Warning: If you sell 20” rims, don’t think that your online shoppers are all black, white guys and Spanish chicks love’m too!
Why is it important to know that according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, as of April 2006, Black online internet users trail behind at 61%. While Whites (non-Hispanic) reside at 73% and English-Hispanic are at 75%?
If you are a member of the Black, Hispanic or White community, it is important for you to know just what percentage of your ethnic population is online, because it helps you to gauge your general standards of living. While it is true that a family that enjoys a fairly good standard of living may choose not to go online, it is very unlikely and usually families that are not online are experiencing some sort of standard of living issue.
The numbers are encouraging all the way around, however, as over 50% of all 3 demographic groups are online according to the survey.
If you are an online advertiser, it is of the utmost importance that you become completely aware of the ethnic internet usage. Even if your product or service is “ethnic neutral”, you may be selling yourself short if your campaign mix is not optimized accordingly. The fact is that certain ethnic groups respond positively to different types of copy and imagery. Why is this so important? Why should I care so much about these seemingly petty details? Because according to the survey just 6% responded that they bought a product online. The other 94% were doing anything from checking out the weather to listening to Anderson Cooper reporting live from Pluto. Man that guy is everywhere.
The fact is that as soon as you go online you have enlarged your neighborhood competitive landscape by millions. There may actually be a million other people trying to sell the same product as you in one way or the other. Every single competitive conversion advantage you can get your hands on, the better off you are. It is up to you however to turn those tidbits of knowledge into action. Paid search and other forms of online marketing may have made it easier for you to get eyeballs to your products, but they have not made it easier for you to turn those eyeballs into cash wielding customers.
“A prospect is a prospect until the credit card transaction is validated”
In other words, you are selling that person on your product or service up until the very last minute they leave your site and even after word, during your post transaction retention program. What! You don’t have a PTRP! I’ll save that for another time.
There are 3.534 separate steps you can take to make sure each pay-per-click / paid search campaign meets ethnic usage requirements:
• Make sure you write 3 keyword ads. One for each leading online ethnic group.
• Make sure that each keyword ad leads to a page that is written specifically to appeal to each leading ethnic group.
• And for goodness sake use imagery that will appeal to each. Don’t for the sake of all mankind use an image of a white family buying a car, if you wrote copy appealing to Hispanics.
What’s the other .534 percent? There is none. It just sounded different!
Making sure that your campaigns appeal to the widest possible audience is hard work. Some think too much work. Those are the losers who will be forking up their customers’ dead presidents to you. Forget about the hard work, do it and make it happen. If you build it the validations will come.
