Keys to reaching the new American marketplace.

• Author: Sonderup, Laura
• Position: Column

Leave your office. Walk around. Do you see the changing face of American consumers?

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America is rapidly moving from "e pluribus unum" (out of many ... one) to an authentically hybrid nation. Today's marketers must acknowledge and accept the fact that ethnicity and diversity are now mandatory considerations.

Based upon erroneous assumptions about minority consumer income, education and purchase intent, many advertisers confine minority marketing to a small percentage of their overall marketing budgets. This practice limits brand growth and retention, as well as new customer acquisition.

The numbers are impressive. In fact, both the African-American and the Hispanic consumer markets are larger than the entire economies (GDP measured in U.S. dollars) of all but nine countries in the world, according to the Selig Center for Economic Growth at the University of Georgia.

In Colorado, minority consumers make up almost 30 percent of the state's population, with 17 percent speaking a language other than English (according to the 2005 American Community Survey, U.S. Census.)

So how do you effectively court minority markets when the consumers speak different languages, have different customs and values or diverge from the general market? The following keys are a great place to start:

Avoid monolithic thinking: Multicultural consumers cannot be consolidated into one homogeneous consumer segment. Many factors--historical, contextual, cultural, demographic and financial--place these consumers in a different category.

These segments view the world--and marketing messages--through their own cultural filters. These filters are formed by language, religion, country of origin, values, heritage and other shared experiences that typically go beyond what can be externally observed.

Talk to your customers: Introduce yourself to the community and become an active participant, not just a visitor observing from the sidelines. Set and maintain the same standards for all customers. Build relationships with communities of color and view the relationships through the customer's eyes.

Maintain workforce diversity: Hire a diverse staff of workers. Encourage employees to bring their different cultural experiences to work with them. Train employees so they are able to communicate effectively and understand how multicultural consumers may perceive their behaviors.

Transform your company culture: Word-of-mouth is a particularly strong form of marketing...