Finding the right Hispanic Marketing agency is never an easy task. Of course, every company wants to keep their branding and marketing as similar as possible across all languages and all channels, but sometimes this doesn’t work out exactly as how you’d like. And then, or course, there’s the process of having to hear each company throwing out similar ideas of how they can help you reach the same market with similar programs or the occasionally laughable off-the-wall pitch.
Don’t worry. You’re not alone. In fact, I’d feel safe betting that there’s been plenty of agencies already looking here to make sure they have their ducks all in a row for the next gen campaigns they’re getting ready to launch.
So where to start?
1. Their Creative Department is Multi-Cultural
This isn’t just to say that they have Hispanics working on the creative, but rather, they have specific individuals who have an understanding of the different Hispanic markets.
While the majority of the US Hispanic market happens to be Mexican-American, two of the top four Hispanic Markets by population happen to not be Mexican dominant.* In fact, New York’s Hispanic population is tilted Puerto Rican and Dominican** while Miami is predominantly Cuban.***
Why this becomes important for any campaign is that verbiage and symbols within the Hispanic community can often differ depending on the cultural connotations to the point where one campaign that works culturally for Mexican Americans, can end up becoming a viral sensation for its comical failure at reaching other Hispanic markets.
2. Digital is Great, but They Focus on Mobile
Elclasificado.com launched the mobile responsive version of their site in October 2012. Around that time, mobile visits had already started growing, but were still only responsible for slightly more than 40% of all visits with 669,608 sessions coming from desktop and 458,298 coming from mobile platforms. In the time since, desktop visits have actually decreased to 422,421 in the month of January, while the growth of the site has been spurred by mobile platforms, which account for more than 1.75 million visits or roughly 80% of all site sessions.****
But we’ll also look outside our own properties to Pew Hispanic who was already noting the growth of Hispanic internet users accessing the web via mobile devices in March of 2013 when they noted that 76% of Hispanic users access the internet via mobile devices.***** As much of the growth was spurred by US-born Hispanics, that number has continued to increase and should be expected to continue even further moving forward.
3. They Track Your Competitors
More than likely, their digital campaigns are going to include AdWords of some sort. As recently as February of 2014, it was reported that 61% of Hispanics favored mobile search over applications for local shopping and that Latinos were 52% more likely than non-Latinos to use mobile devices for the same purpose.****** Not to mention, Google obviously controls the market share, and looks poised to continue doing so despite no longer being the already opted browser for Mozilla’s search functionality and with the growing likelihood that the same will be true with Apple products.
Of course, no decision has yet been made in regards to which browser Apple will switch to. Bing and Yahoo are the obvious choices, but regardless, the future for Google search still looks bright as they still control over 60% of the explicit core search share as of November 2014, 300% more than Microsoft Search Sites, or Google’s closest competitor. Coupled with their popular Chrome and Google search apps, there’s no reason to believe that there will be a large decrease any time soon.
This, too, is reflected in El Clasificado’s own analytics, where Android Operating Systems account for 75% of all mobile traffic and the same percentage reflects the total traffic directed to the site from Paid and Organic Google traffic.****
Knowing this, they should have sites like www.keywordspy.com saved in their favorites to help not only identify how your competitors are driving traffic to their site, but to also then replicate the success of your competitors for your own business in the online marketplace while not needing to work on ideas that have already proven to not be as effective.
4. Their Digital Campaigns Go Beyond AdWords
As prevalent as the Hispanic presence is in online search, in certain cases its even more so in Social Media where 68% of Hispanic-Americans are present on social media platforms. This study, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, also went on to show that like most other digital technologies, adoption was more prevalent among younger and Native born Latino-Americans; however, with the exception of Hispanics aged 65 and older, all other measured Hispanic demos displayed greater than 50% usage rates. By comparison, 58% of all US internet users say they used social media.********
Launched less than a week ago, Target’s new social media initiative #SinTraducción is already seeing success with their competition inviting Latina moms to tweet or share photos on Instagram of their favorite Spanish word without an equivalent English translation both directly within the Social Media platforms as well as generating media buzz for their first all Latino campaign.
Of course, agencies can always go the route of hoping to catch on to a viral trend, but that, or course, can always backfire as in the case as was the case in 2012 when Celeb Boutique happened to notice that #aurora was trending. Unfortunately, the Aurora that happened to be trending was related to the Colorado shooting massacre and not the tweet they sent out.
