The Do's and Don'ts of Multicultural Marketing
By Thomas MacDonald, TeleTech

For the past few years, the marketing industry has been buzzing about multicultural marketing – what it means, who's doing it and how to do it right. With the multicultural population reaching nearly 100 million in the United States alone, and the combined buying power of African-American, Hispanic and Asian-American markets at more than $1. 3 trillion, companies must incorporate multicultural marketing into their business plans simply to be competitive. These days, it's not enough just to employ a multicultural marketing strategy. Instead, companies must implement a well-researched, comprehensive, high-level multicultural marketing campaign to reach and retain customers around the globe.

Why is multicultural marketing such big business? One major reason is that multicultural markets are largely underserved, especially in areas like financial services and insurance. In the United States, there are major discrepancies between the general market and the multicultural market for bank accounts, credit cards, insurance and home ownership.

Smart marketers know it is their job to proactively reach out to multicultural consumers and make it simple and appealing to use their company's services. This means marketers must enable culturally relevant communication at every touch point – online, over the phone and through direct mail, statements and advertisements. They must not only communicate with multicultural consumers, they must find a way to attract and keep their business long-term.

THE DONT'S
Effective multicultural marketing is about knowing and understanding your target market along with the ins and outs of their distinct cultures. What do these consumers really care about? Do they make decisions based on money, family or religion? There are several common errors companies make, causing the loss of resources and potential customers. Here's a short list of what not to do:

Don't Skip the Research: Many companies start the process with poor market intelligence. They begin by targeting the wrong demographic, basing their campaign solely on last names or other superficial information. It's important to conduct comprehensive market research to ensure you are targeting the appropriate people with your carefully crafted messages.

Don't Overlook Infrastructure: Another common mistake companies make is devoting significant budget and resources to acquire multicultural customers without having the customer-care infrastructure in place to support them. It's imperative that once companies acquire multicultural customers, the customers can easily and conveniently conduct business in their native languages online, over the phone or in writing.

Don't Rely on Direct Translation: Finally, one of the most common mistakes is translating advertisements or marketing messages directly, without taking into account context or cultural nuances. Multicultural marketing campaigns can be rendered ineffective by even the slightest translation error. To ensure accuracy in translation, partner with a translation services expert – a company that specializes in knowing the languages, customs and distinctions of cultures around the globe.

THE DO'S
Now that you know what not to do, let's discuss the things you should do to ensure your multicultural marketing strategy is successful.

Do Your Homework: The research step, though time consuming, is the most critical if you want to reach your target demographic effectively and keep these customers happy. Part of your market research and strategy development should be understanding every demographic and culture that you intend to reach. Learning how potential customers communicate and do business, who the decision-makers typically are, times of day when businesses are closed and many other cultural nuances is imperative. Marketers also must consider colors, numbers and images before implementing them into online or written forms of communication. What's considered a positive color in one culture may be incredibly offensive in another.

Do Know the Language: Companies must be meticulously familiar with the language – both spoken and written – as well as contextual variances and slang terms. Studies have shown that when customers are able to communicate in their primary language, customer satisfaction and retention levels increase.

Consider Hiring the Services of an Expert: Services such as in-language telemarketing, localization, translation and over-the-phone interpretation are readily available and easily accessible to companies around the world.

As the need for multicultural marketing increases over the next several years, companies that don't respond appropriately will miss out on these viable, quickly growing consumer audiences. Companies that are serious about serving consumers worldwide and dedicate the time and resources to develop and implement a multi-faceted multicultural marketing campaign will see their customer base and profitability grow exponentially.

Thomas MacDonald is executive director of marketing for TeleTech In Culture, a business unit focused on providing multicultural marketing solutions. He can be reached at (303) 397-8288 or ThomasMacdonald@teletech. com.