December 12, 2016 / 10:25 IST
What is the idea?The startup idea is to establish a multicultural marketing agency focused on social media. This company will create social media campaigns targeting various cultures for brands across the globe. The world is shrinking, and most of the countries are increasingly inching towards the multicultural population. This has led to a significant demand for marketing campaigns targeting different cultures that exist in the world.
Market DefinitionJoinville reports that there are more than 70 million 1st and 2nd generation migrants in Europe, over 50.7 million Hispanics contributing 36.7% multicultural population in the US, and over 10 million foreigners living in Germany.
Asia has an abundance of ethnic groups. All these groups have different cultures. Asia is also home to a lot of religions leading to a different set of beliefs and practices. According to Statista.com, in 2018, it is estimated that there will be around 2.67 billion social media users around the globe, up from 1.91 billion in 2014. It also further states that in 2016, 68.3 percent of Internet users were social media users and these figures are expected to grow.
Brandwatch has given some interesting insights on social media spending:
Social networks earned an estimated $8.3 billion from advertising in 2015;
38% of organisations plan to spend more than 20% of their total advertising budgets on social media channels in 2015, up from 13% in 2014;
Only 20 Fortune 500 companies engage with their customers on facebook, while 83% have a presence on twitter;
People aged 55-64 are more than twice as likely to engage with branded content than those 28 or younger;
96% of the people that discuss brands online do not follow those brands' owned profiles; and
78 percent of people who complain to a brand via twitter expect a response within an hour.
Competitor AnalysisThere is an abundance of social media marketing startups across the globe, but they are concentrating on social media strategy as a whole. There are very few agencies that specialise in cross-cultural marketing.
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Pain Point & Target AudienceThe targeted customer market for this startup is the "businesses looking to sell products across cultures". Because of language barriers and cultural nuances, a lot of ad campaigns run a high risk of not connecting with the audience or missing out on connecting with the audience across cultures. This extract from an article from Mashable sums it up nicely.
"Recently, more companies than ever have begun using social media to reach multicultural consumers. If you're wondering, what's behind the trend, it stems (in part) from a recognition of the size and economic clout of multicultural groups – now about 34% of the U.S. population, with an estimated spending power of $ 2 trillion."
Value PropositionFor most of the organisations, that plan to go global or want to build a universal appeal for their product or services; multilingual capabilities are tough and expensive to build or maintain. This startup will provide marketing strategies for particular cultures across the globe and create engaging content for various social media platforms in different languages. One of the biggest strength for this startup will be its insights from diverse cultures and group globally.
For example, according to a 2015 report by the Pew Research Center, 28 percent of African-Americans who use the Internet use twitter, compared to 20 percent of online white, non-Hispanic Americans.
Business ModelThis startup can tailor its business model around any or both of these lines.
Customised services for every marketing campaign designed targeting specific cultural group; and
The company will also start subscription based model providing content on a daily, weekly, bi-monthly or monthly basis targeted towards different cultural groups.
Way to marketThe company would need to create or collect data about cultures existing across countries which would benefit from multicultural marketing. This data can then be used for pitching to various businesses that can benefit from it. Ground zero would be to identify a country where it can launch its operations, for example, it may be India (where a lot of cultures exist) or the USA (where a lot of cultures have come into existence because of rising immigration). The company should also start broadcasting content on the web for creating awareness around the benefits of multicultural marketing.
MilestonesOnce the startup has a few clients and a handful of successful campaigns in a country, it can target other countries and grow the team. The company could create segmentation at this stage about the business, first geographically and then across different industries.
Investment Needed For PrototypeThe startup would need at least USD 250K which could be raised from angel investors or incubators in your country. There should be no office rentals or salary payout; the entire budget should be apportioned to customer acquisition and acquiring talent that can help in creating multilingual content.
Team CapabilityThis startup would benefit from having team members from digital or advertising agencies that are handling global marketing portfolios for multinationals. In addition to this, it will be good to build multilingual capability from day one in English, Mandarin, French, Arabic and German, you can do this by having a multicultural founding team.
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Investors / Expert TakeAccording to Karun Varma, a real estate and professional services veteran who has helped many multinationals find real estate space in India, "Multicultural marketing could be one of the hottest industries in the times to come. Businesses are going global and the campaigns have to echo that sentiment, multicultural marketing can help companies reach new boroughs of demand." Therefore, the investors could be keen on investing or providing growth capital if a company can show a successful business in this field. In case you need any assistance in launching and building up on this idea, please do write to us at yostartups.com, and we will be more than happy to help you.
