IMV22 : Hispanic Online Marketing

The following is a transcript for IMV22 : Hispanic Online Marketing. The original podcast is located here.

Announcer:

Welcome to the Internet Marketing Voodoo podcast brought to you by MindComet. And now, here's your host, Ted Murphy.

Ted Murphy:

Welcome to Internet Marketing Voodoo, Episode 22. I’m your host Ted Murphy. And with us today is Lee Vann, founder of Captura Group. Welcome to the show today Lee.

Lee Vann:

Hey, how you doing?

Ted Murphy:

Great. Lee, start off by telling us a little bit about Captura Group and what it is you guys do.

Lee Vann:

Great. Well, Captura Group specializes in the Hispanic online market. And what we do is we provide in-language and in-culture online solutions that help our clients connect with the growing Hispanic online market.

Ted Murphy:

So the Hispanic market is definitely becoming more prevalent in today’s American society. How do you see that influencing the Internet marketing strategy of companies? And what can they do to take advantage of more and more Hispanics being online?

Lee Vann:

Yeah. That’s what we’re seeing in the market. When the general online market is kind of re-saturation in terms of growth, we’re seeing a lot of marketers wanting to turn towards niche markets in order to increase market share and drive revenue. And the Hispanic online market is one of these kind of niche markets that’s really hot right now.

In the past 12 months, the Hispanic online market grew about 12%. So about 1.7 million new Hispanics accessed the Internet for the first time. And this growth coupled with saturation in the – what we call the general online market really signals a great opportunity. And a good example of that is the recent partnership between Yahoo and Telemundo, who is the second largest media company that addresses the Hispanic market.

Ted Murphy:

Lee, we’re seeing a lot of growth in broadband access nationwide. Is that same broadband connectivity being transferred to the Hispanic users?

Lee Vann:

It actually is. Hispanics have the same broadband penetration as the general market. And if you think about it, Hispanics are coming online for the first time in these days. And so, Hispanics are leapfrogging dialup and going straight into broadband, which is pretty much what’s being marketed out there.

Ted Murphy:

Lucky them.

Lee Vann:

Exactly.

Ted Murphy:

They never had to have the pain that we went through.

Lee Vann:

Yeah. Exactly.

Ted Murphy:

So where do you see the meshing of both Spanish and English languages online? What are Hispanic surfers looking for? Are they looking for Spanish websites? Are they looking for Spanish search engines? Or is there a bit of crossover there?

Lee Vann:

There’s definitely a crossover. I mean, Hispanics in this country live in very much a bilingual world. And when we look at the data, it’s very interesting and probably one of the most controversial topics in the Hispanic online market.

Today about 52% of online Hispanics actually prefer English. 27% are bilingual. And only 21% prefer Spanish. And that doesn’t really mirror the language preferences of the aggregate offline Hispanic market where Spanish is very, very prevalent.

And if you think about it, the people who came online first in the United States are the early adopters, the people who are more affluent and more educated. And it’s the same thing in the Hispanic market.

But that dynamic is changing. Of those 1.7 million new Hispanics that came online that I mentioned, over one million were Spanish dominant. So the majority of the growth in the Hispanic market is coming from that Spanish dominant segment.

So when we talk to our clients, if they’re looking to reach the overall U.S. Hispanic online market, we feel that a best practice is to use both English and Spanish as long as it’s culturally relevant.

Ted Murphy:

And you actually talk a lot about creating a culturally relevant experience for Hispanic customers. Can you give our listeners an idea of how something like that may be done?

Lee Vann:

Yeah. The notion goes back to Hispanic marketing. And its language will communicate. But cultural is really gonna connect. And what we always recommend is marketers take a look at their product or service. Do some research and determine how to best position it to resonate with the Hispanic community.

And cultural relevance is really gonna depend on the product, the service that a company is offering. Like we find that Hispanics are turning to the Internet for a couple key reasons. And the main kind of overarching one is empowerment.

