Like we have said it before the Hispanic spending power in the U.S. has climbed to $1.25- $1.55 trillion annually. This buying power is expected to grow to increase to 1.7 trillion U.S. dollars by 2020. Products targeting the Hispanic population are seen as a great opportunity for retailers and CPG companies as Hispanics will represent approximately 28.6 percent of the total U.S. population by 2060.
So how do I get started?
1) The Evolution of Online Marketing in Spanish
What has changed in the last decade? Numbers.
The Hispanic segment currently makes up 17% of the U.S. population and is projected to grow at an accelerated rate in the next decade. As a matter of fact, Hispanics are expected to grow 42% in the next 3 years.
Additionally, first, second and third generation young Hispanics are a very present online group and they actively search in Spanish for services and products. According to Pew Research, over 22 percent of all children under 18 in the U.S. are of Hispanic origin.
This group is loyal to their favorite brands and heavily engage in social media to speak their minds.
2) undeveloped Market for PPC *pay-per-click
Today, we see Google tapping into this market and acknowledging the massive potential of Hispanics for the PPC industry. According to Google 66% of U.S. Hispanics say they pay attention to online ads—almost 20 percentage points more than the general online population.
3) ¿Prefieres Hablar en Español?
Instinctively, one would think Hispanics are naturally more inclined to do business with a company that speaks Spanish or that is of Hispanic / Latino origin, since the more we feel connected to, part of, liked by, or attached to someone, the more persuasive they become.
However, the idea that Spanish should always be used to engage U.S. Hispanics online is an outdated notion.
U.S. Hispanics are around English stimuli everyday, making them comfortable with it. According to Google, 94% of digital U.S. Hispanics are comfortable consuming English content online across at least one online activity.
So, you should go back to creating your ads just as they were, right? Not exactly. Google has also released that two-thirds of digital hispanics have used Spanish to look for information using a search engine.
Confused? The internet has become a space where U.S. Hispanics can truly be bilingual. Culture is where language becomes obsolete. This applies to ads, too. When an ad includes aspects of Hispanic culture, regardless of language, 88% pay attention, and 41% feel more favorable about a brand that aims to be culturally relevant.
4) Prime-time Locations
Before jumping into the Hispanic niche, check out your area using the AdWords Keyword Tool to see what keywords are important to your community.
Search Engine Round-Table has stated that the top markets for achieving success with the Hispanic population are NYC, Chicago, Miami, Los Angeles and Houston.
5) Geo-Targeting Your Account
If your customers searched in Spanish, but their Google interface language settings were set to English, your ads wouldn’t show. Make sure to reach your customers no matter what language they search in by setting your account to target all languages.
Or, perhaps you want to target Spanish speakers in countries outside of the U.S, instead. You can get a good feel by using Google Analytics, particularly in Audience > Demographics > Geo > Language, so that you see what the actual affluence of website visits coming from Spanish speakers is.
6) Potentially Lower CPC’s = More Clicks for Your Budget
*CPC (Cost Per Click ) refers to the actual price you pay for each click in your pay-per-click (PPC) marketing campaigns.
From our experience and for the time being, CPCs on Spanish language settings are normally lower than in other languages.
7) The Mobile Opportunity for Hispanics
Mobile is truly at the forefront to target this demographic. According to emarketer – “There is one group who over indexes considerably in the use of mobile phones to access the Internet: Hispanics.”
A great way to target Hispanics in the U.S. is to make sure that mobile devices get their fair share of attention via ‘Bidding Options per Device’ within the AdWords campaigns.
I recommend monitoring traffic to optimize bids on mobile devices depending on incoming traffic, CPCs and performance, of course.
That being said – make sure that your website is mobile optimized and that someone on your end can take calls, orders or reservations from clients. I won’t go into mobile best practices, but we should definitely target these devices with a decent website for an intuitive user experience.
8) Spanish AdWords Campaigns: A Gold Mine for Businesses Across the U.S and Latin America
According to Google, 93% of Hispanics use Google as their primary search engine. Like my colleague Gary Garth mentioned in his post “Targeting 52M Hispanics with $1.3T in Purchasing Power”, the low CPCs, the amount of Hispanics who use Google as their primary search engine and the potential loyal customer base this segment represents makes the Hispanic market a gold mine.
We have experienced the success of AdWords campaigns in Spanish with local businesses that have reached a plateau with their English AdWords campaigns.
However, it is important to point out that you have to prepare a solid strategy and do your research beforehand to expand to this new market, meaning you can’t just Google translate your way to success.
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