It should come to little surprise to anyone working in digital, or even conventional marketing for that matter, that Latinos are an extraordinarily important demographic. In a way, within the US we have seen a kind of internal emerging market. We are seeing a new playing field even the most experienced Latino-focused marketers find themselves thirsting for more data and insight into this ever expanding market.
Online ad spending is one of the most rapidly growing markets today. eMarketer cites general-market online growth at 25% per year. What makes Latino marketing interesting is that their growth is estimated to be growing a full 7 points above the general market, at 32% per year. Its clear that the explosive growth of the Latino population in the US is being mirrored in the digital realm as well.
So how does one reach Hispanics effectively? There are a few characteristics of the demographic that should be considered when building a digital marketing strategy. The first of these is the power of word of mouth amongst Hispanic communities. The effectiveness of this medium actually manifests itself online increasingly more via product rating sites and social marketing tools like Facebook’s “Like” button. As one of the easiest APIs to integrate into almost any part of a website, we would recommend adding Like buttons to most if not all of your content to ensure you take advantage of Latino social networks. Media companies, service companies and distributors can all take advantage of this feature.
Hispanic markets are also known to be brand loyal. This opens opportunities such as cross-promotion across several brands whether they be run by a single company or built through strategic partnerships. And finally the market is also quite “Sticky” which goes hand in hand with loyalty. Presented with engaging quality content Latin consumers are perfectly happy not only returning to, but also actively becoming engaged with a website through things such as comments and social network sharing. Encouraging a registration with your site can be quite helpful in building up these brand/consumer relationships through preferred offerings, newsletters, etc.
Finally, digital marketers would be wise to focus resources on reaching Latinos not only because of their growing size, but also because the demographic has shown itself to be quite open to online media. AOL’s study found that 72% of online Hispanics trust product rating sites, while 28% still stick to the more traditional word of mouth. The trend towards more reliance on digital sphere shows no signs of stopping as the younger, more English-dominant, and increasingly more tech-savvy generations of Latinos continue to enter the market and make their presence felt.
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