Multicultural Spotlight: Reaching US Hispanics

Thursday, September 30, 2010

Cross posted from the Agency Ad Solutions Blog.
Original post written by Meghan Sherlock, US Hispanic Specialist

Cristina is a person who interacts with media all day long. In the morning, she browses beauty sites before biking to work. Over lunch, she reads a Colombian newspaper to check in on the results of the presidential elections, and then texts her friend about dinner plans from her iPhone. She searches for restaurant recommendations, meets her friends at the restaurant, and finally goes home to watch her favorite telenovelas. Connected with technology and her culture, Cristina is a modern Latina, proud of being Hispanic and American at the same time.

Why should marketers care about Cristina, and others like her? Hispanics are the fastest growing US population, and their buying power is projected to reach $1.4T by 2013[1]. Hispanics are also coming online extremely quickly: the total time Hispanics spent online grew by 6.9% in 2009[2], 3.9 times faster than the general market rate.

To connect with Hispanics like Cristina online, it’s important to understand a few key myths about the market.

Myth #1: I need to have a Spanish-language website in order to market to Hispanics.
While 22% of Hispanics speak only Spanish and another third prefer it, most US Hispanics are comfortable with English[3] and feel that English sites are more comprehensive[4]. While a Spanish-language website can be an asset, it won’t make or break the success of your campaign so long as you think carefully about your message and present a compelling value proposition on your site.

Myth #2: The return on investment from Hispanic marketing isn’t big enough.
Hispanic advertising campaigns are often more cost-effective than main-market campaigns. Online CPCs and CPMs tend to be much cheaper due to low competition, and Hispanics are actually more likely than their general market counterparts to take action based on search and banner ads[5]. Moreover, over half of online Hispanics complete a purchase at least once a month[6], so direct response marketers can engage as deeply as brand builders can.

Myth #3: My general market campaign covers the Hispanic market.
Hispanics may be comfortable with English content, but marketers are missing the opportunity to win Hispanics’ loyalty if they use their general market campaign as a catch-all. Hispanics value their identity, and 66% of US Hispanics appreciate being marketed to in a culturally relevant way[7]. A recent campaign by Ford demonstrated how bilingual marketing can improve sales: Ford’s marketing team doubled the incremental lift of their English creative when they rolled out dual-language, culturally relevant creative[8] in a recent direct mail campaign.

Interested in learning more about Hispanics in the US? Email multicultural@google.com to stay in touch, and keep an eye out for fresh primary research in Q4 and Q1.

[1] Selig Center for Economic Growth, Terry College of Business, The University of Georgia. "The Multicultural Economy 2008." January 2009.
[2] Comscore, April 2009. “U.S. Hispanic Internet Audience Growth Outpaces Total U.S. Online Population by 50 Percent.”
[3] Juan Tornoe. “Hispanic Marketing Is Not Spanish Marketing.” http://nglc.biz/2010/07/22/hispanic-marketing-is-not-spanish-marketing/. July 2010. http://advertising.aol.com/sites/default/files/webfm/research/HispanicCyberStudy-2010.pdf.
[4] AOL Hispanic Cyberstudy. 2010.
[5] “Search ads”: ARAnet Adfusion survey conducted by Opinion Research Corporation, provided by eMarketer, March 16 2009. “Banner ads”: eMarketer. “US Internet Users Likely to Read And Take Action After Viewing Banner Ads, by Race/Ethnicity.” June 2009.
[6] RTO Online, Hispanic Internet Usage Report, February 2009.
[7] Alvaro Cabrera, Executive Director of Integration at Diest, Inc. June 25, 2009. “10 Things You Should Know About US Hispanics.” http://juantornoe.blogs.com/hispanictrending/2009/06/10-things-you-should-know-about-us-hispanics.html.
[8] Deliver Magazine. August 2010. “Talk, Don’t Translate.”

Digital Meets Shopper Marketing

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Posted by Jenny Liu, Industry Marketing Manager, CPG

For decades, a marketer's control over consumer communication was generally straightforward - they dictated the times, places and delivery channels to passive consumers via offline media vehicles. The internet changed that completely, turning the act of consuming into a self-initiated exercise or a two way communication, rather than a passive process. Today’s consumer actively seeks out the information for herself, and increasingly is able to find everything that she needs quickly, easily and whenever and wherever she needs it. The result is an increasingly complex path to purchase.

