Who Is The Online Black Community? Your Guess Is As Good As Mine!
I could have started this piece: We’ve all heard it before! "Blacks are the fastest growing minority demographic online!" or "The online African-American community can not be ignored". But the fact of the matter is that when you’re trying to get at this community and delve a little deeper than the above statements and that there are approximately 13 million blacks online, it’s scarce pickings. There are hard numbers, statistics, facts, figures, etc. regarding practically every other demographic but the online African-American community is one that for the most part, has not been thoroughly researched.
This is a call-to-arms for all of us to get involved and push attention towards this community. There are various industries out there from technology to financial services that could greatly benefit from the substantial purchasing power of the African-American community and the online segment of this community is more affluent and therefore even more attractive. The problem here is that no marketing campaign should begin without research and the fact that there is no ample research to pull from could speak volumes as to why these industries are not targeting the online African-American community.
Qualitatively, there is some stuff out there. For example, we know that blacks are more likely to register on websites and give out contact and demographic information. We know that this group is more interested in career advancement, professional development, education, family & relationships, entertainment, health care, news and travel information than the general population. What we don’t know is the intriguing quantitative data that drives marketing campaigns such as, the % of black users who visit black websites over mainstream sites and how many black sites are visited on a regular basis. The point is that we’re lacking the strong numbers that necessitates organizations take action.
By having the hard data to back up what seems to be obvious to many of us, it would force major corporations to take notice. If not from the standpoint that the online African-American community should be marketed to, then from the stance that they must be marketed to.
This is a call-to-arms for all of us to get involved and push attention towards this community. There are various industries out there from technology to financial services that could greatly benefit from the substantial purchasing power of the African-American community and the online segment of this community is more affluent and therefore even more attractive. The problem here is that no marketing campaign should begin without research and the fact that there is no ample research to pull from could speak volumes as to why these industries are not targeting the online African-American community.
Qualitatively, there is some stuff out there. For example, we know that blacks are more likely to register on websites and give out contact and demographic information. We know that this group is more interested in career advancement, professional development, education, family & relationships, entertainment, health care, news and travel information than the general population. What we don’t know is the intriguing quantitative data that drives marketing campaigns such as, the % of black users who visit black websites over mainstream sites and how many black sites are visited on a regular basis. The point is that we’re lacking the strong numbers that necessitates organizations take action.
By having the hard data to back up what seems to be obvious to many of us, it would force major corporations to take notice. If not from the standpoint that the online African-American community should be marketed to, then from the stance that they must be marketed to.
posted by Daze at 6:50 AM
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