How do your marketing programs for multicultural audiences in the U.S. stack up?
Do you advertise to Latinos just about anywhere? Check. Chinese in some cities? Got it. Brazilians near Boston? Oh yes. Arabs in Michigan? Huh? It turns out that the second-largest community of Arabs outside the Middle East lives in Michigan (Paris has the largest). Do you market to religious groups like Muslims? Los Angeles, New York, and Detroit have the biggest populations of Muslims in the country.
Why should you care? If you’ve been following the news over the last few months, you might have noticed a growing media awareness of the U.S. Muslim population, their beliefs, and their needs.
For example, Muslim cashiers at Target stores in Minneapolis made the front page of USA Today when they said that they would prefer not to ring up sales of pork on their cash registers. In the same city, Muslim cab drivers had refused to transport customers they knew to be carrying alcohol (in containers and internally). The twin cities of Minneapolis-St. Paul rank 20th among U.S. cities by total Muslim population, perhaps first in terms of tolerance. North Minneapolis’s Fifth Congressional District elected Keith Ellison the country’s first Congressman who is a Muslim (Sunni, if you’re keeping score). Over in Michigan, one college even decided to install footbaths to accommodate the pre-prayer ablutions of Muslim students.
Where does this demographic fit into your segmented marketing plan, if at all? To be frank, Islam makes many people nervous. With the ongoing war in Iraq, saber-rattling toward Iran, Norman Podhoretz’s warning against Islamofascism, and Rudy Giuliani running for president of 9/11, many Americans don’t quite know how to feel about their fellow citizens who identify themselves as Muslims. Granted, most Americans realize that they live in a multicultural, multiracial, and multilingual society. However, most of those who happen to be outside the “mainstream” have been the “wrong” color or ethnicity but are still subscribe to more familiar Judeo-Christian beliefs.
What’s the opportunity? Data is sketchy because U.S. Census Bureau has yet to drill down into this segment. Estimates of how many Muslims there are in the U.S. vary widely; the most common range from five to seven million. About two-thirds are immigrants and their descendants, with as many as 42 percent being African-American. That said, if your marketing plans call for appealing to ethnic, multilingual, or multicultural audiences, you can market to their secular needs.
What does that mean in practical terms? Apply the same methodology you use for deciding whether you market to any given segment. For example, does your product or service have any special appeal to Arabs living in the U.S. or Muslims? If so, can you focus on particular cities or regions with high concentrations of your target markets? Can you isolate specific demographic or behavioral traits that might make your appeal more lasting? Can you sensitize your marketing programs to Ramadan (a month of fasting), Halal (Muslim dietary laws), and Islam’s different take on financial issues? Have you adapted your website to the cultural, linguistic, or religious issues that might make a difference?
In other words, have you created a compelling business case for entering this market, defined your audience, adapted your marketing materials, and let them know that you have something to offer? It could be good business, but you won’t know until you do your homework.
Donald A. DePalma is the founder and chief research officer of the research and consulting firm Common Sense Advisory, and author of the premier book on business globalization “Business Without Borders: A Strategic Guide to Global Marketing.”
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