So Hispanics view the Internet as a medium to live the American dream. They’re using it to educate themselves, to communicate with family and friends, to a large extent for entertainment. And we feel that companies that can deliver experiences that hit those key foundations are gonna be successful.

But overall when thinking about the Hispanic market, the family is very, very important. And as I mentioned, there’s a lot of growth in the Hispanic online market. So culturally, Hispanics are novice Internet users. So we always recommend that people think about building trust, making design and information architecture very intuitive and very simple.

Ted Murphy:

We’re kind of talking about the Hispanic market. But, to me the Hispanic market should be broken into a bunch of different segments. Obviously different countries have different cultures. Can you talk a little bit about customer segmentation and any tips that you may have there when looking at the overall Hispanic market? How do you break those pieces apart?

Lee Vann:

Yeah. That’s really a good question. The Hispanic market isn’t a monolith. It’s not just, let’s build our site in Spanish. And that’s the first question that people usually ask us when they’re looking at the Hispanic market. “Should I build my site in Spanish?” And the answer is, “It really depends.”

And the first thing that I always tell people is, “You can segment the Hispanic market the way that you’re segmenting your overall market.” So if it’s buyers or browsers or affluent, you can use those same segmentation criteria for the Hispanic market. But then what you’re gonna wanna do is probably start with language preference.

If you wanna reach the aggregate Hispanic online market, the best bet is to go with both English and Spanish. But I would say language preference is really important. From there you can go into geography or country of origin.

If you’re a company that’s based here in southern California, it might make sense to target Mexicans because that’s really the majority of Hispanics who live in southern California are Mexican. So you can use a Mexican Spanish and appeal to kind of specifically the Mexican culture.

And then you might want to move into segmentation by level of aculturation, which means the level at which a Hispanic has adopted the U.S. culture. So that’s sometimes used in segmentation.

But I think if you stick with using your existing segmentation and then putting language on top of it, that makes the most sense. And then if you’re a regional company you might want to look at what the country of origin is for Hispanics in your region.

Ted Murphy:

To me it seems like creating a Spanish version of the same site with the same look and feel and everything else like that may not be as effective as I would think I would want it to be. You know, do you recommend that companies actually develop sites that are specific to those markets and that they have their own designs, their own look and feel, their own way of communicating?

Lee Vann:

I think that a best practice is to have an English and Spanish site that are comparable in terms of the perceived value that the sites deliver to a user. So the Hispanic version should definitely have a Hispanic feel. And that can be executed through design, certainly through imagery of Hispanic people, and also content.

And like I mentioned before, Hispanics live in a very bilingual world. So they’re gonna compare the English and Spanish version of your website. And if they perceive that the Spanish site is inferior, that might be giving the wrong message.

So I think it’s important to have a degree of comparability, but making the Hispanic site feel Hispanic. Make it feel like you’re doing something specifically for that audience in terms of look and feel, and then cultural relevance when it comes to content, messaging, et cetera.

Ted Murphy:

So how can marketers take those sites and then maybe use a Spanish website with a Spanish URL to drive search engine traffic and ranking? Are you seeing those types of practices being used?

Lee Vann:

Definitely. When it comes to a Spanish URL, most people bury a Hispanic or the Spanish version of their site within a subfolder or sub domain of their website. And we always recommend using a standalone dedicated URL for a Hispanic site.

So this is good for search engine optimization. But I think more importantly it’s very useful for offline markets. So if your doing radio or print or TV, it’s a lot easier for people to type in a dedicated URL than a URL that’s ABC Company / Espanol or Spanish.

But when it comes to marketing, like I mentioned, about half of online Hispanics actually prefer English. And so the most popular site among Hispanics is Yahoo.com in English. And what happens in the Hispanic market is we don’t have as many options to reach Hispanics as we do in the general market.

You know, as everybody knows in the general U.S. online market we have ad networks, email lists, co-registration, cost for acquisition programs. In the Hispanic market there’s not as many options. And so you really have to think outside of the box and come up with creative ways for targeting Hispanics.

