As most anyone in the business will tell you, marketing and advertising has been more dynamic than static for many years. It seems that as soon as marketers have a grasp on the status quo, a new disruptive medium or approach comes to bear and changes everything all over again. Two areas of marketing specialization that have emerged are multicultural marketing and digital marketing. And as these two disciplines mature, many marketers have indicated that they can, at times, seem at odds.
One of the Internet’s many benefits is that it allows for a large amount of user control. Oftentimes, individuals lead different lives online. And for many, the Internet can be color-blind. More-traditional media platforms, such as broadcast, direct marketing, etc., have mechanisms designed to identify consumer ethnicity and direct culturally relevant messaging to the appropriate target. Digital marketing is seen as lacking in its ability to successfully segment and approach consumers in the multicultural realm.
The truth is that digital and social are merely pushing marketers to be better at their jobs when it comes to multicultural marketing. A little creativity and originality can go a long way. Rather than looking at the multicultural world from the brand’s point of view, marketers should dig deeper to understand it from the consumer’s point of view.
Take for example Carol’s Daughter. It’s a hair-care product designed specifically for African American women. A quick query in Twitter’s advanced-search mechanism shows a robust following for this product. And the participants in this social conversation are almost exclusively African American women. Many are evangelists. Some are detractors. Regardless, this one simple tool outlines the discussion in a way that offers clues as to how to structure a digital approach for competing products. Savvy SEO and SEM developers essentially have a fresh start on new key terms and points of interest that can extend well beyond Twitter into Google, Yahoo! and even CRM.
And of course, there are other digital tactics that will enhance a digital, multicultural approach. The advent of key-term geo-targeting aligns well with the fact many multicultural audiences reside in easily identifiable locales. It’s also important to note the growth of many culture-centric sites. Most multicultural consumers live in a dual world online. They surf general-market sites, but they also bookmark and frequent sites such as blackplanet.com, mediatakout.com and urbanchat.com. As these networks and sites grow, they will offer more and more value as a part of the overall multicultural/digital mix.
The key takeaway is that multicultural consumers are online, and, with the right approach, can be targeted in a very effective manner. But it will take a distinct approach and possibly different points of analysis to effectively tailor the campaign.
