Write-up: Reaching Black Audiences in a Digital World

Posted by Sarah Levin-Lederer on February 18th, 2022 Posted in: Blog, Webinars
Tags: community engagement, professional development, social media

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On January 12, NNLM R7 and our colleagues from the NNLM Public Health Collaborative we’re honored to welcome Porcha Johnson, “Reaching Black Audiences in a Digital World” for the first NNLM Public Health Webinar Series session.

Unfortunately, due to user error and technical difficulties we couldn’t record this session, but below is an overview of the key points and links to resources.

About Black Girl Health

DBA BGH and Associates is an 8a certified woman owned marketing and video production firm providing:

• Digital Campaigns (social media, email, video)
• Print Campaigns
• Video Productions (animations, live/recorded videos)
• Film (short films, documentaries)
• Livestream
• Graphic design
• Diversity inclusion training
• Virtual and in-person health programming

Digital Marketing Strategy: Start Your Customer Value Journey

“CVJ is the basis of how we develop our strategy. The Journey is what helps Black Girl Health build a relationship with our target audience.  We get them to engage with us and convert them into loyal and repeat customers.”

Know Your Customer

“You can’t market to your target audience if you don’t know anything about them.”

Black Girl Health Customer Profile:

• Age : 33-55
• Gender: black women
• Income: 61k average
• Deeper Facts/psychographics (Interest, worries): entertainment, beauty, relationships, stress relief
• Core beliefs (feelings and desires): Spirituality, Superwomen (juggle multiple tasks and feel overwhelmed and stressed, Improved health and wellness)

Aware: The first stage of the journey is awareness. Make your audience aware of your products and services.

• What did we do? “We generated awareness by developing promotional videos and social media copy we know would resonate with black women and men based on their prospect/customer profile.”

Engage: Starting with first contact with a partner through their whole experience with your brand. This part of the journey is ongoing.

Partnerships: Partnerships are a great way to connect with your target audience. Partner with existing, trusted organizations who work with your target audience.

• What did we do? “We partnered with Black Fathers Foundation to help increase engagement on social media among men.”

Social Media Engagement: Develop promotional material that speaks to your target audiences’ profile.

• What did we do? “We partnered with male and female social influencer to make a social media comedic video.”
• “We developed Facebook event pages, and developed post that were entertaining for both men and women but also educating them on HIV awareness, and we also Empowering the black community to take control of their sexual health, which allowed continue interacting with both Black Women and Men to build on that relationship.”

Subscribe: Positive experiences build trust. With positive experiences, ask for a small commitment like capturing email addresses. Offer something free in exchange if possible because people can be reluctant.

• What did we do? “We offered a FREE opportunity to watch our Game Show [Pop the Question: Men Take the Wheel] featuring social influencers to promote sexual health/ HIV awareness.”

Take Action: If the free offer has enough value and engagement, you can transition that into ACTION.

• What did we do? “We put together [sexual health] evaluations for both men and women. We made the test more entertaining and more solution-based instead of just educational to get black men and women to complete the evaluation. The evaluation increased the target audience’s knowledge of HIV/PreP/Pep allowed the audience to learn their #HIVawareness risk score in less than 3 minutes!”

 

CHALLENGES
Challenge	Solution
Ads that eat into the marketing budget because they’re not effective.	Re-access the customer profile and redevelop content. Maybe you’re accidentally targeting the wrong audience.
Going virtual may limit parts of the campaign eliminating community or local events.	Use target marketing that allows events to be localized where only the target audience can attend.

 

Black Girl Health Next Steps

BGH is launching a Mobile App to fulfill the unmet health needs of minority women in the US.

Be notified when the app launches.

Connect with Black Girl Health on Facebook.