Winning New Clients: How to Connect Your Business to the Queer Community

We’ve talked before about connecting with the local queer community in the Write Better Pride Copy Series. As I’ve said, we are everywhere. Which means that there is a portion of the community that will be your ideal client. And while it’s great to connect to the whole community for Pride and other important events to the queer community, you’ll mostly want to connect to the folks within the community most interested in your business. Obviously.

But what is the best way to do that? Today, I’m going to discuss how to find organizations and other groups that would be more likely to be interested in what your business has to offer.

And if you want to save yourself the time doing that research and strategizing that outreach so that you can focus on what the important parts of your business, set up a 15 minute call with me to discuss your business, your goals, who you want to reach, and how I can help effectively connect you to that part of the queer community.

Beyond Stereotypes: Expand Your Ideas of Who Might Be Interested in Your Products or Services

As I’ve said before, stereotypes often come from some kernel of truth, but ultimately, they are caricatures of real, complex people. You are running a business. You don’t want to limit yourself in a way that doesn’t make sense for your business. Relying on stereotypes will negatively limit you by narrowing who you connect with in the queer community.

Step one for connecting to the subset of the queer community for your business is to acknowledge the stereotypes that exist, and then let them go. 

As an example, let’s talk about sports and the arts. There is a stereotype about lesbians being the sporty ones while gay men are more artistic. Like all stereotypes, this is both true and not true. There are lots of artistic lesbians (like my girlfriend), and there are lots of very sporty gay men, as we have seen over the years with more and more pro athletes coming out. And there are lots of sporty lesbians, and lots of artistic gay men. And a lot of us like both. 

Let’s say you offer a sports-related tour, such as a specific trip for the next Gay Games in Valencia, Spain, you would want to connect with all sporty queer folks who like soccer. Or if you had a tour that focused on Italian art and theatre, you would want to connect with all the artistically inclined queer folks. 

Finding Which Queer Folks Might Be Interested in Your Business

Okay, so you’ve gotten over the stereotypes in your brain, but now you need to figure out how to find those people in your local queer community that might be interested in what you are offering. Where do you start?

We need to define what you are looking for first. My top recommendation is to search for interest groups in your area that align with your business. So, in the sports example, you are looking for local queer leagues. In the arts area, you might want to find a culture club (reference to the 80s band fully intended).

But how do you do that exactly? 

I mentioned in the last blog how great Meetup and Reddit can be for finding organizations in other countries to connect to. They are equally helpful here. Meetup helps you find groups that organize events, and Reddit helps you get plugged into that part of the community and conversation.

And then there is the standard google search (or your search engine of choice). I like to look for national or international organizations that have local chapters. I feel that this helps to find groups that are more established. However, I don’t want to discourage you from connecting to a fledgling or purely local organization. Especially if your business is hyper-local, connecting with these groups can be a really great way to establish rapport with the community. 

Now That You Found Them, How Do You Connect with Them?

Connecting with these queer groups works the same way that it works with anyone else for your business. You want to understand their needs and offer a solution. Talk to the organizers and find out what their groups are looking for and if your business is able to come in and help. 

Can you host a meeting in your space for group that you found through Reddit or through Meetup? Can you sponsor a team or an event? Can you give them a specific discount that is only for members of that group? What ways can you solve the problems that they are facing specifically?

You offer value to the group. And as we talked about in the rainbow washing blog post, it’s really important that these relationships are not one-way streets. 

Write Copy Specific to Each Group You Want to Connect With

While you’ll want to add the groups you connect with into your broader contact group, you might also consider giving them their own group so that you can send copy that is specific to them. Like when you want to offer a Pride discount for members of the queer community. Or you can send out Pride copy during Pride Month directly to them as well as the Pride copy that goes to the whole contact list. 

When you write copy for them, use the three tips that we walked through during Pride Month. Those apply to your Pride copy, no matter what time of year it is.

You are a busy business owner. If you are looking for someone to take over all of this research, figuring out the connection strategy, figuring out the copy, and maintaining those connections, a Pride copywriter is what you are looking for. Book that 15 minute call with me, and let’s talk about how my expertise can help you connect with the right part of the queer community for your business.

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