Is Multicultural Marketingone of the key componentsin your Digital Marketing Strategy this year? If you are not sure, you may be missing out on a Huge Business Opportunity that’s rapidly evolving.
What is Multicultural Marketing?
Also referred to as ethnic marketing or cross-cultural marketing, it refers to the practice of marketing to audiences of a specific ethnicity – Hispanics, South Asians, African-Americans and more.
Check out these 2 commercials from Acura on 2015 TLX. If you are a Chinese consumer, which one do you think appeals to you better?
Though the benefits of products or services a business offers may be same for everyone, multicultural marketingwhen speaking in an authentic tonebased on the culture and beliefs, makes it effective in reaching out to the multicultural audiences by touching on a personal level.
Big Opportunity:
According to Forrester Research, Digital Marketing Spend in the U.S will increase from $67.31 billion in 2015 to $103.37 billion in 2019.
Multicultural consumers are the fastest growing segment of the U.S population. Already over 120 million strong and growing at 2.3 million per year, they represent the growth engine of the future of United States.
Hispanics, South Asians, African-Americans and all other multicultural population make up 38% of the U.S population and Census projections show this to become a numeric majority by 2044. They are the emerging consumer force in America today with their buying power estimated to be $3.8 trillion by 2017. This is a huge business opportunity that remains largely under leverage and under financed.
Challenges:
Few of the key aspects and challenges in running an effective Multicultural Marketing campaign are
- Ad creatives
Marketers need to understand the language and culture of their audience to be able to tailor the messages that will resonate the best and drive higher engagement.
- Targeting
Across various online platforms, marketers need to be able to identify their multicultural audiences based on interests, ethnicity, purchase habits and zoom into them to target them for best response. Facebook and DoubleClick offer numerous options including audience lists to target the right ethnic groups of interest.
- Measure & Refine
As with all Online Advertising campaigns, it’s crucial to regularly analyze the performing campaigns and optimize them for the best ROI – Return on Investment.
Benefits:
Approaching the marketing from cultural standpoint leads to many benefits for the businesses.
- Brands gain the loyalty of ethnic consumers fast
- Ethnic audiences tend to promote ‘ethnic ready’ brands to others in their community
- ROI when targeted to ethnic audiences is much higher than traditional run-of-the-mill advertising
- Costs associated with multicultural campaigns are lower due to their effectiveness
Big companies such as Wells Fargo, Southwest Airlines, PG&E and Acura have already ventured into Multicultural Marketing as seen in some of the ads.
Final Thoughts
Have you had experience of running an ethnic marketing campaign? Or have you been at the receiving end of being targeted in a campaign?
