Solutions Marketing Group

Providing clients with innovative strategies that position them to understand, penetrate and retain the disability market.

Archives for August 2015

SMG Tip: Communicate Authentically

Originally Posted Feb. 17, 2015:

Companies that are champions of multicultural marketing do their homework to understand how to create resonant messaging that inspires consumers to respond by liking a page on social media or purchasing products in the store or online. Their ads tell consumers how the products can be a solution for avoiding pain or deriving pleasure. Messaging to people with disabilities and their families is no different.

In order to effectively connect with consumers with disabilities and their families, what’s conveyed must be clear, inclusive and highlight relevant feature that address barriers. Most importantly, it must be honest and authentic, as consumers are very discerning at identifying companies that lack a sincere commitment to the market. SMG’s clients, that have been the most successful, have used our recommended approach to developing messaging:

  1. Interest/Inspirational – This creative approach is intended to leverage emotions and generally strongly appeals to the general market.
  2. Integrated – Includes messaging that integrates the individual with a disability as just one of the employees/friends/family members. They aren’t ‘special’ or patronized in any manner.
  3. Feature Focused – This approach to creating messaging highlights valuable features that may appeal to the market. Many of SMG’s clients utilize this approach.

Within the past 2 years there’s been a rising trend to include disability themes in commercials, digital and social media, fashion and in print. Follow the leadership of Duracell, who featured Derrick Coleman of the Seattle Seahawks, the first Deaf player in the NFL who was Super Bowl bound. Guinness Beer’s commercial that included a group of able-bodied athletic men playing wheelchair basketball with their friend who used a wheelchair full-time, received millions of YouTube views and critical acclaim. Retail giant, JC Penney included mannequins that were taken from actual molds of people with disabilities as part of its ‘When it fits, you feel it campaign.’ The company received acclaim from the mainstream and fashion media for being inclusive. The key to success is allowing your brand’s essence to connect with the market.

If you are interested in learning how to communicate your company’s commitment to the disability market in an authentic way, leading to building a strong relationship with consumers, contact the Solutions Marketing Group at info@disability-marketing.com.

SMG Tip: Simplicity + Value + Consistency = A Recipe for Success

Checkbox next to the word 'success'Companies that successfully reach consumers with disabilities understand that it requires commitment, discipline and strategy. The truth is, there is such a barren landscape of companies that are speaking to them directly, that any company that is serious about penetrating the market has the opportunity to make the competition irrelevant. These disability-savvy companies know that moving beyond understanding to market penetration requires well-developed tactics. The SMG Team has developed a quick list of tactics that change the culture and impact the bottom-line:

1. To Get the Consumer with a Disability, Keep it Simple

Most companies get into a quagmire about what to offer and what to say to consumers with disabilities. After the research has been completed and your company understands key drivers for purchase decisions, create an efficient path for consumers to navigate to help them understand how their needs will be met, communicating with them consistently and minimizing the number of information sources consumers must touch while moving confidently toward a purchase. We’ve found the most successful brands achieve this by personalizing the route. One way to personalize this process is to have customer service staff that understands how products and services are used by people with disabilities.

2. Offer Value

In most instances, people with disabilities, and families with a disabled child, live financially below their peers. They have to make their dollars stretch among the basics, and have medications, therapies and medical supplies that also need to be purchased. Companies that simplify the purchase process, and offer bundled packages, incentive discounts and additional value will win the market.

3. Be Consistent

The general rule is that a prospect has to have 7+ interactions with a company before making a purchase decision. Seven! That means that companies have to develop an integrated strategy with multiple touch points with consistency to make an impact. There can no longer be limited discussion about reaching people with disabilities in July (anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act) or October (National Disability Employment Awareness Month). It must consistently happen, with resources, all year long.

To learn more about how your organization can penetrate the disability market, contact the SMG Team for a 30-minute free call at 703-920-0225 or info@disability-marketing.com.

eSSENTIAL Accessibility: Making the Web Accessible for All

By Joan Leotta

Essential Accessibility LogoRather than sell accessibility improvement software on an individual basis, eSSENTIAL collaborates with firms that promote improved access features not only for visitor use on their own site, but to be downloaded and used elsewhere by those same visitors on other sites.Software that is designed both to make life easier for customers with disabilities and to make websites accessible for the same clientele is not a new idea. However, eSSENTIAL Accessibility’s new strategy for introducing such a product stands to dramatically expand a single company’s efforts to improve the experience of people with disabilities on their site and across varied disability platforms.

