By David Sanders, CEO of Creative Business Strategies
Do you need a key to unlock the hidden power of your sales and marketing? One of the most neglected and powerful approaches you can take is to understand and appropriately deal with your clientele’s ethnic.
No, I am not talking about researching the traditional images of a specific culture, its foods, music, dances, etc., although this is certainly not a bad idea if you really are going to focus on a specific culture. Ethnics are still evident after the melting pot has melted, and the things that make up an ethnic transcend many boundaries that people feel divides them from each other.
Ethnics actually are ways to establish a sense of friendship that encourages that most important commodity in the world of business, word of mouth.
Here is an example of ethnics at work. If you want to attract beer drinking bikers to your products, then you are going to have to understand the ethnics of this populace and get on the same page with it. But don’t expect that same marketing campaign or sales pitch to bring in your local clergy!
Did you know that an ad campaign that was really successful in the southern United States could actually completely bomb when transferred to the North? Why? Or why does a campaign designed for WASPs (white Anglo Saxon Protestants) not work with Hispanics or Afro Americans or Asians or….
What has been taken out of the equation is a sense of the ethnics. What is valued, what is important, what is liked, what is disliked, these things make up the ethnics of a population.
Any marketing campaign that does not take into account the ethnics, right along those lines and those questions, is going to miss. And don’t be surprised how rapidly these ethnics can change, neighborhood to neighborhood, city to city. Some ethnic points can encompass an entire nation but it’s more likely that they are regional at best.
In Los Angeles and other melting pots made up of many diverse groups, this kind of marketing must become a fine art. One large health care provider with offices throughout Southern California has discovered this the hard way. Their marketing campaign designed for the “average” person does OK in some regions and fails in others. The easy (lazy) way to deal with marketing to diversity is to generalize and attempt a one-size-fits-all strategy. In LA, even translating your marketing materials written for WASPs into Spanish is not sufficient today. Like treating all the plants in your garden identically, your results will be spotty at best.
Politicians especially want to be aware of what the ethnics are of an area, because a violation of the ethnics of the voters is deadly. Look at what happens when politicians are exposed for various large and small crimes and errors. Oddly enough they get away with some things. But it doesn’t matter what good that guy or gal did, once they have crossed an ethnic line that puts them on the outs, it is hard ground to recover once lost.
Let’s bring this down to an example of a company that has made a point of including ethnics in their marketing. Trader Joe’s with its specialized packaging and somewhat exotic line of grocery products has identified itself with a somewhat narrow sector of the population. Yet if you have ever walked into a Trader Joe’s store, you will see the broadest array of humanity imaginable, from bikers and tattoo-adorned men and women, to little old ladies arriving with their shopping carts and teen moms with baby in tow. What you also experience at Trader Joe’s is that each shopper feels at home in this store, enjoys shopping in this store and is a loyal customer. That, my friends, is accomplished by a management that is really paying attention to the ethnics of the area. It is evidenced in many ways, too many to list, but what it adds up to is Trader Joe’s markets are friendly.
Ethnics is not just limited to grocery stores. There are many companies and organizations that can turn ethnics to advantage, and where the possibility is there, it makes sense to do all you can to explore the subject in depth. Next time you see a McDonald’s, ask yourself, is this a brand or a lifestyle? And if McDonald’s starts a campaign to market Southern fried chicken, are they appealing to taste buds or the ethnics of a key clientele? You get the idea?
Obviously anyone who is serious about marketing their products wants the strongest campaign they can devise. Think of ethnics as a way of making friends with your key population and from there you will be able to bring about a broader influence for real.
David Sanders is CEO of Creative Business Strategies, formerly Marketing Director of a Beverly Hills ad agency and President of an Internet start-up he took to #34 on the web. Mr. Sanders has been a market researcher and marketing guru since 1979. He can be reached at 727.304.5000 or CEO@CreativeStrats.com.
