The Importance of Ethnic Marketing (A Modern Day Story)

In today’s society America is defined as a mixing pot of many beautiful people that tend to differ in language customs, religions, race and even income distribution patterns. There’s a wide variety of people in America, so how can one possibly think that only one form of marketing can cater to everyone?

Now let’s look at this concept on a larger scale. There are 192 different nations in the world and they all differ from one another. One marketing tactic might not work for a nation on the other side of the world.

So how can you apply ethnic marketing to your business?

What To Focus On

One idea would be to make sure you know who you are catering towards. A simple mistake of not doing your research can lead to you losing business. An example of this would be Tesco who currently owns Pringles. They chose to have a marketing tactic in London to promote bacon chips as a snack during Ramadan. However, Tesco didn’t research enough to realize that pork is not consumed in the Muslim culture. This simple error led to many customers being upset, especially since this promotion was near one of the largest Muslim places of worship in Europe.

The key here is to be aware of your target market and do your research before you go all in.

There’s also the concept of whether or not what you’re promoting is ethical. At the end of the day as a business owner you need to decide if you want to make a profit no matter what, or realize that your customers are real people. Issues of marketing that have shown up in the past would be promoting nice shoes to poor children in neighborhoods or lightening skin products in a nation that is known to have darker skin.

At the end of the day you have to make the decision how far you want to go ethically and how much research you want to put in when it comes to your target market.

The Other Side

While there are poor examples of ethnic marketing there are a few companies that hit the mark when trying to appeal to various communities. One example would be Adobe who chose to focus on the Black community. They wanted to create and emphasize on how with Adobe anyone can have full artistic freedom to find their own place and do what they want with their creativity.

Nike chose to have a similar campaign by focusing on cricket, which is a popular sport in India. The main idea is that even with a billion people living in India, a cricketer will work with the lack of space and see it as an opportunity.

As demonstrated these companies put in the effort and received many accolades for their projects. All it takes is a little research and you can be recognized for putting in the effort.

Focus In America

In American it is seen that the top three ethnic communities are Hispanic, African-American, and Asian-American. These groups are becoming more prominent especially with their overall increase in wealth which is why businesses need to focus more on segment marketing. There is an increase in the amount of these consumers; especially in certain areas.

Hispanics are known to reside in the states of California, Texas and Florida. Wells Fargo decided to take advantage of this by decorating their locations in these states with more latin styles and having bicultural tellers. This is a perfect example of marketing segmentation for specific areas. Wells Fargo decided to put their resources where their consumers were mainly located to appeal to a specific group. The key focus here is to be able to focus on area’s demographics and appeal to a large consumer population.

Key Takeaway

The main key here is to focus on market segmenting by establishing how a certain group of people are going to respond to your marketing mix. Research is key here because one mistake could lead to you losing an entire population of consumers.

It is a necessity to be able to recognize cultural differences. Pepto Bismol failed at this by promoting their product at a Chinese street fair where all the participants thought they were trying to imply their food was bad, to the point of making people nauseous. They didn’t realize that its not custom to give out samples in that way like it is normalized in America.

No matter what business you are in it’s always important to be aware of your market and to put in the extra effort when it comes to your customer’s. The little details always matter and you must listen to what is going on in today’s society.

What are some of your tips for ethnic marketing? Share with us in the comments below.