Increasing Your Business’s Profile as a Black-Owned Enterprise During the Pandemic

What you’ll discover:

How can I position my business as inclusive while presenting my African American story?
What can I do to attract customers who wish to support Black-owned businesses?
How can I participate in programs that assist Black-owned companies sell more goods?
What forms of collaborations, endorsements, or sponsorships can help my firm get traction?

Businesses around the nation have experienced financial hardship as a result of the outbreak. These concerns have led businesses to rethink how they sell and promote themselves to other businesses and the general public, from attempting to attract new consumers to altering how they conduct business while keeping people safe. Yet, even during the epidemic, consumer attention has shifted to righting social wrongs generated by decades of prejudice against minority communities.

Many individuals are seeking for methods to help Black-owned companies during and after the COVID outbreak. As a black-owned company, you want to draw attention to your goods and services while expressing your story in a manner that appeals to all clients. Here are a few ideas to help you raise your profile.

How can I position my business as inclusive while presenting my African American story?

Customers of all ages might be attracted to rich media. Humans are more able to connect with visual material than they are with large blocks of text. This method is particularly important for mobile device customers that visit your site or are sent to a landing page on smaller displays.

Videos, infographics, GIFs, Instagram stories, webinars, podcasts, and even narrated information are all examples of rich media. Employ forms that will assist you in positioning your brand. You may use images to demonstrate how welcoming your Black-owned company is to all people, while utilizing Instagram or videos to share your African American narrative. Rich media is also readily transferable between platforms, since many social media sites provide a variety of tools and resources to assist increase rich media on their sites. Bring on a social media marketer that can strike the right mix between expressing your narrative and advertising your items via rich media.

What can I do to attract customers who wish to support Black-owned businesses?

Tailored marketing campaigns may help you locate customers who want to support Black-owned companies. These adverts collect information about a person’s buying history, interests, and other characteristics in order to monitor how they engage with the material. This marketing method guarantees that you only advertise to those who have a proven interest in your goods and services.

The drawback of tailored advertising is that the customer must be willing to give up personal information. They could be confused about how you acquire and utilize this personal information. Understanding what customers are searching for while purchasing, as well as their desire to support black-owned companies, can help you to build ad campaigns that target your advertising in a manner that appeals to them without being intrusive.

How can I participate in programs that assist Black-owned companies sell more goods?

You may need to do extensive study on programs and resources accessible to Black-owned companies. Numerous firms provide programs to assist businesses transition to mobile and digital infrastructures, as well as initiatives to help finance female entrepreneurs. Some corporations may also provide specialized tools for Black-owned businesses, such as Google, which allows Black-owned businesses to add an attribute to their company profiles to help consumers locate them.

Certain initiatives may have special prerequisites for enrollment and participation, such as being a small business owner or a woman-owned company. As a result, you may need to narrow your selection to simply those where you satisfy the mentioned qualifications. As you become engaged in a certain endeavor, you should start establishing the marketing promotion elements, such as sending out a newsletter or forming a collaboration with a sponsor firm.

What forms of collaborations, endorsements, or sponsorships can help my firm get traction?

Businesses, organizations, and influencers are constantly keen to collaborate with enterprises to improve the attractiveness of their goods and services to customers. The U.S. Department of Commerce’s Minority Business Development Agency offers resources, loans, and grants to Black-owned firms. The National Black MBA Association also has alliance partners that are interested in endorsing, supporting, and partnering with Black-owned companies.

Several firms have also begun campaigns to develop collaborations with Black-owned businesses in order to display their items in their storefronts or on their websites. Before entering into any collaboration or endorsement, you should draft an endorsement agreement to guarantee that both parties’ promotion and marketing of your goods and services proceeds well.