Create a Multicultural Marketing Strategy
This article is part of a series about the core services Cheek Marketing & Insights offers. In it, we provide some basic details about the challenges we solve, the techniques we might use, and the general results you can expect. Since every situation is different, please get in touch if this sparks your interest. We’ll discuss your circumstances, and how we can help.
The logical path to driving common business goals like increases in sales or profitability is often reaching new consumers and markets. With the US’ rapidly diversifying population, there is often opportunity in multicultural segments like African Americans, Asian Americans, and Hispanics. An oft-cited statistic in multicultural marketing pitches is that half the population will be one of these ethnicities by mid-century. Marketers need not wait that long for compelling reasons to begin reaching these consumers, however:
Multicultural Consumers Offer an Efficient Growth Opportunity
First, the simple math argument: multicultural consumers are growing not only in numbers, but in purchasing power. Their collective buying power quadrupled between 1990 and 2014, twice the rate of the overall population. Meanwhile, there is less competition for these dollars: a 2015 survey of senior marketers showed over half have no multicultural marketing plan in place. Partially as a result, advertising on in-culture and in-language media is often significantly less expensive than its general market counterpart. That can go beyond advertising to areas like product development that allow brands to capture market share also. Marketing is often a search for ownable space, and multicultural markets can offer that.
Multicultural Consumers are Often the Leading Edge of Culture
Getting multicultural dollars is an obvious goal of multicultural marketing. In many cases, multicultural influence over culture is also valuable. Take the 2018 launch of the Popeye’s Chicken Sandwich for example. Capitalizing on poking fun at rival Chik-Fil-A on Twitter, Popeye’s captured the joke-saturated attention of Black Twitter, an informal collective of Black users on the platform. By the time it was over, the highly-publicized moment had garnered $65 million in earned media value. No one can guarantee that level of viral explosion, but nurturing a multicultural following often pays dividends with other consumers.
Fragmentation Means All Marketing Will Look Increasingly Like Multicultural Marketing
One need not look into the future to see culture and media consumption atomizing. As tech makes more and more personalization possible, it increasingly seems like table stakes to consumers. These two well-underway trends show that marketing effectively to niches will become increasingly important. As marketers, we will need to sharpen our skills at being in the right place with the right culturally relevant message, starting yesterday.
How We Create a Strategy for Diverse Segments
Every situation will require slightly different strategy and tactics. Here are three elements that are generally important:
Persona and Path to Purchase
Without repeating what persona and p2p research are, the main points to note here are the culturally-specific barriers, reasons to buy, etc. Do they feel like your product or service is for them? Where do they go to learn about it or buy? What language do they want information in? Teasing out these kinds of insights is key to highlighting the overlaps and differences with your existing strategy.
Media/Partner Strategy
A deep dive into in-culture and in-language places we can reach this audience. This is not radically different from the same process in general market plans. However, additional work is often necessary to dig deeper than the BET and Univision layer of media.
Creative Strategy
The creative elements that define how we speak to this audience, like voice, visual identity, and more. It will often stem from your existing strategy, but need to be fine-tuned to say just the right things to your audience. …y’all good?
Multicultural marketing can be daunting to firms used to addressing the general market. But with the right approach, and the right help, it is doable. Beyond that, it is effective in driving business results. Cheek Marketing & Insights has over a decade of experience reaching multicultural consumers with successful campaigns. If you would like to talk about this or any other marketing challenges you face, reach out.