expertSEM

I’m seeing more and more statistics out there about Hispanics online – and lots of them. But some of this data indicates that many prefer to interact online in English over Spanish (the acculturated set) rather than preferring Spanish (the newer set). And the takeaway is that just because your message is out there in Spanish, don’t assume it is being seen by all Hispanics.

So this raises the question for search marketing – How do you target Hispanics in an English search campaign? I’ve been asked this question a few times, and the answer is not as simple as blanco y negro. First let me clarify for those unfamiliar that search as a marketing medium is different from others in several ways, one being that your customers are already actively looking for you.

So surely there are Hispanic customers already looking for you in English. That’s great, but remember – bidding on English keywords means that you’re going to attract clicks from general market searchers too. Depending on your budget and the relevance of your product or service, this is probably more of a good thing than a bad one. But if you really want to hone in specifically on Hispanic users, I’ll offer these two suggestions to help point you in the right direction –

1. Be culturally intelligent and relevant when writing your copy. By integrating some ‘popular’ Spanish terms such as fiesta into English-language copy, for example, your ad won’t alienate your general market audience but it could help raise an eyebrow and encourage clicks from your Hispanic searchers.

2. Geo-target your campaign to areas of high Hispanic population density. Geo-targeting was also discussed in a previous post (”Two Effective Ways to Reach Hispanic Searchers“). But it’s a cost effective way to approach an English-language campaign, and you can reasonably estimate that a percentage of your clicks represents the Hispanic searchers in that area.

Aside from a well-constructed Spanish-language search campaign, there are techniques to help your English search campaign hit a note with your Hispanic audience. Just be prepared for that wider net to catch the general market too.