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You’d have to have been asleep for the past 20 years not to have noticed that the face of Canada is changing. In fact, Statistics Canada reports that more than 200 ethnicities are now represented in this country. Immigration accounts for more than 50% of our population growth, and that figure is predicted to double by 2025. What this means for entrepreneurs: if you aren’t currently pitching your product or service to ethnic markets, you should be. The ethnic market can represent new avenues of growth, untapped market segments and increased profitability.
But there’s more to ethnic marketing than just submitting an existing campaign to the multicultural media. Today, new Canadians are far more sophisticated consumers, better educated and have more spending power than immigrants of years past. The savvy marketer must not only understand the ethnicity of his customers, but also embrace their cultural customs and sensitivities.
Here are the top five tips you need to consider when coming up with your firm’s ethnic marketing plan:

1. Go beyond traditional research
Traditional market research asks consumers what they think about product attributes, but does not consider the thought process underlying their choices. Effective marketing understands that the reasons people buy are affected by more intangible factors such as beliefs, attitudes and customs, and that these factors are influenced by a consumer’s heritage and cultural identity.
For example: “As a society, many Asian consumers have a strong preference for negotiating, so they may choose a mortgage that allows them to haggle over one which has a no-haggle best possible rate,” says Dilip Soman, professor of marketing at the University of Toronto’s Joseph L. Rotman School of Management. “The value systems of ethnic groups tend to be different, and this drives differences in shopping behaviour.”
2. Don’t stop at translation
Companies often make the mistake of simply translating their existing campaign into different languages instead of targeting campaigns to specific ethnic groups.
Cleve Lu, president of Era Integrated Marketing Communications, a Toronto-based multicultural marketing and advertising service, points out that a successful ethnic marketing strategy is more than a simple translation job; it’s a process of “transcreation,” where the sales copy is adapted with thought to the nuances of the target language so that equivalent idioms and concepts are found. The copy should resonate with the intended audience and feel honest, authentic and as if it’s part of the community itself.
3. Don’t forget customer service
There cannot be a disconnect between what a marketing department does and the systems in place to support it. Product sheets or other marketing materials should be available in the target audience’s native language, and if there is a call to action in the print, radio or television advertisement the responding frontline staff should be multilingual.
4. Set up metrics
How do you know whether or not your campaign is working if you don’t speak the language you’re advertising in? As with any other marketing campaign coded advertisements, offers, coupons or discounts offer an easy metric for tracing effectiveness. Set up specific Web pages where traffic can be measured or designate a specific telephone line for any call to action. Always have frontline staff ask new inquirers how they heard about the company.
5. Build relationships
One of the common errors that companies make is only advertising in the ethnic media during festive occasions, for instance Chinese New Year. Lu notes that ethnic groups tend to be very brand loyal, and that an ongoing day-to-day campaign of building trust is required. While it is good to acknowledge important holidays, jokes Lu, “It isn’t just at the festival times that we buy. We consume products every day!”
A. Charlotte Riley
Canadian Business Online, November 22, 2005
http://www.canadianbusiness.com/entrepreneur/sales_marketing/article.jsp?content=20051122_165504_16872