Search Engine Marketing

Each year, companies lose billions of dollars in potential sales to Hispanics because they underestimate the size and power of this market. From entertainment to politics, food to fashion, health to hospitality, every sector of our economy is being transformed by the Hispanic community, the nation’s fastest-growing and largest ethnic group. Researching is obviously important in the pre-targeting phase, but there are many other steps that need to be considered for an effective Search Engine Marketing campaign. The following list will help you build a solid starting point.

10 Elements to a Successful SEM Strategy with the Hispanic Market:

1. Have a realistic objective strategy and do not always compare the Hispanic Market with that done for the general market. Remember, this market is unique and responds in its distinctive ways.



2. Top executives and marketing managers must be committed to the market, not just for a test here and there. You need at least 12 months to measure real results and adjust campaigns to be in maximum efficiency.



3. Pre-targeting the Hispanic market needs readiness assessment. Marketers need the right front and back-end processes, as well as be advised to have third-party audits from specialists.



4. Your organization must set aside enough resources: people, time, money and systems. The reason many CEOs do not move into Hispanic marketing is they are unsure how it will change their organization. They want the option to retain, upsell and cross-sell. The right strategy can be very rewarding.



5. Should your website be in Spanish or in both languages? This really depends to your unique case. Sometimes companies need to have a fully translated website, other times it can be enough to just implement bilingual webpages. In the past, usually portals with heavy content need full translation and ecommerce websites can get away with just adding product descriptions in Spanish. Now websites are more competitive with this market, therefore the right decision for language use can be one of the most important points of consideration in your overall strategy.



6. Other issues to consider on the content are not just simple translations from English, proper production standards and effective creative for correct imagery must be set to achieve high conversions on the landing pages.



7. Start with paid programs, Cost per Click campaigns are much less expensive, and you could be getting very high traffic volume keywords for just fractions of the cost compared to English terms. Organic results on search engines are much less competed, so be the first to set foot on solid top rankings through Search Engine Optimization efforts.



8. Anticipate additional marketing efforts designing your advertisements and optimized pages. Copy is longer in Spanish and you will need to translate keywords that need to be carefully researched so that it can receive the highest traffic volume through correctly chosen keywords and phrases that might not be your original translation.



9. Apply the same analytical metrics to Hispanic campaigns as to general market efforts, but do not expect the same results. Test, measure results and make adjustments until you have reached maximum efficiency on your Hispanic Search Engine Marketing campaigns.



10. Most important of all, the Hispanic market is not a “One-Size Fits All”, proper segmentation is the key to reaching the right Hispanic consumer for your product or service. There are different acculturation segments, countries of origin, education levels, financial status, geographical and demographic characteristics among many other factors that play important roles finding your targeted online Hispanic consumer.

Today, the primary search engines use their regular ranking algorithms for search queries in Spanish and you will most likely find a combination of both English and Spanish paid ads on the sponsored results. Even if search engines have made an effort to build a distinct Spanish engine (such as espanol.yahoo.com), direct company sources have admitted that U.S. Hispanics primarily use the main network search platforms for finding their results (such as yahoo.com). The future seems more promising, since levels of competition continue to increase for keyword terms and phrases. Search engines will most likely use geographic locations and link analysis to determine clusters of Hispanic communities that will point Hispanic users to the right pages relevant to the Spanish words in the method they are used.

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