Lately I've been reading articles related to the Hispanic consumers.  I think most of us have read or heard about how the Hispanic population is growing so much in the U.S.  It seems to me companies that have products or services to sell should be paying more attention to this and shifting some (or a lot) of their marketing efforts toward the Hispanic consumer.

In an article on MediaPost by Jose Villa (http://www.mediapost.com/publications/index.cfm?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=98883#comments), he talks about a very good reason to shift some focus to the Hispanic community.  Put plainly, they may be in better shape after the recession than any other ethnic sector.  In his article, he points out that unlike the previous recession, most consumers will not be able to go back to their old spending habits because they won't be able to get the same credit that they received before.  And we all know how our society loved to spend money on credit.  In the article, this is referred to as the "deleveraged consumer".  The Hispanic community, on the other hand, typically stayed away from spending on credit.  So when the economy recovers, they'll be more likely to continue their same spending habits they had before the recession while others will have to learn to cut back on their excessive spending.  Their lack of debt means that "the Hispanic market represents a beacon of opportunity as a truly deleveraged consumer" according to Jose.

I really like the idea of spending some marketing focus on the Hispanic community because I think there are a lot of potential buyers in that group that are untapped.  The three top ideas I can think of would be:

1. update your websites to offer a spanish version.  Although many of today's Hispanics that are online speak both English and Spanish, it is a welcoming gesture to let them choose their language of choice.  But don't forget to update imagery and styles of the Spanish website and not just the text (Jose has another article that addresses that: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/index.cfm?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=103345)

2. allow your users to decide which language to receive their emails in.  You'll want to be sure you have proper tracking tools in place so that you can see how well your Spanish emails work and compare that to your English emails.

3. advertise in places where Hispanics spend more of their time.  In a previous blog post I discuss what some of those websites are.

Definition 6 is an interactive marketing agency that can help you analyze and plan a course of action to market to this untapped group.  As an application development company and online marketing company we can also implement your web applications and email marketing campaigns as well as provide analytics of both.  So take advantage now and don't leave out this important ethnic group.