Digital Marketing to Reach Hispanics

25 April 2019
By : Andrés García

Don’t blink! You might miss advertising’s next best thing. For decades, advertisers targeting U.S. Hispanics have utilized traditional outlets like TV, radio, relevant magazines, and local newspapers to effectively communicate campaigns. While these conventional media vehicles supported our client’s marketing efforts for a lengthy era, the time has now come for them to take the backseat. As you know, a myriad of new opportunities emerge every year making it easier for us to connect with specific audiences and also optimize client budgets with real-time metrics.

There isn’t anything necessarily bad about traditional advertising. But there is one thing advertisers who aim to reach Hispanics are definitely doing wrong. They completely focus their strategy and creativity into a single TV commercial without considering things like the changes in society or the way people are currently consuming media. It’s as if they just assume that Hispanics are all the same. No Bueno. It reminds me of something one of my colleagues at PM3 said, “Not all Hispanics fit in the same pot as a simple targeting check mark.”

hispanic man thinking out loud how to target hispanics in usa pm3 agency

At PM3, targeting is king.

To start, we must understand our client’s objectives. By doing so, we can clearly identify opportunities among Hispanics and serve them the right communication in the right place. That’s not something we can achieve by simply clicking that “Hispanic check mark.” So, how exactly do we manage to speak to a diverse array of Hispanics on a personal level and optimize our clients’ money?

In the following paragraphs, I will detail how our digital team uses digital channels to build custom campaigns that not only connect with specific Hispanic audiences but also deliver messaging they actually want to see and hear. Why? Because that’s how you earn new Hispanic customers for your client. Ready. Set. ¡Vamos!

It’s more than Keywords – it’s an answer.

According to Google, over 30% of online media consumption in the United States is conducted by people who use both Spanish and English interchangeably. This represents a huge opportunity for brands to show their products and services to Hispanics. Even though we are surrounded by the English language in every aspect of daily life, it is still easier and faster for many Hispanics to search and read something in their native tongue. This is especially true when it comes to their search engine behavior. When they are looking for a topic, service, or product that they’re not familiar with, many Hispanics will search in Spanish, because they can provide a more detailed description.

Nowadays, content marketing that caters to Hispanics should be at the core of any business. As I mentioned before, Hispanics are more likely to find what they’re looking for by searching in Spanish. Brands need to recognize this opportunity and shift their focus towards drafting valuable content in Spanish if they want to engage this rapidly growing population. Hispanics spend nearly 10.5 hours per week using the internet on their smartphones (Forbes) and tend to use their devices when researching a product before buying it. So, if you want to reach Hispanics, content marketing should be your best friend.

“CONTENT MARKETING IS QUICKLY BECOMING THE BEST WAY TO ATTRACT AND CONVERT THESE CUSTOMERS”

Consider this. Content marketing provides conversion rates that are almost six times higher than any other digital marketing methods for the U.S population (ABG Essentials). What’s more, is that people are more likely to purchase a product after reading an online recommendation or review (Content Marketing Institute). So, when we talk about optimizing ad-spend, we’re talking about reducing the Cost Per Click between 16-50% and sometimes even more when the website provides a quality content experience.

Sounds good? You should contact us to work on your new digital marketing project!

For that reason, leading brands with an established presence are moving towards creating content. It makes perfect sense seeing that 78% of the U.S population prefers to learn about a company via articles instead of ads. If we connect all the dots it’s possible to both increase sales and boost brand perception among the Hispanic audience. Mind you, they are projected to become 30% of the total US population by 2050 (Think with Google). That paired with a buying power of $1.7 Trillion (Forbes), makes this market an undeniable opportunity.

Social Media

When we talk about targeting Hispanics, we usually start by breaking them up into generations. For the First Generation (the eldest), we’ve found that the best way to reach them is through traditional advertising like TV and Radio. However, it’s still important to note that this group also uses Facebook as a practical way to stay in touch with family outside the U.S. So, what about the other generations?