Google and Catapult, a digital shopper agency teamed up with In-Store Marketing Institute to sponsor at 24-page white paper titled "Clicking Through the Path to Purchase: Best Practices in Digital Shopper Marketing" authored by Peter Breen of the In-Store Marketing Institute. The comprehensive report paints a vivid picture of the "Zero Moment of Truth" and examines the behaviors and impact of online couponing, search, social media, product reviews and mobile. The paper illustrates clear examples of the innovative techniques that brands in the CPG space are employing today to engage with this audience.

The report came out with a list of things that marketers need to do to take full advantage of the new digital era. We highlight 5 below:

1. Focus on insights - Developing programs that will resonate with today’s shoppers requires a deep understanding of their needs and behaviors.

2. Look beyond the brand - Resonating with shoppers and aligning with retail partners will often require looking at the category or store-wide level.

3. Develop relevant content - The most important thing you can do is think about building your own assets.

4. Target - Many marketers are viewing location-based communication as the Holy Grail. Technology may soon let retailers “market by the aisle.”

5. Measure - Successful marketers will engage their research and analytics departments while designing programs (rather than after the fact) to assure a higher level of confidence in the accuracy of results.

Visit the full report for more details.

Creating a “Zero Moment of Truth”: Maximizing Search Opportunity in CPG

Thursday, September 02, 2010

Posted by Ali Manning, Industry Analyst for CPG

At Google, we view search as a “database of intentions”; for the CPG marketer, consumer search behavior reveals different moments during which we can connect with consumers who tell us (by typing into a search box) their varying levels of interest in our products. It’s up to us to connect with our customers at these “Zero Moments of Truth” (ZMOTs) and it can be helpful to understand how these align with the “CPG search universe”, especially because most CPG marketers don’t maximize this opportunity to reach customers through search.

Almost all CPG marketers have search ads that appear for their “brand” terms. That’s excellent. If someone asks about your brand, you should be there to answer.

But if we confine ourselves to just covering brand searches, we’re only reaching consumers who are self-identifying as being aware of our brand. We’re leaving out a big piece of the search pie.

Some CPG marketers expand search coverage to Product-related searches, an intuitive extension of standard search marketing efforts. Again, this is a great step—anyone who searches for a particular company's product should get the relevant brand message. But what about the users who are showing a high likelihood of interest in a product (and thus, potentially a particular brand), but are saying so indirectly?

These consumers are searching what we call Category & Association terms—searches that signal “I might be in the market for your product”, without having said just that.

For example, below is what the “search universe” looks like (scaled to actual search audience sizes) by Association, Category, Product and Brand for a moisturizer brand advertiser.

Source: Google Insights for Search
(note: these are searches for each set of terms related to ‘skiing’, ‘dry skin’, etc, which is independent of the advertiser’s search coverage)

Reaching a consumer across Association and Category searches increases the opportunity to reach potential customers in multiples, and each of these connections could create a Zero Moment of Truth. Which, in turn, can grow the demand for products and brands in a particular CPG category.
How does the CPG marketer connect with these consumers? That’s an “easy” one-two punch:
1. Relevant Content
2. Relevant Messaging (dependent on #1)
Of course, the opportunity to expand the universe might depend on the time of year (as it would for skiing):


Source: Google Insights for Search

What is most interesting is if we zoom into the other three sets of terms, they generally follow the same seasonal trend as skiing, which backs up the idea that all of these sets are touch-points to reach a consumer at (or create!) a zero moment of truth:


Source: Google Insights for Search

However, notice that searches for brand xyz remain nearly flat while the related searches for the Product (“moisturizer”), Category (“dry skin”) and Association (“skiing”, above) soar. It’s likely that this advertiser isn’t capitalizing on the search opportunity across these other sets, and so consumers aren’t being reached by Brand XYZ’s message, and aren’t, in turn, increasing their searches for Brand XYZ. These gaps are an opportunity for Brand XYZ to generate interest and demand in its products by creating a ZMOT through search.