In this final post on marketing to Arab consumers, I’ll show you how to incorporate characteristics from secondary research and my market segmentation process into a marketing plan. If you missed the first two posts you can link to them below:

Marketing To Arab Consumers: Characteristics

Marketing To Arab Consumers: Segmentation

Marketing To Arab Consumers:
Listing Characteristics

My first step in building a marketing plan for Arab consumers would be to list the characteristics revealed through secondary research and market segmentation.

Secondary research revealed that Arab consumers:

• value education,
• are politically active,
• have conservative views on social issues, and
• support a different Middle East perspective from USA policy.

Market segmentation found four major characteristics that can serve as major appeals when marketing to Arab consumers. These are listed in order by importance below:

• Work/jobs/career
• Independence/autonomy
• Relationships/interacting socially/communities
• Home

Marketing To Arab Consumers:
Choosing Characteristics For
Your Marketing Strategy

Which of these characteristics that you choose to use in your marketing plan depends on the type of business or organization that you’re marketing.

For example, if you own a business that sells home improvement products, you’d best focus your marketing messages on improving home and family relationships. If you work for a political organization, you’d want to recognize Arab consumers’ political activity, conservative views on social issues, and non-establishment stances on the Middle east.

I spent much of my career marketing for higher education institutions. So if I were marketing an educational program or college to Arab consumers, I’d first note that secondary research reveals that Arab consumers value education. Then I’d pair that with how important market segmentation indicates work is to Arab consumers. I’d concentrate on these two related characteristics for my marketing.

Marketing To Arab Consumers:
Sample Marketing Plan Tactics

Using the higher education example above, I’d market my program or college as education that prepares young people to get better jobs, build careers, and/or develop profitable businesses. I’d condense this down to a key message, creating a slogan or adapting one already used by my program or college. Then I’d base all my marketing communications on that key message.

For direct marketing, I’d purchase a list of Arab consumers in my college’s service area and send them an over-sized post card with my marketing message.

For more general promotions and advertising, I’d select media that target Arab consumers’ views on social issues and the Middle East, including magazines, online Web sites and blogs.

For activities, I’d sponsor political events and those supporting conservative social issues. For example, a parenting conference may attract Arab consumers who value their family relationships and home, especially if the conference compared and contrasted traditional Arab views to modern USA views on parenting.

To build relationships with Arab community leaders, I’d invite them to speak and participate in relevant program or college events. If I built these relationships well, Arab leaders would influence other Arab consumers of my educational program’s or college’s value.

Marketing To Arab Consumers:
Other Marketing Plan Considerations

Of course a marketing plan consists of more than just tactics, You’ll also want to include the following in your marketing plan:

A goal for marketing: In the higher eduction example, I’d need to know the number of total Arab consumers in my college’s service area, the percent of those who are college-age, and the percent who may be want to go to college as adults. In fact, I could develop my marketing plan around one potential group of students or develop a different campaign for each student type.

Build-in evaluations: You should plan to evaluate each tactic’s success, and your marketing plan’s success at several points in your campaign. You should plan evaluations to be measurable and against benchmarks established before starting the campaign. For example, knowing the number of Arab students before starting to market my higher education program to Arab consumers will provide a benchmark to determine the effectiveness of the marketing plan.

Marketing To Arab Consumers:
Conclusion

Marketing to Arab consumers, or any target market, involves three major steps:

• Gathering substantial secondary research,
• Using demographics to discover more characteristics through market segmentation,
• Incorporating this information into a marketing plan.

You can learn more about Arab Americans and get lots of secondary research on them through my profile of Arab Americans.

You can get more marketing information like this by subscribing to my blog. I’ll send you weekly post summaries and a copy of my matrix Market Segmentation report. Just complete the form below:

Posted 6-29-09:
Marketing To Arab Consumers:
Marketing Plan

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