Curated from HubSpot.com
Welcome to Breaking the Blueprint — a blog series that dives into the unique business challenges and opportunities of underrepresented business owners and entrepreneurs. Learn how they’ve grown or scaled their businesses, explored entrepreneurial ventures within their companies, or created side hustles, and how their stories can inspire and inform your own success.
The Unstereotype Alliance studied 300+ global brands and found that those who create inclusive advertisements brought in 5% higher short-term sales and 16% higher long-term sales, as well as a 62% higher likelihood of a brand being a customer’s first choice.
The study results tell me that inclusive marketing resonates with consumers. It shows them that marketers understand their needs, how to meet them and care about their experiences. It’s also clearly good for business.
Despite this, inclusive marketing isn’t a commonplace practice. So, for this piece, I surveyed 100+ marketing and advertising professionals about whether they practice inclusive marketing and how they implement it and got tips from inclusivity experts on how businesses can create an effective inclusive marketing strategy.
What inspired me to conduct this research?
Inclusive marketing recognizes consumers’ different identities (like race or disability status) and lived experiences and serves and represents those differences in marketing content.
I think it’s important because of the goal of marketing: attract an audience to what you offer and convince them to make a purchase. You want people of different backgrounds to come across your content and say, “This brand sees me for who I am, and I understand how it will meet my specific needs.” If people can’t find that connection, they’ll move to a brand that does.
Consumers themselves say this: diversity and inclusion (or lack of it) influence their purchasing decisions.
Demand is clearly there, but as I mentioned above, not all brands are making space for inclusivity in their marketing strategies, and I wanted to know why. I was also curious how those investing in it are practicing it to get a sense of where there might be space for improvement.
So, I surveyed marketers, asked them exactly that, and compiled the results into this inclusive marketing report.
My colleague Jeanie Thompson, associate marketing manager, had conversations with two inclusive marketing experts, Danisha Lomax, executive VP of client inclusivity & impact at Digitas, and Nandi Howard, associate marketing manager (brand equity) at Ulta Beauty, to get their takes on the survey results and advice on how brands can implement inclusive marketing meaningfully and intentionally.
State of Inclusive Marketing in 2025 I’ll start by exploring the current state of inclusive marketing, including how businesses practice it and find success.
63% of marketers told me their primary place of employment invests in inclusive marketing. 37% say there isn’t investment or they’re unsure if there is.
I was curious about the extent to which inclusivity is embedded into the strategies of those who use it, and a majority said that there are “some” inclusive elements. Just 42% say inclusivity is central to their marketing and communications.
Continue reading this research at HubSpot.com:
https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/inclusive-marketing
By: fneedle@hubspot.com (Flori Needle)
Publication Date: 2025-06-10