Do you have what it takes to expand your business into the Hispanic market?
Marketing to a Hispanic audience can provide a lot of growth opportunities for your business. Hispanics are expected to be the engine that drives economic growth in the U.S.
If you want to get a jump start on these growth opportunities, you have to do it right.
There are plenty of marketing fails because businesses think that Google Translate is all you need. That will likely cause an embarrassment for your company.
Read on to learn how your business can market to a Hispanic audience and gain new customers.
Understand Your Audience
At the core of marketing, no matter who you’re marketing to, you have to know your audience. Understanding the Hispanic market is no exception.
You’ll want to know demographic information such as age, background, location, income, gender, and marital status.
You need to discover psychographic information, too. What are their pain points around certain issues related to your product or service?
If you’re selling an app, how will that make their lives better or solve a specific problem?
The demographics are important to know so you can effectively target your advertising. The psychographics are important to know so you can create messages that resonate with your prospects.
Create a Universal Message
What does anyone want, no matter where they’re from? They want love, a healthy family, friends, laughter, safety, and security. These core needs are universal.
How can you get your message to transcend languages and cultures? That is a million-dollar question.
There are a number of ways to do that, and a lot of it depends on your business. An insurance company might talk about protecting your family from financial and other disasters.
An IT company can talk about business security and how a business disaster would impact family life.
These are all potential messages, but the right one is the one that matters most to your audience.
Get the Translations Right
Do you remember the Chevy Nova? It was a classic Chevy car that sold incredibly well in the U.S. In South America, not so much.
That was likely due to the name. While Nova seems pretty innocuous, no va means don’t go or doesn’t go in Spanish.
There are unfortunately a ton of examples like this in the history of marketing. You want to be on the right side of history, not in some Hispanic Marketing Fail Hall of Fame.
Your graphic design should also match the cultures and regions you’re targeting. Some colors that mean one thing in America may mean something else in another part of the world.
Know the Culture
Did you know that there are 10 major dialects in Spanish? Mexico’s government recognizes 68 different languages.
There’s so much more to marketing to a Hispanic audience than just knowing Spanish. You have to know the culture where you’re targeting.
Even in Spain, there are distinct differences between the northern regions and the southern regions. There are differences in language, in food, in just about every aspect of life.
You can expect to find similar differences in every Hispanic country. It’s the same way that California and Texas are extremely different places. There are some commonalities like they’re both U.S. states, but there are many distinct differences.
You need to discover what the commonalities and differences are between regions. If you highlight the commonalities and differences, it’s easier for people to relate to your brand. They will also trust you.
Do you plan to market to the Hispanic market in the U.S.? You still have to know and understand these differences.
Be sure to take a look at indicadores de ventas, or sales indicators, too. This will give you valuable information about how people are making purchases.
Social Media and the Hispanic Market
The Hispanic market widely uses social media in Spanish and on mobile devices. They don’t use their phones to make a purchase, however, they do look for discounts and coupons on mobile devices.
One effective and inexpensive way to reach your audience is through social media. Facebook has specific instructions to create ads that target the Hispanic market in the U.S.
You can use social media not to drive purchases, but to have people sign up for discounts online.
SEO and Multiple Languages
If you want to use SEO for reaching the Hispanic market, you need to have your website in order. Starting with building a website for your audience. You want to make sure that your site caters to both English and Spanish speakers.
For example, if you are targeting a specific country in Latin America, you can buy a domain name with a country code TLD. Targeting Mexico would be www.yourdomain.mx.
You could also through subdomains or subfolders. A subdomain would show the Spanish version as something like es.yourbusiness.com and as subfolder would be www.youbusiness.com/es.
There isn’t a right or wrong way to do it. It depends on where your target market is and how you plan to use your website to reach them.
Google recommends using any of these methods as long as users have the option to choose what language they want.
You’ll want to make sure that you use a back end CMS like Drupal or WordPress because they support multilanguage sites.
Otherwise, the basics of SEO still apply. You have to do keyword research and link building to make sure that your site ranks well.
Working with the Hispanic Market
When you start marketing to the Hispanic market, you’ll find that a lot of standard marketing principles apply.
You have to know your audience and create a message that cuts across cultures and languages. You still have to use the right marketing channels to reach them.
The key differences between marketing to an American and Hispanic market is that you have to understand the language very well and know the unique differences among regions and cultures throughout Latin America.
Do those things well, and you have a blueprint for business growth. Would you like more business tips? Take a look at these translation apps for international business.