This approach demonstrates the company’s commitment to persons with disabilities through offering additional value to their site and then ultimately giving the product away.  In the end, eSSENTIAL anticipates that the individual benefiting from this experience will return as a satisfied and loyal customer.

Development of the Software

Simon Dermer, Managing Director of eSSENTIAL Accessiblity says, “I owned a healthcare center and got a feel for the needs of people with disabilities in a clinical setting and then in the daily life setting with assistive technology. We were working with a Swiss company that has a platform for aiding people with paralysis. We were utilizing this technology in aiding people with severe physical limits use the internet.”

Dermer observes that these products were very expensive and often complex and specialized. “Many folks don’t even know they have resources out there to help them.” So he imagined a web based solution that would go beyond helping people with visual disabilities.  By 2009 his concept began to take shape.  Dermer began placing his software onto websites serving a variety of needs, which stimulated and expanded interest and use.  Larger companies took note.

Overtime, eSSENTIAL began to reshape its marketing communication to companies. “If you want to do more than engage [a client] one time, to really reach the disability segment of the market as customers and employees and to expedite traditional regulatory concerns, then giving them access to this software will help.” Companies desiring to gain more customers with disabilities were very receptive to using the eSSENTIAL Acessiblity app™.

How Does It Work?

The eSSENTIAL Accessibility app™ provides a suite of keyboard and mouse replacement solutions, among other tools, designed to help people with physical, reading and age-related disabilities get online. The app is free of charge to the end-user and can be downloaded by clicking the blue wheelchair and keyboard symbol. One promising and determinative example of its effective implementation can be found on merck.com and merckengage.com. Once downloaded, the app can be used on any website.

What Makes This App Different?

Simon Dermer observes that “there are many great specialized accessibility solutions for those who can do the homework to find it and have a lot of money to spend on a specialized app. Our advantage is not so much in what our app accomplishes as in the way we are going about putting it into the marketplace. Its open availability is what makes us different.” eSSENTIAL calls the firms who use its app “partners” because they work together to provide a better internet experience for people with disabilities. He adds, “the elegance of our solution is that this is a social impact model that eliminates the cost barrier to the person with a disability who needs it and the app is easy to use.”

For example, on the Merck site, visitors who click on the icon are directed to a special Merck landing page. Here, they can download the app, access MerckEngage for online resources for healthy living, view job opportunities within the company, learn about Merck’s global diversity and inclusion practices and programs, and access the Merck Manual for Pet Health, which offers readers information on animal-assisted therapy and service animals for people who are differently-abled.

Partnership Experience

In September of 2014, Merck, a global healthcare leader, began its partnership with eSSENTIAL Accessibility. People who cannot browse the web using conventional methods due to conditions such as arthritis, paralysis or amputation, can use this app to browse completely hands free, using tools like motion technology and voice-activated navigation.

David L. Gonzales, Merck’s Chief Diversity Officer, announced “we are pleased to join this important coalition of organizations that are working together to empower people with different abilities by making inclusivity the norm.”

Dermer says of the partnership, “Merck has recognized, from the get-go, the importance of being a diverse and inclusive organization. From developing products that serve people with disabilities, to offering their employees with disabilities the outstanding Workplace EnABLEment program, to their community-giving efforts and their partnerships with organizations that promote thought-leadership on diversity, Merck truly sets the bar high. We are proud to have them join the coalition and we look forward to working together to help take their inclusivity efforts to the next level.”

In November of 2014, former Vice President and Chief Diversity Officer at Merck, Deborah Dagit, joined  eSSENTIAL Accessibility at the 2014 ANA Multicultural Marketing & Diversity Conference. The three day conference highlighted people with disabilities as perhaps the last hidden demographic and explored how organizations and brands are creating economic and social value by tailoring their information and offerings for people with disabilities. Drawing on her extensive experience at Merck and as a pioneer in the diversity and inclusion realm, Dagit  shared with attendees how weaving a people with disabilities message into brand experiences engages at a basic, powerful, emotional level to adapt to the changing demands of this consumer segment.

Dermer says, “it’s all about recognizing the overall buying power and importance of customers with disabilities and building loyalty by offering such programs as eSSential on their site, to be used anywhere.”

