[display-name-category]

[post_author]

Several years back, I’d wonder when online marketing and search were going to take off for Hispanics in the U.S. and in Latin America.

My wait has been over for a while now!

Hispanic spending power in the U.S. has climbed to $1.5- $1.7 trillion annually, according to Santiago Solutions Group. This buying power is expected to grow by 50% in the next five years.

What does this mean for your business? Read on and find out!

1) The Evolution of Online Marketing in Spanish

What has changed in the last decade? Numbers.

The Hispanic segment currently makes up 17% of the U.S. population and is projected to grow at an accelerated rate in the next decade. As a matter of fact, Hispanics are expected to grow 42% in the next 3 years.

Additionally, first, second, and third-generation young Hispanics are a very present online group and they actively search in Spanish for services and products. According to Pew Research, over 22 percent of all children under 18 in the U.S. are of Hispanic origin.

This group is loyal to their favorite brands and heavily engage in social media to speak their minds.

2) Untapped Market for PPC

Today, we see Google tapping into this market and acknowledging the massive potential of Hispanics for the PPC industry.

According to Google (Think With Google, 2015), 66% of U.S. Hispanics say they pay attention to online ads—almost 20 percentage points more than the general online population.

3) ¿Prefieres Hablar en Español?

Instinctively, one would think Hispanics are naturally more inclined to do business with a company that speaks Spanish or that is of Hispanic / Latino origin since the more we feel connected to, part of, liked by, or attached to someone, the more persuasive they become.

However, the idea that Spanish should always be used to engage U.S. Hispanics online is an outdated notion.

U.S. Hispanics are around English stimuli every day, making them comfortable with it. According to Google, 94% of digital U.S. Hispanics are comfortable consuming English content online across at least one online activity.

So, you should go back to creating your ads just as they were, right? Not exactly. Google has also released that two-thirds of Digital Hispanics have used Spanish to look for information using a search engine.

Confused?! Allow me to explain. The internet has become a space where U.S. Hispanics can truly be bilingual.

Culture is where language becomes obsolete. 

This applies to ads, too. When an ad includes aspects of Hispanic culture, regardless of language, 88% pay attention, and 41% feel more favorable about a brand that aims to be culturally relevant. Check out our blog post about Hispanic PPC to learn about the culture and how to reach this demographic!

4) Prime-time Locations

Before jumping into the Hispanic niche, check out your area using the AdWords Keyword Tool to see what keywords are important to your community.

Search Engine Round-Table has stated that the top markets for achieving success with the Hispanic population are NYC, Chicago, Miami, Los Angeles, and Houston.

5) Geo-Targeting Your Account

If your customers searched in Spanish, but their Google interface language settings were set to English, your ads wouldn’t show. Make sure to reach your customers no matter what language they search in by setting your account to target all languages.

Or, perhaps you want to target Spanish speakers in countries outside of the U.S, instead. You can get a good feel by using Google Analytics, particularly in Audience > Demographics > Geo > Language, so that you see what the actual affluence of website visits coming from Spanish speakers is.

 6) Potentially Lower CPC’s = More Clicks for Your Budget

From our experience and for the time being, CPCs on Spanish language settings are normally lower than in other languages. Use this to your advantage!

7) The Mobile Opportunity for Hispanics

Mobile is truly at the forefront to target this demographic. According to emarketer – “There is one group who over indexes considerably in the use of mobile phones to access the Internet: Hispanics.”

A great way to target Hispanics in the U.S. is to make sure that mobile devices get their fair share of attention via ‘Bidding Options per Device’ within the AdWords campaigns.

I recommend monitoring traffic to optimize bids on mobile devices depending on incoming traffic, CPCs, and performance, of course.

That being said – make sure that your website is mobile optimized and that someone on your end can take calls, orders, or reservations from clients. I won’t go into mobile best practices, but we should definitely target these devices with a decent website for intuitive user experience.

8) Spanish AdWords Campaigns: A Gold Mine for Businesses Across the U.S and Latin America

According to Google, 93% of Hispanics use Google as their primary search engine. Like my colleague Gary Garth mentioned in his post “Targeting 52M Hispanics with $1.3T in Purchasing Power”,  the low CPCs, the amount of Hispanics who use Google as their primary search engine, and the potential loyal customer base this segment represents makes the Hispanic market a gold mine.

We have experienced the success of AdWords campaigns in Spanish with local businesses that have reached a plateau with their English AdWords campaigns.

However, it is important to point out that you have to prepare a solid strategy and do your research beforehand to expand to this new market, meaning you can’t just Google translate your way to success.

Botton line: no one size fits all.

Buena suerte y sigan optimizando!

Have a Happy and Productive Holiday!

I will shamelessly steal this advice from Google’s ZMOT, (recommended read), if you do not have someone that is in charge of your Holiday Marketing Strategy, namely Google Shopping Campaigns, then you have to step up your game or bring someone to help you get through the Holidays.