Elements of an Effective Hispanic Marketing Campaign

Even as the U.S. Hispanic population growth is increasingly driven by U.S.-born Hispanics, a recent “Facebook IQ” study found that marketing in Spanish is still important. The study reports that 80% of U.S. Hispanics say they do not feel the need to give up speaking Spanish in order to assimilate into American culture.

This contradicts a recent trend of replacing Multicultural Marketing with an all-encompassing message delivered in a single language. As the number of bilingual Hispanics continues to grow, so do the opportunities for marketers to deliver culturally relevant messages.

When consuming media online, the majority of bilingual Hispanics use Spanish at least half of the time. This stands in opposition to the idea that Spanish becomes less relevant as a Hispanic consumer becomes acculturated.

It is important to note, however, that there is a gap between the ROI of TV ads in English and in Spanish. A Nielsen study found that the ROI of English ads were $0.30 higher than those of Spanish ads.

After an in-depth analysis of these results, Nielsen found that 54% of the Spanish ads actually had equal or higher ROI than the English ads. Several factors were found to increase the effectiveness of these ads:

·        Original Spanish language rather than translations from English ads or voice-overs

·        Humor relevant to Hispanic culture

·        Relatable settings

Ads that incorporated the above elements saw significantly higher ROI than English-language ads.

In order to effectively reach the growing population of U.S. Hispanics, campaigns not only need to incorporate the Spanish language but also culturally relevant messaging.