The clip (ID 103763) is not found.

The Tricky Trade of Multicultural Marketing

source: http://www.marketingcrossing.com/article/index.php?id=220512

clipped by suzip Feb 21, 2008

audience ethnic Marketing multicultural segments target

Notes by suzip:

Multicultural Marketing is targeting Ethnic Segments which directly hits the Target Audience by finalizing your marketing program.

Home | Quick Tour | Contact Us

NEWS

ARTICLES

FAQ

WHY JOIN?

BROWSE JOBS

SEARCH JOBS

POST A JOB

Articles


Comments	Share it	Other Categories + Marketing Matters + Business Feature
Printable Version	PDF Version

Career Feature

+ more

	The Tricky Trade of Multicultural Marketing
	By Puja Mahendru Afuwale

You may have come across every marketer's foremost and favorite marketing tip: ''Get into the shoes of your customer first, and then sell to him.'' This advice has worked wonders for marketers who have implemented it by becoming members of their target audience. It is important for an organization to speak to its customers directly in order to sell their products or services to them successfully.

The Tricky Trade of Multicultural Marketing



	Multicultural marketing is about targeting various ethnic segments and speaking their cultural languages.

And now, a new wrinkle can be added to that old advice. With customers increasingly coming from a wider and wider variety of countries and cultures, the time for multicultural marketing has truly arrived! Marketers know that they ignore these new potential customers at their own peril. No longer can they afford to ignore the surging numbers and buying power of these cultures. Mass marketing is gradually being replaced with multicultural marketing efforts to focus on these highly lucrative and diverse groups.

Multicultural marketing is about targeting various ethnic segments and speaking their cultural languages. Simply translating your advertisements into a local language or packaging your products showing faces from the ethnic population is not enough. Understanding the cultural nuances and customer preferences and integrating them into your communication is what is truly required for successful multicultural marketing campaigns.

In fact, multicultural marketing can help organizations stand out in competitive and niche markets, helping them to develop “one-to-one” rapports with minority ethnic groups.

The concept of multicultural marketing has, however, been slow to take off. Here are a few reasons why:

Lack of knowledge of other cultures amongst marketers and a back-of-the-mind apprehension towards dealing with unfamiliar cultures
Fear of losing existing customers who may look elsewhere once the organization shifts its marketing focus to other groups
Assuming that the same sort of communication does the job with ethnic customers also
Lack of interest on the part of an organization to include other groups in order to expand its consumer base, which may occur because it doesn’t see a sizeable market for the other groups

Organizations that shy away from adopting multicultural marketing, though, may soon find that their messages are being misinterpreted by some ethnic groups, resulting in losses for the organization, damage to its reputation and brand image, and increased competitor threat.

How Does One Become a Successful Multicultural Marketer?

Use the right language and the right cultural perspective for reaching your audience.
Understand your consumers’ mindset adequately to understand what motivates them.
Find out the marketing media most accessible to them before finalizing your marketing program.
Respect your customers’ culture and analyze the results of using images, language, jargon, or slang before employing them in a market. What clicks with one consumer group may have the opposite impact on another group. Pre-test your marketing initiatives before going all out with them in the market.

Collect adequate information about your customer group to communicate with individuals in the group on a personal level to make your messages more effective. Conduct local background checks before talking to a customer group. Surveys can be very valuable in creating and analyzing your marketing efforts.
Most importantly, live the life of your customers before marketing to them.

Online Multicultural Marketing

An IDC report predicted that more than one billion people had gotten access to the Internet by the end of 2007. Thus, the Internet can be an extremely effective tool for reaching your customers in any part of the world.

Your career as a multicultural marketer can earn you a name and fame if you keep the following tips in mind while you target your customers through web media:

Use websites in multiple languages to reach multiple groups of customers from different cultures.
Customize images and content used in the websites for each target group.
Preserving your brand is important. To ensure that you do so, make sure you give the same look, color, and feel to each page on your website.
The site should be user-friendly, and customers should find it easy to navigate through. Ensure that the web pages load quickly or else your customers will move on to some other site.

Developing individual marketing strategies and messages for each customer group or culture is impossible and uneconomical. However, it is important to acknowledge the distinct mindsets and buying behaviors of individual groups. If you can bring this balance to your marketing initiatives, you will be in high demand as a multicultural marketer.



del.icio.us	Reditt	Technorati	Yahoo	StumbleUpon
Google	Netscape


		On The Net
		Multicultural Marketing: Why One Size Doesn’t Fit All Marketing and Multicultural Diversity Multicultural Marketing Multicultural Marketing: Growth Means Opportunity


		Post Comments

*Your Views:

*First Name:	*Last Name:	*Email: We respect your privacy



* Required Field	Rate this Article

1-800-680-7345

Free Marketing Job Search

The Most Marketing Jobs Anywhere

Location

Keywords

Search in job title

Search in job description

SEARCH JOBS		Advanced Search
SEARCH JOBS		Map Search

TOTAL JOBS

46,967

NEW JOBS

(in last 7 days)

9,720


	Marketing Jobs Near Your City
	Looking for a new marketing job in your city? + click here

Most Popular Articles

Most Viewed

Most Emailed


1.	Search Marketing for Dummies

2.	Top Tips for Marketing over the Holidays

3.	Making Career Change Work for You

4.	Marketing Secrets: How to Use Education to Dominate Your Market and Increase Sales

5.	Innovative Marketing: Are You Using It?

The Editor Recommends


1.	From MySpace to McSpace

2.	Survey Says: Don't Fake It

3.	Workplace Woes: Identifying the Pessimist

4.	From a Marketing Group to a Marketing Team

5.	An Overview of Marketing Channels

Success Stories

Ray Kroc: The Man behind McDonald's

By Amit Agarwal

Founded in 1940 by two brothers, Dick and Mac McDonald, McDonald's Corporation, as it is known today, was later taken over by Ray Kroc. Kroc's vision and marketing expertise created one of the most...

Jobs Break Up