Opinion

If you want your business to stand out from the crowd, reach new markets and build genuine customer relationships, you will find that strategically targeting a multicultural audience can be beneficial to your business. Here are a few essential lessons on targeting multicultural audiences with your advertising dollars, and tips on how to embrace diversity and inclusion in your marketing mix. Challenges When it comes to reaching new audiences, each market presents its own challenges. Hispanics, for example, have been early adopters of emerging technologies such as streaming TV, radio, social media, and smartphones, yet advertisers find difficulties in reaching customers through these digital mediums. True multicultural marketing—to the Mexican-American soccer fans in Los Angeles or to business professionals in Asia—generates brand awareness that is authentic and also uniquely reflects today’s multicultural customer. Some marketers have tried translated marketing messaging, word-for-word, in an attempt to reach multicultural communities. For communities that often feel overlooked, this approach is cause for alarm and distorts the narrative which can alienate members of your target audience. Accounting for Social and Cultural Norms When forming a multicultural marketing strategy, first identify and define which aspects, desires and interests conform to your target customers. Effective messaging has to recognize important things like age, location, sexual orientation, religion, education and income. For example, we have found that imagery and content focused on the family unit often resonates well with the Hispanic market (comprising 18.1% of the U.S. population) because as studies have shown, family, culture and heritage are important to U.S. Hispanics. Your brand’s successful marketing content, from copy to imagery, should start with setting high standards, developing more granular insights, and incorporating a more nuanced approach. Localizing your messaging is also crucial and should be done with transcreation as opposed to translation. Transcreation refers to adapting the messaging to another language while still maintaining the original intent, tone, style, and context – which is not possible with a word-to-word translation. For example, modifying search campaigns to include Spanish search ads for Hispanic communities have proven to garner boosts in click volume and lower acquisition costs. Transcreation can also be applied to creatives by converting the ad copy to relatable and actionable call-to-actions whilst including relevant imagery. How to Measure Multicultural Campaigns Implementing a dynamic campaign that targets multicultural communities is half the battle. Identifying how the implemented strategy compares to standard campaign structures is a must, and showcasing results based on creative changes relies heavily on the ability to measure contrasting strategies by incorporating regular AB testing and comparing cost per conversion metrics. While it can sound difficult to embody and target different cultures, multicultural marketing cannot be dismissed. Brands that are serious about setting their business up to reach new markets and increase revenue should implement a multicultural marketing strategy focused on building genuine customer relationships with targeted consumers on a local level.