Image by Choconancy1 via Flickr

You hear kind & loving voices on the boutique stereo speakers. Video from the CEO is playing telling you about the boutique, and all the wonderful things you’ll find there. You listen, and you’re entranced.

The visuals are heavenly and soothing, too…and just look! As you walk around, you see products from other women you recognize, or would like to get to know better, at least.

You’re so engaged, so impelled by the magnitude and quality of products at this boutique, you feel compelled to give kudos to management. So you search around a bit to find someone who works at the boutique.

No one yet.

You search a bit more.

Maybe if you open this door…Nothing.

Then it hits you. You’re there all by yourself in this huge boutique! Why aren’t there any sales people here, you wonder? You’d like to buy something here.

But wait! Did someone call your name? Yes! But it sounds very distant. You walk toward the sound and you find that it’s the owner. She’s calling to you from outside the store. She wants to talk to you. You tell her you were just inside enjoying the boutique, but she insists on talking to you outside of her lovely boutique. In fact, she prefers to talk to you from a competitor’s store!

Can you feel the frustration of this potential customer?

This may seem like the beginning to a short fiction story, but it’s a scenario I see carried out all to often with new social networks and online communities. The community manager of a new or recently updated social network community oftentimes prefers to chat with community members outside of the community entirely. Any contact with customers take place at other communities like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn…all great networks, but competitors for your customer’s time. If your community manager is spending more time on these networks than your own, then your community is suffering.

In a recent Online Community Culture Survey, one of the top 5 most influential factors listed in a community’s culture was participation by the Host. And as women in social networks, this study agrees wholeheartedly with our viewpoints about the kind of networks we feel connected to. Network execs that instruct their community managers to pump out editorial information, then leave the brand community and convene elsewhere, yet expect community users to somehow feel connected with them have their heads buried in the sand.

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That, in itself, is not odd since I’ve been speaking at web conferences since 2002. What has been different this time is the types of conferences I’ve been asked to speak at lately. They’ve all been conferences directed at Women and particularly, Moms.

Why all of the seemingly sudden interest by corporations in marketing to multicultural women? Perhaps the stats can help tell the story:

• At $1 trillion, the purchasing power of women of color represent the 10th largest global economy — as large as Brazil’s GDP! (Source: World Bank Indicators Database, Sept 2004)
• The earning power of women of color is highest.
• Businesses owned by women of color represent the fastest growing segment of the U.S. economy.
• African-American women are the primary household decision makers.
• The ethnic beauty industry is expected to grow to $11.0 Billion by next year (2010)

Clearly, it’s easy to see why marketers are looking for ways to promote their products to a more diverse audience of women. The economic benefits are really exponential if marketers get it right and don’t market to stereotypes.

I’m honored to be considered an expert in marketing to women of color online, as a woman of color myself, who’s been involved in web marketing since 1999.

My overriding goal is to help marketers understand and target multicultural women better. I help marketers to nix stereotypes, nix generalities, engage better, build growth and loyalty.

Kudos and many thanks to the conference organizers who have asked me to speak to their largely female audiences about social media marketing on behalf of all women of color.

• Blissdom
• Touchpoint
• Blogaglicous

I’m looking forward to building a future with marketers who recognize this incredibly important market. If you’re a marketer who wants a bit more information on what multicultural women’s needs are, check out these key takeaways to our Blogalious panel on Social Media and the Woman of Color.

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