need to help our practitioners understand how clients benefit from these I&D offerings.

#3 Research is an ally

In B2B, the research department is the marketer’s best friend. And the larger the company, the more pockets of research there’ll be to help you.

By taking the time to find out what, if any, I&D research is happening at your company, you have a great opportunity to piggyback off corporate research in this space, create something customized for your industry/function, or start embedding I&D into your existing research efforts.

At Accenture, for example, I recently used this approach to build a business case for understanding whether a company’s commitment to I&D matters to consumers and the bottom line. The result was a report which showed 42 percent of ethnic minority shoppers and 41 percent of LGBT shoppers would switch to a retailer committed to I&D.

Working on this research wasn’t only an opportunity to author some valuable thought leadership, it was also a chance to present to clients on a topic I’m truly passionate about. That’s not something many B2B marketers get a chance to do!

#4 Imagery matters

We all know that creative is the bread and butter of marketing. But it also has an important role to play in I&D. As marketers, we’re the owners of the imagery we bring to market. And we need to be accountable for our contribution to inclusion and diversity in our thought leadership, videos, social media posts, and so on.

Oftentimes, however, I see imagery from professional services firms that tends to be homogeneous or perhaps only showcases one area of diversity. As a profession, I think we can do better. We need to reflect all forms of diversity and be inclusive of our employees, our clients, and the customers they serve.

This means reflecting age, sexual orientation, persons with disabilities, ethnicity, religion, as well as other forms of diversity in all marketing, not just when the topic is related to I&D. It also means working with creative agencies that share this vision.

To keep a check on this, it can be a good idea to set up a team to audit materials or have a review team look at your imagery prior to finalizing. That helps ensure you’re not embedding your own conscious or unconscious bias into your marketing materials.

Remember, it’s a journey…

In the end, building a culture of inclusion means being willing to be aware of your biases, challenging them, and working to overcome them. You need to know the makeup of your team and set goals to increase its diversity. You need to be courageous and stand up for those that don’t feel they can do it themselves.

Yes, you need to share your triumphs. But you should also be willing to be vulnerable. You should know that you’ll make mistakes on this journey but that it’s okay if you do. So be open and honest about any missteps. Own them, learn from them, and do better the next time.

I’m reminded of an Accenture video that our employees made a few years ago. I think it does an excellent job of articulating why being an inclusive leader is needed now, more than ever.

Most of all, remember this doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time and effort to make lasting change. But in the end, you, your team, and your company will all be stronger for it.