The Future

eSSENTIAL Accessibility helps organizations build loyalty with people with disabilities. Derner sees the company as “offering partners an assistive technology app that enables people with disabilities to interact with their brand online, and to execute marketing communications campaigns that support customer service, diversity and inclusion efforts. By joining a growing coalition, leading organizations from around the world are reinforcing a disability-friendly brand presence and creating sustainable business and social value by engaging and serving this overlooked market.” For more information, please visit essentialaccessibility.com.

SMG Tip: Make a Smart Budgeting Choice for 2016

hand-drawn graph showing increasing bars and a stack of moneyThe reason many companies indicate why they aren’t targeting consumers with disabilities is because of ‘limited budgets’. Can you imagine what would’ve happened if Dove Soap didn’t target real women with a range of body shapes, Old Navy didn’t target tweens, and Chipotle didn’t target millennials? These brands would have missed a loyal following of consumers, sales would remain stagnant and stock prices would be flat.

Why hasn’t this same attention been placed on the disability market? There are 56 million people in the United States with disabilities, with aggregate disposable income of $544 billion. Why aren’t more companies targeting them as guests, customers and employees? Why, when budget planning takes place inside of companies, is the disability market placed at the back of the new markets discussion? There seems to be avoidance or lack of understanding. Once this gap is closed, then companies can penetrate and retain new consumers.

As many companies are ramping up for 2016 budget planning, here are a few things you should know about consumers with disabilities that will shorten the typical learning curve:

  • The global estimate of the disability population is 1.2 billion people.
  • There are 56 million people with disabilities in the United States, with a disposable income of $544 billion.
  • Friends and family understand disability and are also loyal consumers. There are some 100 million+, with a disposable income of $3.9 trillion.
    Source: Return on Disability

That’s a lot of people. And a lot of money.

Armed with these facts, the time is now to begin shifting the internal discussion about the disability market from compliance to value that’s created by building a relationship with these consumers and their friends, families and/or caregivers. As this shift is taking place, there are a few key questions that must be honestly answered:

  • What does our company understand about the disability market, as it relates to products/services?
  • Who is our ‘ideal’ customer who is connected to disability?
  • What’s important to them?
  • Where are they?
  • How can we most effectively reach them?
  • What do they want to hear from our company?
  • What is the most important driver in their purchase decisions?
  • What do we need to know that we do not currently know about this market?
  • What initial steps do we need to take?

Questions like these have been answered by global brands about the African-American, Hispanic, Asian, and LBGT markets. The reality is that budgets didn’t get in the way of companies formulating strategies to reach multicultural markets, (or niche markets for that matter). Isn’t it high time that the disability discussion change as well?

If you feel your organization is ready to head into a new direction in how it employs, markets to and serves the people who have disabilities; and if you’d like to ask questions related to your company’s disability marketing, contact the SMG Team for a 30-minute discovery call. To schedule, send a message to cbeaty@disability-marketing.com.

Happy Budgeting!

Carmen D. Jones

How Much Money is Your Company Leaving on the Table by Not Reaching the Disability Market?

Image of a man walking away from a table with stacks of money on itLet’s provide some context for the size and scope of the opportunity to reach the disability market. Tweens (ages 8-12) are 21 million strong, spend an estimated $30 billion annually and influence $150 billion of their parents’ spending. That’s a total of $180 billion that is spent directly linked to the tween market.

The disability market, by comparison, is 56 million and the market’s aggregate disposable income is $540 billion. When we include family and friends who have an affinity for disability, that numbers swells by 105 million and the aggregate disposable income grows to $3.9 trillion (Source: Return on Disability Group).

We’ve found that friends and family react strongly and emotionally to direct, as well as subtle, cues that connect brands to the disability community. They change their buying behavior and ‘preach’ their loyalty passionately. These folks become brand ambassadors and lifetime customers.

In weaving a disability message into brand experiences, firms engage at a basic, powerful emotional level. Smart brands will adapt to the changing demands of boomers, the wealthiest demographic in human history.

To figure out what this is costing your company we are going to do a little exercise.

  • Write down the average sale/s for 1 customer of your company, if you know it.
  • Write down the estimated number of customers your company has.
  • Divide that number by 5. 1 in 5 people have a disability. That is the average number sales your company is receiving from the market, by default. What would happen if you intentionally tried to reach them?

What money are you leaving on the table? It’s time to make a change that impacts your bottom-line. Forget altruism – while that’s nice. Reaching consumers with disabilities is about business. Period.

Ready to get started? Contact Celeste Beaty at cbeaty@disability-marketing.com to schedule a 30-min consultation with Solutions Marketing Group.