And the partnership between Telemundo and Yahoo, I think that’s really a positive thing for the Hispanic market because it’s gonna add more content and areas that marketers can use to reach the Hispanics online.

Ted Murphy:

So I’m gonna take a listener email that we’ve got here. And I’ve got Veronica who asks, “What do you feel is the strongest medium to leverage for multi-cultural marketers? Do you think it’s digital marketing or do you think that it’s traditional marketing?”

Lee Vann:

I think ideally it would be using integrated marketing. So we do specialize in a Hispanic market. But we always recommend that the Hispanic online program needs to be integrated into the overall marketing base.

So my answer to that would be integrated makes the most sense. Now if you only have a budget to do one or the other, I’m a big proponent of the internet as a medium because of the interactivity, the ability to target, the ability to communicate cost effectively. So I’m big into the Internet. But I think the best practice is integrated.

And it’s interesting because a lot of companies will launch a Spanish site and forget about their customer service or operations or their offline programs and not integrate it. It shouldn’t stand-alone. It shouldn’t be in a vacuum. It should be a part of the overall marketing mix.

Ted Murphy:

So for those of you who have questions that you’d like us to answer on the show, you can always email us at ted.voodoo@mindcomet.com or you can call us toll free and leave a message at 1-866-206-4461. All right Lee, so in terms of what’s hot right now tell us what’s going on in Hispanic marketing. What’s the buzz?

Lee Vann:

I think the buzz is really around how to market to Hispanics online. So, as I mentioned, it’s not as many options out there. There’s kind of the main portals, Univision, Yahoo en Espanol, AOL Latino. There was a recent merger between Batanga and PlanetaTV.

So I think what’s kind of hot right now is more and more publishers are starting to address the Hispanic online market, which will give us as marketers more mediums and avenues to reach Hispanics online. For example, a few years ago Univision and Google had a partnership. So that dramatically increased the search volume of Spanish language words.

Another thing that’s really interesting is behavioral targeting. And this is something that’s been talked about for a long time and I think is gonna be very important in the Hispanic market. So you have 50% of Hispanics actually prefer English. So if you wanna reach that English dominant Hispanic online, how do you find them?

They’re on English sites. And so, companies out there can start to discern what say my behavior is. And if I’m visiting a Mexican site or Yahoo en Espanol or AOL Latino and then I’m on an English version, in theory you could be served in advertisement as an English dominant Hispanic.

And the big question there is what language do you use? So if I’m on Yahoo.com and I’ve gone to a couple Hispanic sites and I all of the sudden get a Spanish ad, the question is how will the user perceive that? But I think that behavioral targeting is something that will be specifically applied in the Hispanic online market.

Ted Murphy:

So overall, what would you say are the three best practices that a marketer can enlist when catering to an online Hispanic market?

Lee Vann:

One of the things that I think is most important is the notion of access. And so a lot of people will launch Spanish sites and not make it available to their users. So, what that means is provide clear and prominent access from your English site to your Spanish site.

And we usually recommend doing that through the words, “En Espanol,” on the top navigation hopefully on every single page of your site. That’s something that a lot of people neglect because your English site might be your best source of Hispanic traffic.

I think cultural relevance is something that’s really important, that’s really a way to connect with the audience and get them to buy your product or service or whatever you’re trying to accomplish.

And then I think online advertising. Making sure that once you build something, you let people know that it exists. And make sure that you’re marketing it so that you’re achieving your business objective.

Ted Murphy:

Well Lee, it’s been a pleasure having you on the show today. And I think that our listeners probably found a lot of this information very valuable. Hopefully we can have you back on the show sometime in the future.

Lee Vann:

Great. Thanks a lot Ted.

Ted Murphy:

Thank you.

Announcer:

For more information on this week's topic, visit http://www.InternetMarketingVoodoo.com. This podcast has been brought to you by MindComet, the Relationship Agency.

[End of Audio]

Marketing Resources
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