This trillion dollar market segment that has been overlooked for so long is composed of America's minorities.

Multicultural marketing is fast becoming, not trend, but norm in America. You see more ads featuring African-American families, commercials in Spanish with English subtitles or commercials that celebrate a minority culture.

Many advertisers who wish to tap into this market think that replacing a Caucasian actor or model with a minority is good enough. Wrong! Anyone can spot such a disingenuous act a mile away.

So if equal representation doesn't do trick, then what does?

In many ways, multicultural marketing is no different than any other kind of marketing. The first thing you must do is understand who your target market is.

Here is a breakdown of your largest target demographics:

*The Hispanic Market--This market has seen explosive growth in its population size. Hispanic market spending power has reached $350 billion. The U.S. Hispanic population now numbers more than 30 million, comprising 11% if total U.S. population. By 2050, Hispanics will make up over 25% of total U.S. population. Today's Hispanics are living a different reality than those of previous generations. They have higher levels of education, are more affluent and consume a variety of different media.

*The Asian Market--This fast-growing market of 10.2 million commands an annual purchasing power of $101 billion. This market is younger than general market at an average age of 30. Asians have highest average household incomes of any group in U.S. and also have highest levels of education as compared to all other consumers. The average household size is larger than that of other groups, because of Asian preference for multi-generational family households, further magnified by immigrant experience.

Easy. Have consumer market to consumer. When your friend tells you ‘hey, you should buy this product, its great!’ you are highly likely to believe him and likely to consider buying it. When an advertiser tells you same, you may not even hear message – you have learnt to block out ads unconsciously. You probably equate them to noise.

While click-through ratios of ads are about 1% or so, friend-to-friend recommendations can have a click through as high as 64%, according to a survey I once saw some time back. And what about sales conversion ratios? Well, direct marketers have known for years that an endorsed ad can convert as much as 30% or more.

There are many ways to get people to tell their friends about your products and services. Many web sites now have recommend-to-a-friend links. These use email to get a person to send recommendation to a friend. That is good, but not enough. Have one of those; but also have something else. We now need a method that is novel so that person can feel a thrill when they send a recommendation to a friend. We also need a method that is more instantaneous than email, and one more personal than email. What is that method?