Great work doesn’t come from consensus.

Everyone lives within their own personal bubble, whether they like to admit this or not. This bubble is a culmination of all their experiences in life. These experiences differ due to a variety of factors: race, gender, socioeconomic status, life events, where you live, your family structure. Often people forget about their bubbles and when you put too many people in a room who share similar experiences, you risk ending up with marketing that misses the mark (we’re looking at Pepsi).

While race and gender diversity in marketing are hot button issues, I’m talking about diversity in life experiences as a whole. Often these two factors can have an impact on our experiences, but many other things can too. Gaining different perspectives to produce stronger ideas that resonate with a variety of audiences extends beyond these two issues.

Why Are Different Perspectives Important?

Marketing is more effective when audience personas are built on psychographics rather than demographics. How does your buyer think and feel? What does their day-to-day look like? What’s important to them? Who or what influences their buying decisions? And how does your product or service fit into all of this?

Questions like these inform marketers far better than only knowing gender, age, income and occupation. While research can be an incredible tool to inform these insights, nothing can match personal experience.

How Can Marketers Build a Diverse Team?

To achieve a truly diverse team you need to seek individuals with different backgrounds. Look for team members who have lived in different cities, traveled to remote corners of the world and are overall open minded to learning about how others live. Beyond that, seek people who have different interests and hobbies rather than continuing to hire people that like the same things.

Learn Beyond Your Craft

We attend conferences, read articles and watch webinars to hone our craft and learn more about marketing, but your professional development should extend beyond book smarts. As a marketer, make a point to acknowledge your bubble and extend beyond it. Meet different types of people with a variety of interests. Attend networking events that aren’t just for your industry. Conduct informational interviews with someone from your target audience. Watch documentaries, travel, learn how others live, think and feel rather than just assume you understand their lifestyle based on data.

In case this still isn’t quite clicking for you, here’s an example of what I mean-

I grew up in Florida and moved to Colorado a few years ago. While I knew the state has an active outdoors culture, I didn’t realize all of the nuances of this culture. Things like rock climbers wearing “puffys,” skiers wearing crazy costumes during the spring season, the meaning of terms like “gaper” and “Texas suitcase.” I wasn’t even familiar with many popular outdoors brands or what a 14er is. This knowledge gap was only ignorance on my part. I wasn’t aware of what I didn’t know. While research could have helped fill this gap to an extent, it’s hard to search for something when you don’t know what you’re looking for.

While I’m thankful for the experiences I do have and am able to share with my team, I can’t immerse myself in every culture and neither can they. That really gets to the heart of why it’s important to build a marketing team with diverse perspectives.

Having a remote team has enabled us to accomplish this at Koi. Each team member is able to experience a different “bubble” while maintaining the flexibility to experience others. We’re also able to pull in experts on specific audience segments when needed. Still curious about our flexible team structure? Read why founder, Dianna Romaguera, feels having a remote team was the best choice she’s ever made.

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Nicole Knox

Nicole has a passion for telling stories through multimedia. Her experience spans across industries from consumer brands to B2B clients. With a differentiated point of view, her experience allows her to find the story in any brand and tell it in a unique and engaging way to communicate effectively with their audience.