How to Localize Your Marketing Message to Reach Your Target Consumer

Like real estate, retail has always been about location, location, location. But as the demographics of the American population continue to shift, retailers have placed more emphasis on targeting specific ethnic groups based on their location and spending patterns. As such, they must rely on advanced micro-geographic technology to get better insight into the prominent ethnicities of specific neighborhoods (both current and future projections) that they're targeting for stores nationwide. Having a better understanding of in-store consumers helps drive online purchases as well.

This realization becomes more apparent as emerging ethnicities have increased buying power in the U.S. The latest findings from the American Marketscape DataStream Report revealed that the average Asian and Hispanic household are projected to spend far more in their remaining lifetimes than non-Hispanic white households by over $800,000 and over $400,000, respectively. Retailers recognize that marketing in-culture is important, but some are lacking the visibility and detailed localization tools in order to target these individuals.

By leveraging the latest technology and data, retailers have the ability to extract prospect counts and optimize data aggregation on geographies and trade areas as small as a block group and as large as ZIP codes and bigger. They can then create trade area maps that show comprehensive situations in various ring sizes, by drive times or even custom-designed areas. In doing so, they're able to tailor their inventory and bring on the right staff that can cater to the ethnic population in their immediate area.

Using new technology to identify locations for future stores will provide retailers with the ability to successfully connect with their target consumer and build stronger relationships with consumers as improved targeting and deeper cultural understanding is employed. This same technology can help identify underperforming locations and provide assistance to local and regional managers on staffing, training and marketing.

With this new technology, retailers can now identify locations for future sites which will help to increase sales of specific products vs. others that aren't as popular with a particular ethnic group. Retailers can now drill down to the neighborhood level to see which ethnicity is most widespread in that particular area, and can then adjust their strategies to serve those consumers. The map below is an example of where the Hispanic population is likely to be most prominent in 2018, allowing for retailers to plan store implementation around this projection: