How to Increase Your Return on Investment With Hispanic Markets Why you should consider Hispanic customers as a vital part of your future sales strategy.
By Hernan Tagliani •
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
As we are getting closer to the end of the year, many companies are planning and seeking how they can maximize their marketing efforts in 2018. In some cases, CMOs have targeted the Hispanic market as a new stream of revenue, but they haven't seen a strong return on investment (ROI) because they haven't been fully committed.
Some of the most common trends I have seen in the marketing and advertising industry are that for some CMOs or executives, they have to increase sales and revenue first to then consider the Hispanic market as part of their marketing efforts.
As we all know, getting new customers in the door is essential to increase revenue. America is changing and evolving where minorities are driving the growth of some major markets besides the nation.
So, why shouldn't you consider the Hispanic market as a venue to increase sales and revenue? How can you justify that by investing all your advertising dollars in the general market; a market that is getting more fragmented and consumers have more options to choose from you foresee to sale more and increase revenue.
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Forecast, planning and budget it is not solely based on what you have done previous years. It is also based on future consumption patterns, loyalty and growth market trends. When you take a look of age, life stage and family size, the cumulative lifetime spending of Hispanics households is greater than white non-Hispanics households, according to Geoscape.
Doing what you've always done is easier and more comfortable. But, this behavior lacks vision. As author John Maxwell says, "A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way and shows the way."
Another trend I have seen from CMOs is that they want to test the waters first, then decide if they are going to commit or not. Testing is good, but if you don't have a strategy or a plan with an ongoing campaign, then the strong profits, higher revenue and market share you are looking for won't just appear.
What you should be doing is testing marketing variables. For example: How do Hispanics respond to a specific offer? Is the media you chose to deliver that offer the right one? If you take the wrong approach, this is a simple way to waste your marketing dollars, regardless how much you invest.
Once, a college from Florida wanted to do a test campaign by doing some grass root marketing and community involvement first. The problem was that the marketing director wasn't willing to understand the cultural challenges the college had to overcome first because they hadn't reached the Hispanic market in the past. This marketing director tried to make assumptions that, because they have been in the market for quite a long time, everybody knew about his college.
This was a recipe for failure.
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Apply cultural relevancy
If you want to win Hispanics, stay away from the literal translation of your current English campaign done by your Anglo agency or the Hispanic media. Start trans-creating your campaigns.
It is not just about language. It is about culture and how well you understand it. Cultural relevancy is key to connecting with Hispanics in English and Spanish. The problem is that most of the time companies are more focused on their brand's interest rather than consumer's cultural values, preferences and buying process.
Just because you or your agency has a person on the team who speaks Spanish doesn't mean they know what needs to be done to achieve the results and success you are looking for. Believe me, I see it all the time.
I have seen many corporations do this without really understanding the process of changing product perceptions in Hispanic consumer's mind and the importance of consistently targeting to them until this change takes place. Stop applying the expectations and benchmarks that work well for you in the general market -- but not the resources -- into a Hispanic campaign.
It often takes almost as much time, energy and money to invest in a failing campaign as a successful one, so think about that when you decide to make the jump.
At the end of the day, it is not just about price. It is about cost.
