Now you know a little about target demographics, but you still don't know enough to market to these cultures. The problem is, there is so much to know, so many intricacies of each culture. And there are cultures within cultures. Never forget that.

What I suggest is that you do what it takes to become familiar with cultures. It is difficult to go out and immerse yourself in a culture that is so different from yours, so I won't demand that you experience everything first hand. Although that is most educational experience.

Consider taking a college or community education class on diversity. I took one of these classes during my own college education and I couldn't believe how much it changed my perspective on minority culture. The most important thing you can learn in a diversity class is how to see things from perspective of another culture--how to shift your paradigm. This is exaclty what you need to do when marketing to a different culture.

There are also plenty of publications out there dealing with business and marketing trends in Hispanic, Asian and African- American culture. Reading ads in ethnic publications tells you what your competitors are doing, as well as what appeals to different groups. Don't hesitate to watch BET or Univision to get more ideas on what appeals to African Americans and Latin Americans.

What you are looking to do is understand basic characteristics of three groups. Learn to appreciate subtleties of each group so you can know how they think, and also avoid marketing errors that could cost you potential customers. Learn to Tailor ad messages to specific needs, wants and values of a group, and you will be able to break into that trillion dollar market.

So what is idea? Well, what you need to do is have a short form on your web site, on each page of your web site, inviting people to send a free SMS to their friend about your site. Of course, so that they do not go about sending their own messages that have nothing to do with your site, you would pre-write your advert and make it unavailable for change by site visitor. So all you ask your visitors for is their mobile phone number and their friends’ mobile phone numbers. That is all. When they enter this in your form on your web pages and click send, a script sends your pre-written ad to their friend. Of course, you have to write it in a ‘friendly’ manner so that it does look like a ‘personal recommendation’ to recipient. You can show sender what outgoing message will be but don’t allow them to change it or else they will just type in their own personal story about dog at home – at it will still cost you $0.05. It is that simple.

Many people love to send and receive SMS messages so this is a very fresh and engaging way for you to advertise. And you know you are hitting right target because most people will not recommend something to their friend unless they like it and know their friend will like it. So you pay for good targeting. You also get good response because people trust their friends more than they trust you. So do remember to ask sender for their mobile phone number because that is how receiver will know that it came from them. You may also ask them for their first name and their friend’s first name and insert them in pre-written recommendation you send out.

Now all you need is to implement this. What you need is a company that has set up a ‘SMS gateway’ that has worldwide roaming. Open an account with them. You then send your SMS messages to that company and they will transmit it for you. It is all done easily via scripts. Some of best companies out there for this are Simple Wire and Deltica (see http://www.imagesofone.com/articles/reviews.asp for updated links to gateway companies and service providers). These companies will give you a starter kit that includes sample code that you can modify to implement what we talked about. You can implement this easily if you have some experience with CGI scripts or perhaps ASP or PHP. If you don’t, you can get someone to do it for you at www.elance.com for a small fee.

What have you just done? You have enabled your consumers to talk to each other about you in most personal and rapid way. This is where future of marketing lies. And you can get in on it right now. I wish you all best and hope to get an SMS from your site one day.