Ethinc marketing

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Marketers are aiming at ethinc groups all the time. Be careful how you do it for your business.

I got a direct mail piece at home the other day from a company in Gretna, Louisiana. The first page was written in Vietnamese. Unfortunately I don’t speak or read Vietnamese, even though I know enough about it to recognize it. I have heard it spoken and it sounds like a beautiful and interesting language to learn. After looking at the direct mail piece, I figured out it was a company that sells karaoke equipment. How did I get the piece?

Obviously the Phong Le Karaoke Company practices ethnic marketing. They bought a list of Vietnamese first and/or last names. Tran or sometimes Tron is not an uncommon Vietnamese name. My ethnic background is Norwegian and German. Tron is also not an uncommon Norwegian name. My dad, who is my Norwegian parent, thinks the reason Tran or Tron is often seen in Vietnam is because the Vikings traveled all over the place. His assumption is that a Viking named Tron ended up trading or plundering or both in Southeast Asia and his name carried on his legacy. I think it is because there are only so many sounds the human voice makes and Tron or Tran or Trun is a pretty simple one. So why shouldn’t it be found in many languages.

Depending on what part of the country you come from, you might be surprised to find out I am not Vietnamese. Many people who heard my name before meeting me were surprised that I was not. People who live in areas of heavier Nordic populations assume I am a Swede or a Norwegian. I often get catalogues of Swedish or Norwegian craft, clothing and culinary delights around Christmas time, when other companies are buying their Scandinavian first and or last name lists. So I am lead to believe that Norwegian-Americans buy sweaters and crafts and Vietnamese–Americans buy karaoke machines. At least this is what these companies are hoping. Lots of companies do this kind of ethnic marketing. My neighbor, who is Black, got a brochure from a large bank that is promoting its services in our town with a picture of a Black family on it. I got the same brochure with a picture of a white family on it. We had a little chuckle about it.

Is ethnic marketing effective and should you practice it in your self storage business? Well the answer is, “Do it well”. When I ran a bottled water company and we were trying to add new customers, our sales people loved to sign up a new customer who was any kind of newly arrived immigrant. One of our route drivers had been in the Army in Korea and could speak enough Korean to get a laugh out of a native Korean. He had a bottled water cooler in about every Korean household in town. One of our other salesmen set up a Cambodian couple and ended up signing up 8 other accounts for cousins and in-laws. Every sales person had a story of striking a vein like this. It is true that immigrants create their own networks and communities with their own group until they get settled in and comfortable. This can take one, two or more generations. Even after many generations these networks still exist in some looser fashion.

Here are a few ways to take advantage of ethnic marketing at your store. Find out which ethnic groups live nearby. Learn about them and the things they are comfortable with and uncomfortable with. If the dominant ethnic group in your neighborhood was Iraqi and Islamic, you wouldn’t roast a pig for customer appreciation day. Make whatever accommodations you need to make everyone feel at home. Don’t try doing fake tributes to people’s cultures. Fake tributes will blow up in your face. If you have people on staff who speak languages other than English, advertise this and let people know the hours that these staff people are available. Put up a sign in the office, so if someone comes into the office that really wants to speak Urdu, they can see that your Urdu speaking staff person is in from noon to 5 today.

Then take advantage of your language skills and put direct mail to work for you. Buy a mailing list of ethnic names matching your staff people’s language skills for you area and send out mailers. This will bring excellent results.

Set up a booth at ethnic food fares in your area. Give some discount to the local cultural or religious group that will help you spread the word that you are a friendly and reliable place for this particular ethnic group to store their belongings.

Learn to be patient with language and cultural differences. I met a gentleman a few weeks ago who has been living in the US for 23 years. He has two PHD degrees and is a University professor. However, his native accent is still rather thick. If you were not careful, you might assume he was uneducated, unintelligent or lacking funds if he showed up at your store one day in his yard-work clothes all sweaty and dusty from getting his three car garage cleaned out and organized. You might accidentally or on purpose treat him with disrespect. Wrong move! Assume anyone with a thick accent is a worthy potential customer with lots of friends and relatives.

Pay attention to the ethnic groups in your market and make the most of their presence. You might be surprised who you find. As one might expect, Spanish is the largest new language group of new immigrants in Missouri where I live. But can you guess the second largest new language group? Email me your guess to tron@phone-smart.net and I will send you a prize if you are correct.

Good luck with your ethnic marketing. I hope you store lots of karaoke machines, sweaters and crafts for you business customers.

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Disclamer: This entry is intended to promote our partner StorageMart and some or all participants received compensation.