Untold Millions

Secret Truths About Marketing to Gay and Lesbian Consumers

The first definitive book on researching gay and lesbian market behavior, Untold Millions: The Truth About Gay and Lesbian Consumers in America will help marketers, advertisers, and public relations managers learn how to successfully market and research products for gay and lesbian consumers. Author Grant Lukenbill, a leading consultant on the cultural and motivational aspects of gay and lesbian consumer behavior, provides you with important procedures, research, and guidelines that businesses today are following in order to develop successful marketing strategies to this growing target audience. From this updated and revised edition, you’ll receive current methods, new data, and sure-fire strategies that will help your company break into this market segment, satisfy intended customers, and boost company sales.

Providing you with statistics and data from the first market research study of its kind, the Yankelovich MONITOR’s Gay and Lesbian Perspective, this book gives you suggestions on what things need to be done within your company before planning your marketing strategies. You’ll benefit from ideas and suggestions in Untold Millions that will help you create consumer-driven market strategies to gays and lesbians, including:

• recognizing that there are families and relationships in society that are not heterosexual

• acknowledging age differences and the needs of particular generations

• attracting customers by circulating non-discriminatory hiring policies through press releases and company memos, installing domestic partner health care plans, and identifying cultural reference points to which gays and lesbians can relate

• remembering that many gays and lesbians may look at business with cynicism and doubt and may be quick to interpret actions as victimization

• referring to the Wall Street project before addressing gay- and lesbian-specific issues

• focusing on the areas of individuality, a need for association, and the need to alleviate stress

• reserving a post script in your direct marketing letter to remind consumers of your company’s domestic partner benefits or if you support a particular gay/lesbian interest organization

  Untold Millions contains advice on several other topics, such as corporate legal issues, public information trends and analysis, and changes in gay and lesbian communities to give familiarize you with your target audience. With Untold Millions, you’ll be able to develop appealing marketing or advertising campaigns that will satisfy the highly profitable and emerging gay and lesbian consumer market.