Hispanic Shoppers Receptive to Online Marketing Efforts

Businesses should tap into Hispanics’ openness to online marketing, concludes a recent report of several studies tracking shopping habits and Internet use.

While the report reveals conclusions to help marketers influence Hispanics to shop at their stores, small businesses also can use the findings to attract Hispanic consumers, who in 2010 are predicted to spend $125 billion on consumer packaged goods such as apparel, food, beverages, cleaning products, footwear, personal-care and beauty items and tobacco.

“Hispanics tend to try new brands so they’re highly engaged with e-mails and websites to find them,” Tobi Elkin, a senior editor at eMarketer, told BusinessNewsDaily. Elkin’s research firm aggregated and analyzed studies to create the report.

For example, 70 percent of Hispanics are likely to read online articles containing brand information whereas African-Americans and Caucasians  are less likely to do so (57 and 49 percent, respectively), according to the report. Furthermore, 62 percent of Hispanics are very or somewhat likely to take action after reading deals sent via e-mail and 57 percent are likely to take action after seeing sponsored search-engine advertisements, the report said. Non-Hispanics aren’t as likely to take action.

“Hispanics respond well to online offers. They’ll opt into e-mail newsletters. They love hearing about promotions. They’re great participators in opting in to get tips, coupons and special offers,” Elkin said.

Businesses, however, aren’t taking advantage of this. Spending on ads that targeted Hispanics represented less than 2 percent of total spending on ads in all categories, the report notes.

To appeal to Hispanics, whom the Census Bureau reported in 2009 are the largest minority in the United States at 47.4 million people, businesses can produce online marketing that targets Hispanics, include Spanish-language content on their websites, send deals via e-mail and create Spanish-language cell phone applications that offer coupons.

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