Commentary
Allocating Marketing Budgets With Projections
- by Sebastian Aroca , January 17, 2013
The rapid growth of the Hispanic American consumer segment has been widely discussed over the last few years. It started well before the 2010 Census, which revealed that Latinos in the United States had grown by more than 27 million or nearly 10% during the first decade of the new century. This growth has certainly caught the attention of chief marketing officers at major corporations, advertising executives, search engine optimization experts, and other marketing professionals who are scrambling to tap into this burgeoning consumer group.
Targeting the Hispanic American market in the U.S. presents a series of challenges. The results of the 2000 Census were certainly eye-opening since the purchasing power of Latinos was estimated at $500 billion back then. By the time the 2010 Census data was compiled and presented, a Nielsen report mentioned in The National Journal indicated that the purchasing power of Hispanic Americans had grown to $1 trillion in 2012. Targeting a rising population that is increasingly becoming affluent should not be a problem for marketers who have access to unlimited resources, but the reality of budget apportioning and return on investment must be given serious consideration.
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There is plenty of information with regard to market intelligence and research into the consumer sensibilities of Hispanic Americans. The time is ripe for discussing some of the most serious issues that come into play when planning multicultural marketing strategies:
- Budget Allocation
- Organic Search and Paid Search Campaigns
- Cost Per Impressions, Cost Per Click and Cost Per
Enrollment
- Revenue Consideration & Measuring Sales Data
Today, we will focus on the first point: Budget Allocation.
Advertising and Marketing Budgets
Products or services that have wide appeal across the demographic spectrum should be marketed adequately. With regard to budget allocation when it comes to marketing to Hispanic Americans, business owners and executives should first take a close look at the products or services they offer and where they offer them.
The budgets should be allocated according to the demographics of the target market in question. If your market is Florida, California, or Texas, for instance, Hispanics account for more than 50% of all the population. If you are providing a service catered specifically to Hispanic Americans, maybe a regional approach where you target all Top Hispanic metropolitan areas in the nation would make a lot of sense. The states that have a population of 1 million or more Hispanic residents are Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, and Texas.
Download data on 2011 Population Estimates State Characteristics: Population by Race and Hispanic Origin (source: Pew Hispanic Center).
Hispanic Americans make up approximately 16.7% of the U.S. population. Since Latinos are a growing segment, it makes sense for business executives to allocate a few more dollars of their marketing budgets when targeting Hispanic Americans. According to the Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies, the top 500 advertisers in the U.S. utilized 5 to 6% of their budgets when targeting Latinos, more than 10% lower than the actual demographic presence.
I am interested in hearing what you think about Budgeting for Latino Marketing campaigns.
Hello Sebastian,
Kudos on the article, what a great platform to get the message about Hispanic Marketing to decision-makers!
In your opinion, what percentage of an online marketing budget ought to go towards social media (for a B2C organization)? And what are your thoughts on companies who use translation as their primary tactic when addressing US Hispanics?
Thanks,
Zeph Snapp
Thank you Zeph for your comments and questions. I am planning to address that on Part 2 next month. Let me post a preview here though since you asked. I think you would probably agree with me that for B2C organizations, the percentage of an online marketing budget to go towards social media would depend on how valuable and relevant "branding" and "engaging their customers" is for the organization, first and foremost. Some companies start with an Intern managing their social networks and others go as far as working with digital marketing agencies and investing in the development of facebook applications and so forth. I think social media has many benefits when done professionally for it adds depth and builds connections between brands and users/customers thru companies sharing relevant content, news, tips, coupons that is all appealing to readers. And at the same time, it helps SEO for SOCIAL, TRUST and PERSONAL are three OFF THE PAGE SEO factors that influence rankings. In my opinion, social media, PR and SEO/SEM folks (any combination of in-house and third party agencies) should all work in sync as interrelated teams and under one strategic direction.
As far as your Q on translation, I think that is a question many companies ask themselves. Are they better off translating to Spanish the content they have in English or creating content in Spanish from scratch? The best option would probably depend on the degree of independence of each language version, and the degree to what its English- and Spanish-language content needs to be synchronized, considering we are referring to web properties. Both strategies can be valid. If the Spanish site has autonomy and has its own promotions and news, then creating content from scratch (using content creation platforms such as www.createanarticle.com) in combination with some translations may work best. If the Spanish-language site is merely a Spanish-language version of the main English-language site, then the translated copy (localized and culturally sensitive) can be sufficed to keep the bilingual site up to date. Just my two cents worth.. what are your thoughts?
Hi Sebastian,
As you say, social is a big topic, I'll be writing a bit more about my views later on, but it's certainly an area where there needs to be significant investment.
As far as translated content, depending on the acculturation of your potential customers, sometimes a translated website is not even necessary (in our experience). But when it comes to content localization, our preference is always to use the current pages as a reference or template, but write the content from scratch. This is because when you give someone the job of translating pages, they generally fall into the trap of doing so in such a way that it doesn't feel right to those who are reading in other languages.
Very much looking forward to Part 2!