Hispanic Marketing: What it is and what it isn’t! (Part 1 of a series)

Hispanic Marketing can be defined simply as marketing a product or idea to Hispanic individuals. This is what many companies and brands believe and that is why they are missing the highly involved process of connecting, interacting and influencing the growing Hispanic population in the United States today.

Hispanic Marketing cannot be summed up with a blanket statement or idea and in this post I wanted to point out what I believe Hispanic marketing is and how some companies continue to get it wrong.

It is no secret to smart brands and companies that in 2002, the US Hispanic population officially became the largest minority in the United States, and it will continue in this position through at least 2050. (marketingprofs) With that in mind, deciding to ignore such a huge population could be a detrimental mistake. Marketing to them in the wrong way is not much better and could actually damage your brand reputation with this influential group.

The first thing any company should do when jumping into the Hispanic market is perform extensive research. This research must be thorough and not lump Hispanics into one group, as is often the case and the temptation for marketers. Like other customers and audiences, Hispanics can and need to be separated by age, sex, economic status, and technology knowledge background, level of assimilation and whatever else is needed to better understand your target market. By doing this you can begin to see ways to market to this group in the correct way.

Once you’ve reached a level of research that you believe puts you in a better position to market your brand to the Hispanic audience you must tackle the language barrier. Granted, Spanish is the second most spoken language in the United States after English—this does not mean that these are interchangeable languages and that your campaign can simply be translated into Spanish and affect the Hispanic consumer in the same way. (More on this in part 2 of this series).

Still, any marketer and great communicator knows that to reach an audience you must speak their language, so having someone able to communicate your message into Spanish will help your brand immensely.

You may decide to create an entirely unique campaign to meet the needs of the Hispanic market. In my opinion, this is the smarter choice but not always the most cost-effective. In this instance, you would go through the same steps of creating your campaign as with the English version but you would be sensitive to the research you gathered in regards to the Hispanic market.

Bottom line-Hispanic marketing isn’t easy, but with this group having about $863 billion in discretionary annual income, more than any other minority group in the country-it is something NOT to be overlooked.

The next part in this series will address the language barrier to Hispanic Marketing and mistakes not to make.

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