• by Sebastian Aroca , January 31, 2013

In a previous article, “Allocating Latino Marketing Budgets With Projections,” we started discussing one of the most serious issues that come into play when planning multicultural marketing strategies: budget allocation.

Today, we will focus on the remaining points: organic search and paid search campaigns, and revenue consideration and measuring sales data.

Organic Search and Paid Search

When planning your Hispanic marketing strategy, one question you probably ask yourself is, what percentage of your marketing dollars to allocate to print, tv, radio, and online. For those dollars that are directed online (our focus here), the next question is, how much goes to organic search and paid search campaigns (we decided to selectively ignore social media for simplicity’s sake and because it deserves another article on its own). 

Normally, there’s always some sort of combination between efforts involving organic search and paid search. How to hit that sweet spot? Here are a few important questions you may want to ask yourself to self-assess your situation:

• How important is creating brand awareness for your company?
  
  
• Is your website a lead-generation platform (transactional), a media informative platform (publications, magazines, etc.) where you post relevant content regularly and monetize by selling advertising to consumer brands, or one through which you sell products and services (or subscriptions/memberships) to a group of Hispanic consumers?
  
  
• Does your business model flourish from recurring business (repeated visitors), or is the nature of your service a one-time deal like providing legal advice to specific commercial underwriters after a natural disaster?
  
  
• How soon do you need to start generating traffic, leads or sales? Do you give priority to long term over short-term goals or vice versa?
  
  
• Do your web properties require low or high levels of customer engagement?
  
  
• How competitive your keywords are in the web sphere?
  
  
• What are your human resources capabilities (in-house and third-party agencies) in terms of personnel capable of generating unique and culturally sensitive content that is appealing to Hispanic Americans?

When marketing to Latinos, it is important not to overlook language barriers when considering the Hispanic demographic, both in the United States and Latin America – particularly when trying to reach this demographic through ads and web content. Enough has been written about this topic so I will continue with other considerations when planning multicultural marketing strategies. 

CPM, CPC and CPA Considerations

In Hispanic search engine marketing, in order to gauge the effectiveness of a paid advertising campaign, it is important not only to measure cost per impression and cost per click, but also cost per conversion and cost per acquisition or cost per enrollment metrics. 

It may be tempting for business executives to significantly increase their spending on Latino advertising due to the rising affluence of the ethnic group, but all the metrics presented above should always be observed to guarantee that a good portion of Latino consumers are exposed to a specific marketing campaign, and that enough of them visit your landing pages, enroll in your programs or acquire your products and services.

Revenue Consideration and Measuring Sales Data

Budget allocation should always be performed along a sound revenue projection. Increased spending when marketing to Hispanic Americans should be justified by the demand and the leads or consumer sales that it can generate. Statistical models and recent reports can help in this regard, and even the judgment of staff members who have first-hand experience in this matter can be trusted, but the bottom line remains: Marketing budgets should always be contingent upon revenue projections. 

Multicultural marketing requires a segmented accounting of sales. Qualitative data should always be analyzed and factored in, but quantitative data are the best indicator when making future decisions about budget allocation as well as determining ROI.

With that said, I am interested in hearing what you think about planning for Hispanic marketing campaigns. Please leave comments, good or bad. If you liked it, please share it via email or tweets.