A Web site selling wholesale breakfast foods that are quick and easy features a picture of a smiling Caucasian woman and her two Caucasian children. To some this may be the perfect representation of what an all-American family stands for, but in a country where this is not the only “all-American” family, is the messaging turning off customers? While some products or services were created for a certain niche of the market, many products have the ability to stretch across several audiences, so how can you rework your existing content to make sure that the right message reaches the right audiences?

Be cognizant of the differences

The first step in accomplishing this goal is to be aware of what the differences in your audiences are. Based on this information, you can easily determine how you can rework your content. For example, Wachovia bank has a marketing campaign about how customers should expect more out of their bank — and of course how it meets these expectations. Their campaigns run in English and in Spanish. The wording is exactly the same for both campaigns (except the Spanish campaigns are written in Spanish). The difference is in the visual representation. The English campaigns show Caucasians, African Americans, or Asians, while the Spanish ads use Hispanic subjects.

It may be as simple as translating the message and using a visual representation that your audience can relate to that allows to you to reach multiple audiences.

Keep it simple, stupid (KISS)

One of the key marketing concepts applies when marketing over a wide range of audiences. The last thing you want to do is alienate a portion of your audience by speaking over their heads. When you are creating content for your brochures, Web sites, or other marketing material keep it as basic and simple as you can. Use common words instead of jargon. Use pictures with ethnic diversity represented. So if you know, or if you suspect, that your audience is diverse, be inclusive of all your audiences when you are creating content. This may require that you consult with people who fall in these audiences because your perspective may be different from those who represent the audience you are targeting.

For example, a financial services company has the same Web site copy for all of its audiences. Its pictures include groups with men and women of various ethnicities. Instead of translating and creating different versions for different audiences, they have covered all of their audiences in one shot.

Create different versions

You may have seen in firsthand. You go to a Web site and you see a little link at the top that says something in a different language. When you click on it out of curiosity, you see that the whole Web site switches over to a foreign language. This is a company responding to the fact that they have many different audiences. A German or Latino family may be just as interested as an English speaking person to buy your product, so do you really want to alienate them and lose their business because they can’t read your Web site? The answer here is no and if it all it takes is some minor tweaking and translating copy, then spend the money or take the time to do it.

It may not be a cultural marketing snafu either. It may be a gender snafu. While there are products that are specifically used by certain genders, there are also products that are gender neutral. But if all of your campaigns and marketing materials feature women, are you alienating your male audiences? Maybe. So when thinking of your audiences, be sure to think of all of the variations including gender, age, ethnicity, income brackets, etc.

So do you have to run out and create a completely different brand, mission, Web site, or brochure for each audience you market or sell to? Not necessarily, but you do need to be aware of the differences between your audiences before making this decision. It may be as simple as changing out a few pictures on your Web site. It may be as simple as rewording your copy to make it easy to understand by native speakers and non-native speakers of English. Knowing your audience is the first step to determining how you can tweak the content you already have to get their attention.

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