Ideally, an agency should already have a social media marketing team ready at the helm to take advantage of opportunities that would make sense, more so in the way that Oreo took advantage of the Super Bowl power outage with their “Dunk in the Dark” campaign that was ready within minutes of the electrical failing.
And, of course, campaigns should always be launched with a social media inclusive mindset as well.
5. No Data is Left Behind
In the past, general campaigns were measured by how much revenue a company brought in. A beer company would advertise on television and measure their rate of success based on how much sales increased around the same time. They may also have been able to gauge ad response based on particular coupons and promotions as well, but the data to continue engaging their previous shoppers, or those who showed interest, was not as readily available.
Now, it is, and it can be segmented for more targeted advertising.
Of course, not all campaign metrics can be measured by the data that can be gained directly from consumers, but any digital campaign should include some form for data collection with a purpose for user’s providing their personal information such as a contest, promotion, or discount that is revealed when the visitor fills out the fields.
Forms, ideally will contain smart fields like Hubspot’s so that the same user never has to answer the same question twice and will allow you to gain greater segmentation for your marketing campaigns, and should generally include standard contact information for the first submission such as Name, Zip Code, Phone Number, and Email Address because
6. Email Marketing is Alive and Well Again
While increases in spam messages and with the advent of the cell phone’s texting capabilities had initially led to decreases in responses and ROI, the smartphone has started to reengage the email market. According to Experian, 80% of Hispanics check their email from the smartphones during a typical week.**********
80%!
However, targeting any random group doesn’t necessarily work and personalized messages will generally lead to increased open rates. Hence, the reason the form completion information is so important. Are sales down in Miami, but exceeding goals in Los Angeles? The zip code allows you to reach each person individually. Furthermore, if you’re seeing that the drop in sales is only related to mothers, but every other demo is still outpacing their goals, you can target the campaign specifically to reach that demo in the location you’re looking to target and customize the message so that it’s tailored to that specific market because, as was mentioned in point #1, the Hispanics in Miami are culturally and linguistically different than Latinos in Los Angeles.
7. Hispanic Word-of-Mouth Has Tremendous Potential
According to clickz.com, Hispanics are twice as lucky as non-Hispanics to seek out more information from their loved and trusted ones regarding a product before making a purchase, contradicting the initial thinking that Hispanics were value shoppers.********** Of course, value is important, but what’s being recognized as more important among Hispanic shoppers is the quality of the products that they’re purchasing or, in regards to stores where the product is sold, the experience of shopping in that particular location. This is also especially true in the case of recent immigrants who rely on their network to help them learn about their new home and work towards greater acclimation.***********
To help improve on this opportunity, a good agency should also look to engage previous Hispanic consumers and shoppers in a way to help share their experience. Whether through social media, email, or some other method, utilizing word of mouth can then further act as one of the strongest drivers for increased sales volume and market share.
However, it can also lead to a negative effect if the experience is not positive. To help ensure this does not happen, agencies looking to increase a company’s sale should have a team on hand specifically to handle any customer complaints that may not come from traditional channels (i.e. phone calls), but through social media, internet forums, and more.
Without such, the work that’s already been done could end up coming unraveled quickly.
*Top 100 Hispanic Markets by Population https://www.multiculturalretail360.com/artimages/HR/table30.pdf
**Report Breaks Down NYC’s Hispanic Population https://www.wnyc.org/story/238996-report-breaks-down-nycs-hispanic-population/
****Google Analytics February 9, 2015-March 11,2015
***** Closing the Digital Divide: Latinos and Technology Adoption – Internet Use https://www.pewhispanic.org/2013/03/07/ii-internet-use-3/
******Hispanics Over-Index in Mobile Use for Local Shopping https://www.marketingcharts.com/online/hispanics-over-index-in-mobile-use-for-local-shopping-41066/
********Closing the Digital Divide: Latinos and Technology Adoption – Social Networking https://www.pewhispanic.org/2013/03/07/vi-social-networking/
*********Hispanics are mobile-dominant. Are your campaigns? https://www.experian.com/blogs/marketing-forward/2014/05/19/hispanics-are-mobile-dominant-are-your-campaigns/
***********Why Latinos Are Leading Retail Trends https://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/2239609/showrooming-and-social-shopping (used twice)
