New Research Indicates Lesbian And Gay Marketing Doesn’t Work But The LGBT Community Is Still One Of The Lucrative

A new report by Community Marketing Inc, a San Francisco based company, has acted to examine the attitudes and media usage of gay and lesbian consumers, and discovered that whilst other sectors may have been hard hit by the global recession, the gay and lesbian community are one of the most lucrative markets to be targeting. One element of the report showing this clearly concerned a question about what big purchases had beem made in the last year with 29% had bought a new laptop and 26% had bought an HD television set. On top of that respondents has also bought PDA/smart phones, cars and new desktop computers. 

LGBT Focused Advertising Just Isn’t Working

A discovery that may surprise many is specific LGBT focused ads didn’t have the strong impact that marketers might imagine, with only 22% saying their purchasing decisions were influenced on advertising in LGBT magazines and newspapers, 21% by those who using LGBT spokespeople and 18% from companies advertising on LGBT websites. There was however a different factor that had a much bigger influence on whether the LGBT community would buy from a company, and that wasn’t how they targeted the gay community – it was how they looked after it with company’s employment practices (“such as non-discrimination in hiring or recognition of domestic partners”) influencing 45% of respondents, whilst 42% were influenced by “companies actively promote gay-friendly policies” in that category, and 37 percent ny companies supporting “LGBT political causes.”

Asked why the he believed LGBT media had such a small impact on buying decisions David Paisley, the senior projects director at Community Marketing said

“I think there is a combination of issues here…First, gay men and lesbians don’t necessarily look at the LGBT media every week. The number of LGBT print and Internet media is such a small fraction of the overall media. Also, when you go to an LGBT Web site, many of the ads are somewhat generic, and don’t necessarily qualify as ‘targeted LGBT.’”

The report also indicated that as well as LGBT print and internet media only making up a small proportion of all media, respondents were far more impressed by companies who didn’t act to hide away their targeted gay and lesbian advertising in niche publications, but instead produced general market advertising that reflected diversity and inclusion in society. One example of this was the Kaiser Permanente ad (which ran in Time magazine) which showed a photo of widely assortment people including a gay couple holding their child, with Paisley commenting

“That type of ad tests through the roof,”

How Does The LGBT Community Use Media?

Concerning the kind of media that the LGBT community use, the report discovered that over 70% watch television every day, with 61% listening to the radio, 51% using mainstream websites and 40% reading daily mainstream newspapers. Again though it discovered LGBT focused media was less popular with LGBT internet sites only being looked at daily by 21% of people and LGBT blogs only gaining 11%.

In terms of media used over a week, the internet did however come out top with an average of 13.1 hours, with television and music coming second and third. In terms of the first, online social networking has become a lot more popular, but isn’t necessarily the best target for marketing to the community with only 12% saying they used them to research products and services, whilst 63% went to communicate with friends.

However whilst it may suitable as the only source of advertising, it doesn’t mean it should be ignored completely, especially for those marketing to gay men, as the research showed 25% of gay men and 14% of lesbians responded to ads on mainstream sites, with that rising to 30% for gay men on LGBT blogs/social sites.

Changing Attitudes, Changing Advertising?

Attitudes to the LGBT community have changed steadily over the last couple of decades, and this has lead to different generations of the LGBT community being influenced by different forms of marketing. Older generation, for example, are likely to be more receptive to more LGBT targeted promotion, however the younger generation who feel more supported by society as a whole, are according to Paisley:

“…far less interested in the gay and lesbian media or being labeled in any way.”

Saying that they’d found the perfect place to market to a 25 year old gay man was not through a LGBT website but instead through social media sites like Facebook, it indicates that there is no longer a single marketing approach to suit all of the community.

Open But Still Proud

Whilst the report indicates the LGBT community is a lot more open to more general advertising, it also clearly shows a commitment to supporting the LGBT community with gays and lesbians passionate about boycotting companies that they felt had supported anti gay causes.