In my continuing research into marketing to the Hispanic consumer, I'm finding great articles from MediaPost that provide good information on why and how to reach this particular audience. So here is an article by Joseph Kutchera (Why Does Google Send U.S. Hispanics To Foreign Web Sites?) that talks about what Google is doing with search results for the Spanish speaking community and how you can apply similar ideas to your marketing campaigns.
The first thing he points out is that if you search in Google using Spanish words, 50% or more of your responses are going to be for sites outside of the U.S. borders. So why does this happen and why do marketers miss this target audience? Kutchera provides the answer. "Google and other search engines index sites globally while we marketers, agencies and media sellers work within the economic and political borders of the U.S." When people search using Spanish words and terms, Google is going to return sites that have Spanish content on them. Does your website have Spanish content? If you do, you may still be missing out on this audience for a few different reasons. Kutchera points out the following. 1) Your Spanish site may not be optimized for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) like your English site. 2) Many Spanish speaking Hispanics like to go to sites of their country of origin. 3) Spanish language markets are more likely to spend time on their content, making it more relevant than someone from an English language market who is updating a Spanish language website. 4) U.S. advertisers have been slow to move budgets toward online marketing and therefore not providing the resources necessary to provide the content that is necessary.
So what can you do to reach the Hispanic population:
- Purchase non-U.S. targeted inventory on your search buys along with your U.S. targeted inventory.
- Reach out to Hispanic country-of-origin web sites through ad networks.
- Apply behavioral, contextual, and language targeting to further segment and understand your Hispanic audience.
As a Senior Consultant at Definition 6, an interactive marketing agency with expertise in Web Search Engine Optimization and Search Marketing Consulting, I'm seeing lots of evidence for companies to shift some marketing dollars to specifically target Hispanics in the U.S. This growing population is getting online at a very fast pace. There are millions and millions of them out there that could be buying your products or services if they could find you. Are you willing to let them go to your competitors? We can help you target them. We can help you get ahead of the curve.
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