How to Promote Gender Diversity at Your Marketing Event

I’ve attended sufficient tech and advertising occasions to make a number of generalizations:

1. Girls are vastly underrepresented; whether or not it’s a panel or a convention speaker lineup, chances are high it’s overrun with white males.
2. Sexism is prevalent, and it spans from refined (assume underrepresentation, pinkwashed girls’ lounges) to overt (assume harassment, non-consensual advances).

There are exceptions (there at all times are), however that is the final rule, and it’s an enormous stain on the business you and I are each part of.

Now I wish to make it clear, I’m not right here to chastise anybody. As a used-to-be convention organizer, I’m responsible of it too.

Once I ran Unbounce’s first-ever Call to Action Conference (CTAConf) 4 years in the past, I invited 4 girls to talk, two of which spoke on a panel. The opposite seven have been — you guessed it — white males.

My cause was an all-too acquainted one: “There aren’t sufficient certified feminine audio system.”

That is rubbish. It’s unacceptable. And it’s not a cause in any respect — it’s an excuse. What it actually got here right down to was, I wasn’t attempting exhausting sufficient.

I wasn’t asking my community for suggestions. I wasn’t doing sufficient analysis. I wasn’t making the additional effort required to widen the pool of audio system. I wasn’t dedicated to gender range.

Quick ahead to right this moment and my perspective has fully modified. Not solely as a result of it’s necessary to me on a private degree, but in addition as a result of it makes enterprise sense.

See, if you pull from the identical pool of audio system as people in your business, every thing begins to seem like white bread — bland and borderline junkfood. Your convention appears to be like like that different convention that occurred a number of months in the past. And the content material? Yep, it’s the identical, too.

By digging a little bit deeper and increasing your search a little bit wider, you may uncover contemporary up-and-coming expertise with new views, new issues to show. And also you present feminine attendees that their voice and their skilled improvement matter.

And did I point out you promote tickets and entice extra feminine attendees?

Moz, which hosts its personal convention (MozCon), reported that as the percent of female speakers increased so did the percent of female attendees. What else can I say however duh?

I see numerous progress being made round bettering gender range in advertising and tech. Persons are asking questions, they’re holding corporations accountable, they’re having these robust conversations, which is a good begin.

However what are individuals truly doing about it?

This submit will dig into particular steps you may take to enhance gender range at your subsequent occasion. They’re the results of an honest-to-goodness want to do the fitting factor and our personal cringe-worthy fumbles (extra on that later).

It’s my hope that the following tips and techniques will assist to alleviate any hesitation you or your group might need about taking the leap.

Decide to gender parity

At Unbounce, we’ve been having conversations round gender range for months, so when Unbounce CEO Rick Perrault challenged us to decide to gender parity at CTAConf 2017, the response was a convincing YES, YES, YES.

It’s so simple as this. And but it’s a bit extra nuanced as effectively.

The reality is, reaching gender parity did take a bit extra time and a bit extra effort. However the result’s a extra dynamic lineup of audio system and a possibility to faucet into an viewers that in any other case would possibly’ve handed in your occasion.

Overlook ROI — discuss RO why not?!

So how did we do it? How did we stack our lineup with proficient male and feminine audio system? (And extra importantly, how will you?)

1. Leverage your social community and ask for suggestions through Fb, LinkedIn and Twitter (like Unbounce Co-Founder Oli Gardner did for the Unbounce Street Journey in 2015).

2. Pull from current complete lists similar to this list of 1,000+ tech speakers who aren’t men and this one featuring 100 influential women marketers.
3. Commerce previous speaker lists and rankings together with your community of occasion organizers. I despatched private emails to each occasion organizer I knew asking them for his or her previous speaker lineups and rankings, and in trade I shared our listing and rankings. This tactic is one is my faves, and it’s how we scored a ton of speaker leads for CTAConf.
4. E mail previous presenters and audio system and ask them for suggestions. It’s how we discovered Claire Suellentrop, who’s talking about creating high-converting campaigns utilizing Jobs To Be Executed at this year’s conference.

Sponsor the ladies at your individual firm

I truthfully consider that everybody has one thing to show. EVERYONE. No matter gender, no matter age, no matter job title, everyone seems to be an skilled in one thing.

It’s this perception that gave me the braveness to lift my very own hand and ask to speak at last year’s CTAConf.

However I wasn’t a quote unquote speaker. I suppose you might have known as me a speaker in residence. I spoke at a number of small-time occasions right here and there, however I’m not well-known like Seth Godin. I don’t journey the world talking at business occasions or conferences.

I used to be caught in a basic Catch-22: I couldn’t develop into a speaker with out expertise, however I couldn’t get expertise as a result of I wasn’t a speaker.

However relatively than specializing in what I didn’t have, our speaker choice committee targeted on what I did have: enthusiasm and an entire lotta occasion advertising expertise besides.

