4 ways ethnic marketing can help your business grow

Wise and effective ethnic (aka multicultural marketing) marketing is much more than translating your company’s overall message into other languages. Multicultural marketing is about carrying out comprehensive marketing campaigns targeting specific local ethnic and cultural groups. So it requires much more than knowledge of the language – it is necessary to fully understand how a given group thinks, acts and buys. However, if we know how to implement it, we gain loyal customers who will engage in our communication and identify with the message and philosophy of the brand. See 4 Ways Ethnic Marketing Can Help Your Business Grow!

Table of contents:

1. Only proper means of communication
2. Precise targeting of ads in social media
3. Increase customer loyalty
4. Development of omitted segments

1. Only proper means of communication

For a business to be successful internationally, it is important to understand how different customers make purchasing decisions. After all, every marketer is aware that customers are divided into segments – they are usually not a homogeneous group. Ethnic marketing goes one step further. It requires us to carefully research the media used by clients from the ethnic or cultural groups we choose. If you want to communicate more effectively with potential clients of a given group, you need to know where they are looking for information. For example: if you are a British company that wants to reach Russians (e.g. those living in the UK), you should know that they use VK more than Facebook. So there is no point in wasting your budget on advertising in the wrong medium. If you want to reach US customers, you need to know what, to whom and on what channel. For example, African Americans are the most active TV users in the United States. On the other hand, Americans of Asian descent almost completely do not use traditional media, and rely on mobile applications and social media.

2. Precise targeting of ads in social media

Effective advertising in social media is the one that will give us as many customers as possible for the lowest budget. How to get it using multicultural marketing? Of course – through precise ad targeting. Each of the cult groups you want to reach requires an individual approach: separate content, a different message, but also adapting technical issues to their lifestyle, the way they make purchasing decisions and the way they use social media. The main technical elements worth paying attention to include:

• Social channel – which social channel is the most popular in a given group,
• Ad type – which type of ad the group responds most willingly to (e.g. are the ads responding better to engagement or linking to the website),
• Language – the language in which the media is used (this is not always the same as the mother tongue!),
• Area of residence – in which areas, for example in a given city, the concentration of the greatest number of inhabitants of a given ethnic group reside,
• Device type and operating system – does the group use computers or smartphones (if the latter, which?),
• Revenue Level – This option is not available in all countries, but it works very well for US targeted ads.
• Interests – are there pages, places, brands etc. especially popular with this group,
• Time of displaying the ad – if you are targeting your ad outside your country, you need to take into account not only the time zone, but also the mode of the day, e.g. in your ad for Spaniards, it would be good to consider the siesta
• Content – in the case of multicultural marketing, this is crucial. Even the choice of the right influencer for the campaign will be decisive for its success or failure. The NA-KD clothing brand carefully selects influencers to cooperate with, often selecting people from various European countries. It’s a great idea on how to gain new customers from those areas. Here is a post about the new collection in collaboration with Norwegian influencer Gine Margrethe:

3. Increasing customer loyalty

Companies that want to successfully implement ethnic marketing should first of all understand the desires, lifestyle and interests of their multicultural audiences. Customers need to feel that the brand understands their culture and their way of thinking. They must feel that they identify with what you say to them. Take a look at how MoreMins does it, referring in its communication to the cultural identity of people from Romania:

Another way of effective multicultural marketing in practice may also be event marketing, i.e. organising events for a strictly defined community living in a given place, e.g. Polish expats in Great Britain. This type of event is best organised in the case of holidays or cultural events that associate a given group, and are not common to the rest (e.g. in the case of Poles, it could be, for example, Independence Day on November 11). Thanks to such initiatives, you gain in the eyes of the selected group. This strategy is used on a much larger scale by the McDonald’s restaurant, which offers unique menu suggestions in each country. For example, in France, customers can eat a baguette there:

4. Development of omitted segments

If we are able to understand in depth the characteristics of a given group, we quickly notice what everyday problems it is struggling with. Having appropriate socio-demographic data, we can use all elements of the marketing mix (product, price, place, promotion) to achieve the goals of multicultural marketing. Rihanna’s cosmetic brand, Fenty Beauty, has mastered this lesson. From the very beginning, the company advertised a solution for resolving the problems of black people in choosing the colour and shade of a foundation. No cosmetic company has so far focused so much on this ethnic group and its needs. Fenty Beauty not only introduced innovative products to the market, but also based its entire promotional campaign on this message. Models with very different skin colours (from very pale to dark) appeared in advertising spots – no group felt left out:

This strategy worked perfectly. What’s more, it gained followers because competing companies began to adapt to this philosophy. By using such activities, not only do you reach previously undeveloped market segments, but you also have the chance to gain the most loyal type of customer possible.

Whether you want to reach an ethnic group in a particular city or an entire expat community nationwide, multicultural marketing requires knowledge of the consumers you want to focus on. It cannot be done based on intuition – you should have data on lifestyle, behaviour, culture, interests, needs and many other factors that will determine your marketing activities. If you are looking for an agency that has experience in ethnic marketing, please contact us. We have implemented some of the examples mentioned in the article for our clients.