What Nonprofits Must Know About Hispanics: Insights from Southwest Airlines

What role does culture play in your marketing strategy? You could ask ten different nonprofits and get ten different answers to this question. And they might all be good answers! Engaging donors or volunteers through the lens of culture takes some serious nuance, and it doesn’t look the same for every organization.

Southwest Airlines is not a nonprofit, but their marketing team takes culture seriously while seeking to reach customers. Isaac Muñoz, Senior Business Consultant at Southwest, shared some practical advice with Kerux Group on how to reach multicultural audiences.

Know where you fit into culture

An important early piece of the equation is evaluating your own organization.

“Start with an assessment of your business,” he said. Know what makes your nonprofit distinct: its history, its place in culture. Your starting position should determine your future marketing strategies. Once you have a firm grasp on how your organization is perceived and what your resources are, you can find the best way to engage with certain audiences.

“So it’s allocating at the right level with the right message,” Isaac said.

Know your audience’s culture

Once you’ve done that, you should also consider the complexity of your audience’s cultural identity.

“Culture is more fluid than we realized,” Isaac said. He sees customers expanding the definitions of various ethnicities, ages and genders. Our audiences often don’t fit neatly into conventional categories – so leveraging culture to connect with your audience can require hard work. Isaac emphasized that a process of trial and error is usually necessary to learn how to do that well.

“It’s a massive experiment to try to enhance the experience,” he said. He added that marketers need to think outside the box, and outside expertise can be a big help.

“That’s where creativity with your partners comes in,” he said.

Stepping into action

Measuring where your nonprofit is at and diving into cultural nuance are no small tasks. At Kerux, we’ve assembled a team of professionals who have been succeeding in these tasks for years or decades. We know that a deep understanding of culture is needed in order to win the support of Hispanics. If you’ve seen the value of multicultural marketing and want to try it out, we would love to help! It’s a serious endeavor, and it’s more than worth the effort.