As soon as the committee deliberated, I spent two hours whiteboarding my discuss with Oli. He and Unbounce Senior Conversion Optimizer Michael Aagaard additionally reviewed my slide deck a number of occasions, offering constructive suggestions.

Their experience helped fill the gaps in my resume, in order that once I stood up on that stage I felt ready and supported.

And guess what? It went rather well.

So this yr we reserved one CTAConf speaker slot for workers, and we despatched a callout asking for candidates. The response blew my thoughts: 4 candidates, all girls. And although the selection was a tricky one, I’m happy to say Alexa Hubley — Buyer Communications Specialist and first-time convention speaker — will be on stage at CTAConf 2017 along with her discuss “Grasp Buyer Advertising and marketing By Watching Romantic Comedies.”

So what are you able to do to enhance gender range at your upcoming occasion? You can begin in your very personal yard. Encourage high-performing girls at your organization to talk at occasions, and provide them mentorship and help to get them up on stage.

And when you’re a person who’s been requested to talk at an occasion, take into account if there’s a girl you recognize who’s equally certified to talk on the topic. If there may be, provide up your slot. In actual fact, Oli already did this, when he really useful me to talk at CIMC 2017.

Create a code of conduct

A transparent code of conduct helps create a protected atmosphere to your workers and your occasion attendees by setting expectations for what’s and what’s not acceptable habits.

From a range perspective, a code of conduct is an particularly useful device for making girls really feel comfy, as a result of there are strict insurance policies in place to discourage discrimination and harassment.

Making a code of conduct out of skinny air may appear intimidating, so I recommend pulling inspiration from current codes and including your individual private taste.

Once we created our code of conduct, we appeared to different corporations we admired, particularly Moz and Atlassian.

Wistia has written an exceptional post about how and why they created their code of conduct for WistiaFest, together with how they made it seen. Humble people that they’re, they highlighted the place they might have improved (so you may study from their errors!).

You’ll discover three core ideas outlined in all these codes:

1. Be good/respectful/form/inclusive
2. Be skilled
3. Look out for others

Together with these three core ideas and your organization’s core values is a good place to begin.

And bear in mind, there are not any guidelines with regards to making a code of conduct, besides one… it’s a must to be ready to implement it.

Implement your code of conduct

A code of conduct is like insurance coverage; you hope you by no means have to make use of it, however in these unlucky circumstances, you’ll be glad you may have one thing to again you up.

At this yr’s convention, we’re making our code of conduct entrance and middle with printed posters hung across the venue.

You’ll additionally discover the code on the CTAConf web site in addition to in our convention app. And we’ve made it easy to report a violation by together with a direct cellphone quantity to our occasion advertising coordinator in our code of conduct.

Whereas I can’t go into the specifics of each reported incident, I can let you know we’ve enforced our code a number of occasions, with attendees and audio system.

Sure, audio system.

Bear in mind once I talked about cringe-worthy fumbles? Properly learn on, readers.

See, stay occasions are a difficult beast. You’ve gotten this very passionate particular person up on stage who’s pumped up and perhaps a little bit nervous. You haven’t any thought what’s going to come back out of their mouth. You hope it received’t be something offensive, however you actually don’t know.

You do, nevertheless, have management over their content material, particularly their slide deck. That is one thing we realized the exhausting method:

Props to Annette for calling us out. It wasn’t our slide, however as occasion hosts, the content material that will get projected for all our company to see is our duty. Interval.

So what did we begin doing to ensure this by no means occurred once more? We leaned on our code of conduct:

1. We ship all our presenters the code of conduct beforehand through electronic mail
2. We embody the code of conduct in our Speaker Area Information, which incorporates every thing a speaker must know, similar to contact info, journey and lodging data and slide deck specs
3. (This one’s a biggie.) We evaluation and log out on everybody’s slide decks, slide by slide, to make sure there’s no offensive or discriminating content material
4. We don’t invite again audio system who’ve damaged our code of conduct

And subsequent yr, we’ll take a web page out of Moz’s guide by together with our code of conduct proper in our speaker and sponsor contract.

So does all of this “additional stuff” add to our workload? You wager it does. Nevertheless it’s one thing we account for now. And the payoff is invaluable.

We’ve nonetheless obtained rising to do

You will have seen this submit is targeted on tips on how to create a gender numerous occasion and never a various occasion. The reality is, we all know we are able to #dobetter at elevating people who aren’t usually requested to talk at occasions — not simply white girls, however individuals of shade, non-binary people and members of the LGBTQ group.

We all know now we have extra rising to do and we’re dedicated to it, simply as we have been dedicated to reaching gender parity at this yr’s convention.

I believe we’ve come a good distance as an organization, and I believe I’ve come a good distance as a champion for girls. The excuse I gave as a convention host almost 4 years in the past — that there weren’t sufficient certified girls audio system — is not an excuse.

We’re welcoming 10 distinctive males and 10 extraordinary girls to the CTAConf stage in June, and I couldn’t be extra excited.

Hope to see you there 🙂