Business Diversity Quarterly Report
Marketing to growing ethnic groups requires planning, sensitivity

by Tim Loughran
for Virginia Business
February 2007

Are you selling as much as you could be to Virginia's newest consumers?
This news is worth repeating: Since 2000, this state's Latino population has soared by more than 37 percent and the number of our Asian residents has jumped almost 30 percent. We now have 7 percent more African-American Virginians than we did five years ago and about 5 percent more whites.

Companies such as Coca-Cola, Nike, Walt Disney, Johnson & Johnson, Target, Sony, Home Depot, Verizon and General Motors all know that Americans whose ancestors were born in Europe are about 40 years away from being this nation's largest minority. And these companies are spending more each year to win larger shares of this nation's quickly fragmenting marketplace.
And while your firm may not have the experience or the budget of a Fortune 100 company, there are several simple rules smaller companies can follow to thrive in Virginia's increasingly diverse marketplace.

• The U.S. is no "melting pot." We're more like a buffet table; we love the freedoms we have to eat, live, work, shop and worship where and when we like, and change our minds as often as we can. And depending on the situation, we prefer to eat, live, work, shop and worship with people who look like us, speak like we do and think the way we think.

That's especially true today. Increasingly inexpensive telecom services permit every person to live in more than one nation at one time and in as large or as small a community as we want. So, if you're waiting for immigrants "to learn proper English" or "act like Americans," your company is already dying.

• Within each ethnic consumer group there are families born in the U.S. and families that came as immigrants from dozens of countries. Many are more educated than others, many can speak two or three languages and most hold tight the buying habits they learned back home.

• Be prepared to work harder and smarter than you do now. Too many U.S. companies make the same fatal mistake before they spend their first "multicultural" dollar: They assume that everyone who isn't a U.S.-educated, native-speaker of English is a gullible idiot who will pay eagerly for shoddy products and terrible customer service.

Most immigrants to the U.S. come with at least a little chip on their shoulders. They've sacrificed their careers, spent all their savings and moved away from people they love dearly because they were more than fed up with companies and governments that didn't respect them. They demand to be treated fairly.

• Take at least 18 months to complete the first stage of your research to identify which minority or ethnic market your company can best serve on your current budget. Survey your staff to see if they have the energy, enthusiasm and skills necessary to reach a new group of customers.
The combination of their creativity and their abilities will determine your entry point: educated, bilingual, professional and affluent, or semi-literate, semi-skilled and hourly income.

• Foreign language fluency is not essential for your company to sell effectively to members of a specific immigrant community, because your best sales prospects usually speak English perfectly, or well enough to run their own businesses.

However, if you advertise or recruit in a language other than English, you must guarantee you serve customers and employees in that second language. Failure to fulfill this basic promise usually prompts this often-fatal question from customers and potential employees: "What else are they lying about?"

• Minority and immigrant consumers - who are often supporting extended families, often in two countries at the same time - can't afford to litigate with strangers. They prefer to save money and buy from friends they can trust like family.

So, be prepared to regularly volunteer your time and company resources to local churches, schools, athletic leagues, social-service agencies or private nonprofits. Show your face on nights and weekends and hire employees from within the community you are trying to serve. It will tell your customers that, while you are trying to build a business, you care as much about their families as you do for your own.

Tim Loughran, a former correspondent and bureau chief in Mexico, Argentina and Central America for Dow Jones & Co., Time-Life Inc. and Bloomberg News, is the editor and general manager of CENTRO de Richmond, a publication of Media General Inc. and the Richmond Times-Dispatch.