Multicultural Marketing

Organizations should not underestimate the fact that cultures and communities are constantly morphing. Brands must develop adaptive strengths to keep them attuned to their audience.

Being adaptive is the kind of risky business that many companies avoid. A business should understand society and culture, not just consumers. Customers should not be defined strictly in terms of their consumption proclivities.

Businesses should consider how culture and community fit into the experience of their audience. The background of customers influences how they consume content, products, and services. Multicultural marketing emphasizes understanding these influences.

Multicultural marketing is a marketing strategy that recognizes the differences in culture and ethnicities of a target market. Given below are some tips to get multicultural marketing strategies right.

Relevant Research

It is essential for a business to understand the diverse backgrounds of their customers, including their language, customs, traditions, beliefs, and experiences.

Having a deeper understanding of different cultures comes in handy when it comes to creating content and messages for consumers. For instance, Target’s 2020 holiday campaign was part of a larger effort to reach multicultural audiences.

The company launched simultaneous campaigns in English and Spanish.

Avoid Generalization

A multicultural marketing strategy should personalize rather than generalize. There should be efforts to find a consensus on the marketing strategy for a certain region rather than overly relying on the expertise of one individual.

Partnering with an influencer from a specific culture that a business is aiming to market to can help avoid stereotyping and cultural appropriation.

Avoid Force Fitting a Universal Approach

Force fitting a typecast approach to multicultural marketing is ineffective, and dilutes all efforts and impact. The optimal marketing approach is more of both ethnic targeting plus leveraging broader-appeal strategies for all. The need to address target specificity and to drive deep relevance is vital.

For instance, the Emmy-winning 2018 campaign featured the universal talk African American mothers have with their children about racism. The campaign didn’t shy away from tough conversations.

It opened the door on the closed-door conversations that happen in African American families across the nation.

Crafting Authentic Brand Messages

Developing a brand message that engages a multicultural audience can be done either in-house, or through a partner agency. Existing brand messages should not be forced to fit new communities.

On the other hand, crafting a multicultural message should start from the ground up. It should involve identifying pain points and considering meaningful ways a product can be promoted.

The focus of messaging should be built from scratch to serve the cultural group of the target audience.

For instance, to craft an authentic brand message, BMW felt it was important to work with an outside team to leverage external perspective and experience when targeting African- American, Latino, and Asian consumers in the United States.

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