Pride is over, but you can keep your business in touch with the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender market year round.

This is the time to start planning your strategy and budget for next year’s Pride season. And not only that, but develop a strategy for keeping your business in the eye of GLBT community year round.

We can help you set up your advertising program.

We are happy to announce that after the June 1st launch of the new www.blazingsaddle.com we have our first two advertisers!

Westrum Optometry and Central City Liquors have realized the benefit of advertising with www.theblazingsaddle.com.

And because we want to celebrate Pride month by allowing businesses to experience how beneficial it can be to target market to the LGBT community, we are offering a special advertising rate in June.

If you sign up to advertise on www.theblazingsaddle.com this month, pay only $125/month with a three month contract!

That is half off the our usual $250/month with a three month contract.

We have only two advertising slots left. So don’t miss out!

In even more exciting news, over the coming weeks watch out for total redesigns of new client’s websites: www.queerconnections.org, www.libertygiftsonline.com, www.stagewestiowa.com and www.dmgmc.org.

And even more to come!

What are you doing to promote your business to the LGBT community? Find out how affordable targeted marketing can be, contact us.

We are excited to announce, the Blazing Saddle’s website has been redesigned and relaunched in time for Pride month.

The Blazing Saddle has been a client of Global OUTage since 2005 and was our first web development client.

In the last year, the Blazing Saddle’s web site has had over 500,000 hits with an average of over 42,000 visits a month.

With a redesigned website that includes many enhanced or completely new features such as the calendar, Blazing Video, Blazing Radio and all content is now accessible through RSS feeds, web traffic will only continue to grow.

The new site was completely developed in Joomla!, an open source content management system.

Joomla! allowed us to add the innovative features our client wanted. Most importantly, it makes the task of updating and adding content far more intuitive and accessible to end users.

Global OUTage has been our web developer for the last two years and with the new site has provided a valuable tool to market our bar.

It integrates social networking aspects that provide comments, events, videos and our own radio program.

It also is very easy to update and maintain. We would highly recommend Global OUTage for their service and commitment to the gay community.
Bryan Smith, Bar Manager
The Blazing Saddle

It is an exciting day in Iowa. This morning Governor Culver signed into law a civil rights bill offering protection for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender individuals.

More from KCCI TV in Des Moines.

The Pride Guides are popping up all over town and Capital City Pride is just three weeks away!

There isn’t much time left to prepare, but here are few things you need to think about in getting your business ready for Pride Season.

Branding your business

Branding a small business can be a challenge. Most businesses don’t have the budget of Coca-Cola or or Volkswagen.

Branding is about creating an image or message that is accessible and relateable to your target customers. You want your customers to identify you through this image or slogan.

This is where the challenge lies for small businesses, building their identity in a world inundated with competing information.

One of the best resources online with tips for helping small businesses brand themselves is Small Business Branding.com.

Pride is an ideal time to update and review your branding strategy or to start thinking about one if you haven’t yet.

For LGBT businesses or businesses serving the LGBT market, there is no better time of year to get your brand out and visible to the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community.

This is the one time a year the whole community is focused together on a single event and paying close attention to who and who isn’t there supporting and sponsoring the festivities.

Marketing your business

Marketing your business in the flood of information everyone is exposed to is another huge challenge.

Pride is a great time to develop and release targeted marketing. One of the better entries on Small Business Branding.com details 5 things a business can do to market to existing and potential customers. I’ll rework some of their ideas to fit in with Pride month.

Some simple and cheap Pride Season marketing:

Send out a reminder to your customers in June wishing them happy Pride month and reminding them of your products and services and what new products of services you’ve recently begun offering.

Target your LGBT customers with special Pride month discounts. Discounts are often the best way to encourage prospective customers to go ahead and try your products and services.

Reward your customers with Pride month referrals. LGBT customers can be amongst the most brand loyal of any customers. And, good word of mouth is the best way to viral market your services in the LGBT community.

Use your booth at Capital City Pride to do some simple market research. Folks love give-aways. Do a drawing or raffle for a product or service in exchange for folks answering a 2 or 3 key questions. The wording of the questions is important. Put some serious thought into what information you most want or need to know about your current or prospective customers.

Your business’ website

I rely almost exclusive on Google searches to find products and services. I recently visited Kansas City. I was heading down for business but knew I’d have some time for pleasure.

I tried to do a search for gay bars, events and businesses in Kansas City. All I found were dead links, out dated information or worse yet nothing at all. In my mind those places had gone out of businesses. Or if they didn’t show up on my search, they didn’t exist at all.

It is so important to have an up to date website and even more important that your website if searchable.

