Connor Brooke
Spanish speakers in the US form one of the most prominent foreign language domestic markets in the world.
Their purchasing power is estimated at over $1 trillion and their online spending is greater than $20 billion (2011). As the Hispanic population in U.S. retains their culture and language, more so than other ethnic groups, by far the most effective way to target them online is through localized content. Their growing clout on the web makes them a group that is hard to ignore and American companies can benefit greatly by concentrating upon this group.
Targeting Hispanics
Currently, the Hispanic population is only engaged by a limited number of companies through the web. Although the amount of websites that support Spanish has increased greatly over the years, a complete online marketing strategy for this group is only utilised by some companies. Greater communication with the group will result in increased exposure to an internet savvy and high spending group increasing online revenue.
Font: Britannica Encyclopedia
Translating to Spanish
For companies which are looking to target Hispanic users in the US, the primary focus should be to create content that is relevant for the target audience. Translating English content would be adequate but to effectively target Spanish speakers in a specific country, transcreation or localization of content would be more suitable.
The Spanish content should follow a similar structure to the English content and be of a similar length. This is useful not only for the users but also to impose brand image amongst different language groups.
Engaging Hispanic Users
A website in another language is often not enough to develop a sustained strategy that would result in increased exposure and sales from a specific language group. General or sales support in the language and further engagement in online social spheres like Facebook would help develop a strong brand reputation.
Language specific accounts should be created on social networks to distinguish between different groups. Engagement should be relevant for the audience and in this case, a focus on cultural elements will help a company increase its engagement with Hispanics online.
Many companies are using new domains in Spanish to appeal to the group. One famous example is Kraft Foods which operates comidakraft.com and provides localized content to users that are very effective in building strong brand reputation with a web user group.
There are several other examples of significant domestic foreign language markets in western countries, e.g. Turkish community in Germany, Polish community in the UK. Targeting these users will help develop a strong brand and open new streams of revenue.
The opportunities are present, it’s up to the business to harness them and move ahead with multilingual strategies within their own market.
This article was written for Business 2 Community by Connor Brooke.
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Lovely article, but there is a huge mistake on the bottom of the map: Font does not equal source. I wonder if this is a machine translation not properly reviewed by a human…
In some instances humans are still better than machines.
The hispanic market in the US is a huge opportunity. Insightful companies are adding a “Latino marketing” effort to their domestic marketing. But nearly every strategy assumes that the Latino community is a monolithic group.
1. how many latinos have a preferred language other than spanish!? Portuguese and English are the preferred language of large numbers of the US latino community – and the colloquial versions of spanish are very different. and yet the effort is “in spanish”?
2. cultural differences are huge and nuance is required. we maintain that a robust international business development effort for US companies penetrating latin america is hugely important – once they are in markets and learning nuance (understanding the difference between mercosur and andean cultures for instance) they are much more capable to create a textured strategy for domestic latino marketing
3. cultural localization is critically important and almost always overlooked.
It’s a complicated topic that requires a cerebral approach rather than a reflexive one.
Nice article about translation.