According to a Google study, the US Hispanic Market ranks 15^th in total internet population. It is said they are also better educated, heavier online users, more likely to have a broadband connection and more inclined to search and click on ads in English compared to other minority races.

So I ask myself, is Hispanic targeting for me? Here’s what I found out: There are several different attempts one can make to target the Hispanic market. One, is to create a new site-targeted ppc campaign with your ad text in English. The sites you should target should include should be Hispanic targeted sites like these:

For Life Style or Entertainment: Univision.com, elagulanews.com, vidalatina.cc, adonde.com, tercera.cl, mediotiempo.com and mundosoccer.com.

For Automotive: quierouncarro.com, motorawards.com, chileautos.cl, automecanico.com, Spanish.autoblog.com, patiotuerca.com and carsmexico.com.

Additional Hispanic targeted sites: solonosotras.com, fuego.com, brownpride.com, and latinola.com.

You can also enter another ad group within this campaign only with your keywords and ad text in Spanish. Hispanic people living in the US mostly use the English language as their main language. But they can also speak Spanish. If you run ads in both English and Spanish, you’re more likely to generate more traffic by catching Hispanic people who only speak in one language. Also, a lot of these Hispanic sites convert into English giving the user an option.

Another way you could target to the Hispanic market is if you have a Spanish speaking landing page. Most companies don’t have on-site translators to create these Spanish speaking landing pages for them. That’s why there are numerous English to Spanish and visa versa translation services available today. Some cost, some are free, and some just require you to register to their site.

But I encourage you to be cautious of these free translation services, they may not be entirely correct. I would recommend finding a Spanish speaking person to check over the translations if you’re thinking about using it for a landing page.

If you do have a Spanish speaking landing page or a site that converts into Spanish, you should definitely consider having keywords in Spanish in your ppc campaigns. This would work like any other ppc campaign you would set up, except the keywords and ad text are in Spanish, and the destination URL should lead visitors to your Spanish speaking site.

So could Hispanic targeting be for you? YES! Hispanics shop for the same things online that non-Hispanics do. They need services, products, insurance, cars; I could go on and on.

“There’s a relatively slim inventory of Spanish-language content and content in English that is culturally relevant. When you look at the content, it’s a limited fraction of the potential it can be given the hunger this audience has,” says Mark López, publisher of AOL Latino.

In other words, right now is a great opportunity to tap into the Hispanic market because it is virtually un-traveled territory, and competition is minimal.

BEWARE!

If you are in an industry where you GEO-Target your ppc ads, you may want to look up the Hispanic population in your area before you start building that Spanish speaking landing page. According to Search Engine Roundtable, the top 5 markets for reaching Hispanics are: New York, Chicago, LA, Houston and Miami.

When it comes down to whether or not you should target a specific group of people, wouldn’t it make you feel better if you just try? Perhaps if the Hispanic market is minimal in your area, you create a small, site targeted campaign with low bids, and see if anything comes of it. At least you can say you tried. I do believe that companies targeting Hispanics online will grow larger and larger in the future. Eventually, it could get just as competitive as English speaking websites.

Gracias!

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 7th, 2007 at 8:26 am and is filed under Advanced PPC Strategies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.