Creating a winning multicultural marketing strategy

Cultural Consultancy

Introduction to multicultural marketing

 

Multicultural marketing has been a largely untapped area of marketing for large and small brands alike for many years. In light of the Black Life matters movement and the impact of COVID-19 on the BAME (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic) community, many brands have re-evaluated how they appeal to ethnic communities and as such have started the process of crafting a multicultural marketing strategy.

For many businesses, multicultural marketing is an entirely new part of their marketing plans. Surprisingly just 1 in 5 brands use ethnic marketing, meaning that the vast majority are missing out on a market which in the UK alone consists of 9.1 million people with £300bn of spending power. Clearly, for businesses that are yet to explore this significant opportunity there is the potential to significantly increase their sales and gain a foothold in what is often a notably less competitive market compared to others. So, what does creating a multicultural marketing strategy involve?

6 Steps to a winning multicultural marketing strategy

 

1) Select your target audience

 

Targeting multicultural communities requires careful consideration of which communities you want to appeal to. Each community within the wider BAME community will respond to different forms of marketing, what works well for the Polish community may not appeal to the African community. Some communities can be grouped together as they share certain characteristics such as their culture and spending habits, but others may be best targeted individually.

Many businesses are often unsure about which communities would best suit their brand and that is not an issue at all, in fact in many cases it is a great opportunity to start with a blank canvas and find your best target audience using tried and tested research. This is where we come in with our multicultural marketing consultancy service, helping you to identify your ideal audience by drawing on over 12 years of expertise.

 

2) Decide where to target your multicultural marketing audience

 

Once you have selected your target audience, you will be well placed to decide where you are going to target them. Your choice of target audience will often determine where it is best to target your chosen community. If you are unsure about which locations are best an ethnic marketing agency such as GottaBe! Ethnic will be able to advise you further. The key location options are cities, UK regions such as the south coast, the UK as a whole or if you want to target multiple European countries you can opt for a pan-European campaign.

Brands that select a city approach will also be guided by their choice of target audience. Popular cities for ethnic marketing campaigns include London, Bristol, Manchester, Birmingham and Edinburgh with their final choices depending on their chosen ethnic community/s.

 

3) Find channels to reach your selected audience

 

Choosing channels to reach your BAME audience can be the most critical step in crafting your multicultural marketing strategy. The key consideration is deciding between online or offline, your choice here will be influenced by your budget and selected audience. If you have a larger budget to invest, choosing to target online and offline is often a worthy consideration if your priority is to maximise your reach.

In the online category, you have channels such as social media, SEO, PPC and display marketing to choose from. For online channels certain options will complement each other well such as SEO and PPC or social media and display marketing. The digital marketing options also offer you a high degree of measurability and the ability to easily adjust the campaign at any time.

In terms of offline marketing, businesses looking to target ethnic minorities have a wealth of channels to choose from including print, magazines, tv channels, radio channels. These traditional marketing channels are an excellent choice for reaching a wide demographic. As an established marketing agency with strong relationships with leading ethnic media channels, we can offer our clients preferential rates for ethnic media buying that are not available for most brands that purchase media placements directly.

 

4) Create engaging campaign assets

 

All successful multicultural marketing strategies have engaging campaign assets at the heart of their success. In order for the assets to be engaging they need to take account of the language/s spoken by the chosen ethnic community and the tone of voice of your brand.

If you have existing copy/text in a language different to the languages/s required for the campaign, we can take care of the translations with our translations service. We only use native speakers to translate copy, so you can be assured that the final translations will be well received by your ethnic audience. Taking the time to translate your copy into the language of your target audience will really help you to engage with them and make them feel like valued prospective clients of your business. 73% of ethnic minorities prefer it if a brand communicates with them in their native language rather than English so you can really stand out from your competitors with native language copy.

Last but by no means least, your brand will require appropriate graphics for your campaign. While choosing graphics may appear relatively unimportant compared to other aspects of your campaigns, it is very easy and all too common for businesses to launch campaigns with images that do not support overall strategy. For example, if you are looking to target the African community using photos of members of the Asian community is not going to help you appeal to your audience. Fortunately, by working with us you will benefit from our extensive experience at preparing winning campaign assets.

 

5) Choose the right time of year to communicate with your multicultural audience

 

In ethnic marketing as in traditional marketing, the time that you choose to launch your campaign can be the difference between the success and failure of your strategy. The timing of campaign will always be influenced by the time constraints connected to your marketing budget, which in turn is often linked to the financial year.

While these considerations will also apply to your ethnic marketing strategy, consideration should be given to the events and occasions that are important to your ethnic audience. Luckily, our helpful team have created a guide to key ethnic celebrations and holidays, which is a great starting point when deciding on the timing of your strategy and the campaigns that it involves.

 

6) Focus on testing and measuring your multicultural marketing strategy

 

It is always best practice to focus on testing and measuring your strategy once it is underway. If you take a set and forget approach towards your strategy you may not achieve the return on investment that you need or you could miss valuable opportunities to respond to feedback and improve your strategy. When deciding on the success of your strategy, consider the sales, cost of customer acquisition and the overall reach of the strategy.