We’ve found that it’s easier to reach 3rd generation Hispanics using the slew of targeting options Facebook and Instagram has, instead of using traditional outlets. It’s as simple as selecting a Multicultural affinity and age to get around 8 Million Hispanic prospects. From here, we can do a lot more by selecting interests, family, education levels, and more to better build the ideal audience for our clients.

Effectively reaching the 2nd and 3rd generations is still a challenge because they’re comprised of a completely American lifestyle that includes old and new qualities. This requires more than simply targeting their Multicultural affinity. It’s important to build that buyer persona, Latino first, to better understand the right way to interact with them and align brands to their belief.

hispanics interacting more with brands on social media hispanic digital marketing pm3 agency

Hispanic millennials are more likely to interact with brands on social media.

Among the many positives social media boasts, being able to A/B test and adjust ads instantly is a frontrunner. It’s helped us identify the right messaging for our content before creating a whole new campaign. This capability has been crucial for us to successfully reach millennials. However, building brand awareness among an audience has never been more complex than it is now. Millennials have grown up with an elevated understanding of their power to choose what they want to see and when they want to see it. As a direct effect, the rules of advertising had to be completely rewritten. Ironically, millennials were also the solution to this new class of advertising. As you know, people want content that caters to every single facet of life. Entertainment, information, research, tips, lifestyle, music, etc. These new rules for the ad-game were conceived by the same audience which started creating content themselves for everyone to see.

It’s imperative for brands to adapt their communication if they want to effectively engage with these newer generations. How you adapt your message to different media outlets and their respective audiences is crucial. Not too long ago, marketers struggled to create content that people legitimately wanted to see and not skip. At the time, their initial solution was to increase their paid social spending, which is why the overall social media budget for 2015 rocketed to $23 Billion. What marketers didn’t realize though, was that Facebook updated the algorithm, which meant a higher ad-spend failed in comparison to the ROI of substantial content. This led to brands increasing their media budgets (at least that’s what Mark Zuckerberg said) and essentially killing their organic traffic (and ad-spend). But, there were a few businesses keen to the times that managed to create enjoyable, worthwhile content – PlayGround being one of them. Instead of following the herd, they decided to reduce paid media to 2% and allocated their funds towards quality content. The result? They managed to up their organic reach to 98%!

If you want to learn more about how content should be done for social media, see Facebook for Creators, but more specifically – I highly encourage you to check out this Mexican who has gained 500,000 followers by making the right content.

Programmatic Buying

Do you want to reach Hispanics to show your monthly promotions? Sure! Then why not start by placing your ads on multiple high-traffic Spanish websites? That way, you can gain thousands of impressions and get plenty of visitors on your site. All of which, are interested in your product.

For years, that was one of the few targeting capabilities display advertising offered. The resources that were available to create custom audiences were very limited and all we could do to optimize our campaigns was based on retargeting ads. This affected every marketer’s ability to efficiently reach and engage with their desired Hispanic consumers.

Fortunately, that’s now a problem of the past. With the arrival of programmatic marketers, targeting has become more intricate and precise than ever. Now, we’re capable of going beyond language-based targeting and can add even more segmentation to campaigns. By using factual information about Hispanics, marketers can be more strategic in their execution and are no longer limited to depending on language identifiers. Top leading third-party data providers have also played their part in making targeted ads more strategic and successful.

latin woman interacting sharing and buying on digital platforms because of a programmatic buying ad aimed to hispanics

Conclusion

This couldn’t be a better time to include Hispanics in all of your marketing efforts! Thanks to the different digital tactics, data, and technology in the market, brands can easily access the second largest minority in the United States without spending a fortune on advertising. Essentially, a whole new world of opportunities awaits your company.

If you found this article interesting and want to learn more about how Hispanics represent a huge opportunity for your company, please reach out! We’ve been successfully advertising and marketing to Hispanics for over 15 years and are always ready to take on a new challenge.

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