Global OUTage is, of course, a web development company. One of our specialty services is search engine optimization (SEO). We can get your website higher in the Google rankings in time for Pride month and catch all those out of town visitors looking for LGBT friendly services.

Your business’ blog

You want to communicate with your customers. One of the most cost effective ways and least intrusive ways to communicate with those customers is with a blog on your website. Blogging should be “10% sales pitch and 90% good content.”

We often hear from our customers that they don’t have time or ability to maintain a blog. However, blogging is a powerful tool and the time and energy commitment is well worth the investment.

There are hundreds of tips online to help you refine your blogging technique and give you new blogging ideas.

These are just a few tips to get your started. If you don’t have time to get ready for Pride 2007, get a head start for Pride 2008 by setting up a meeting with us.

Mainstream businesses and retailers, especially on the local level, have had some reluctance to launch advertising or marketing campaigns targeting the lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender demographic.

This has generally been based on a concern for alienating straight customers and clients. This apprehension can also be compounded by a concern over their corporate logo appearing juxtaposed to adult oriented or racy content.

Should companies be concerned about alienating their straight cliental by advertising to the LGBT market?

A national survey conducted by Fleishman-Hillard, a leading global marketing and corporate communications company located in St Louis, MO, found that,

An overwhelming majority of American adults say knowing that a company markets its products or services to gays and lesbians would have no impact on their purchasing decisions or attitudes about that company.

Specifically,

The overwhelming majority (82 percent) of those surveyed in 2006 indicate it does not matter to them if a company whose products they use on a regular basis also promotes them to the gay and lesbian community…

[T]wo-thirds of American adults surveyed indicate that knowing a company promotes its products or services to gays and lesbians has no effect on how they feel about the company. Fleishman-Hillard

Mainstream companies need not fear openly and aggressively marketing to the LGBT community.

Ben Finzel of Fleishman-Hillard in PR Week Blogs,

It’s important for companies to realize that marketing and advertising to the gay communities will not hurt their reputation.

Steve Kauffman of Fleishman-Hillard in the same blog is quoted saying,

The mainstream companies that target the gay and lesbian community see that they are expendable consumers. Gays and lesbians do appreciate companies that market to them in a sensitive way, that recognize their community for what it is. And in turn, they’re very brand loyal.

Should companies be concerned about their advertising appearing next to racy or adult oriented content?

This is a much more difficult question to answer.

A recent article on C-Net News.com concluded,

While seeing ads from blue-chip companies alongside questionable Web material may strike some people as shocking, the popularity of user-driven content and Fortune 500 advertisers’ embrace of the Web make such a juxtaposition almost inevitable.

Global OUTage gives advertisers the option to avoid more adult oriented content by separating out our websites for entertainment venues that may include such content.

The choice of where to advertise is left completely to our clients. It is important to us that we offer our clients advertising avenues that are consistent with and reinforce their current branding strategies. We try and offer the best most complete information we can so your clients can make a fully informed decision.

In making the decision of where to advertise our clients weigh possible content and the potential for exposure to the key demographic. For example, our entertainment venue websites tend to have higher web traffic and repeat visitors giving advertisers more exposure.

Also, as Kauffman alluded, there can be a huge pay off in loyal new customers by aggressively marketing to the LGBT community.

A study by Harris Interactive found that 49% of lesbian and gay respondents agreed with the statement “I prefer to buy everyday products and brands that target gays and lesbians over competing brands that do not.”

Additionally, 47% of lesbian and gay respondents agreed with the statement “I trust brands more if I have seen them advertised in gay media.”

Interested in advertising with our websites? Contact us and we will get you a full proposal.

Iowa GLBT owned businesses and community based organizations now have to new, affordable choice for web design. Global OUTage, a small gay owned company in Des Moines, has recently begun marketing web design services to the GLBT community in Iowa.

“Few GLBT businesses have fully utilize the potential of the web,” says Mr. Smith, founder of Global OUTage. “So many still have no presence on the web. Unless you have in-house talent, developing a web site for your business can be a daunting and expensive task. We are trying to change that.”

Global OUTage offers web design and hosting, search engine optimization, e-commerce services, advertising and marketing along with other related services. They are currently focusing on Iowa based businesses but hope to expand into near-by states over the next year.

Founded 2005 and already developing and servicing a number of local websites, this spring marks a significant expansion for Smith’s company. Smith has been in web design and development since 1999 with clients that include art galleries and retailers.

“With Global OUTage I wanted to make quality web design accessible to GLBT businesses,” Smith says. “We are trying to go beyond just designing a website for a business. We want to build long term relationships and teach these small businesses how they can use the internet effectively.”

Global OUTage is a Des Moines based and gay owned business that provides web and print marketing and design along with advertising services. Clients include GLBT community groups, businesses and entertainment venues.