How can I get more Hispanic customers to use my website?
To reach a targeted demographic, try driving traffic through portals rather than through search engines.
Claudio Batista, Raztro.com, Washington, D.C.
I launched an auction site in Spanish a couple of years ago, and it hasn’t had much traffic. I tried sending e-mails to a Hispanic mailing list to make people aware of the site, but got no results. What do you suggest?
By Anne Fisher, Fortune Small Business contributor
Dear Claudio: You’re smart to target Latino consumers, whose purchasing power has exploded from $653 billion in 2003 to a projected $1 trillion this year.
“The Hispanic market is one of the few real growth areas right now, especially online,” says Michelle Villalobos, CEO of Miami-based Mivista Consulting.
Latino households with Internet connections are growing 20% a year, and 39% of those already wired are in high-income neighborhoods. Villalobos says those customers are more likely to find Hispanic or bilingual websites via portals than through conventional search engines. Three of the biggest: terra.com, univision.com, and telemundo.yahoo.com. To draw bidders to your site, Villalobos suggests linking with or advertising on one or more of them.
Marcela Gomez, CEO of Hispanic Marketing Group in Nashville, adds that the row of zeroes on your home page makes it painfully clear that no one has bid on anything. “No one wants to be first,” she says. “You need to ask your friends and relatives to get the bidding started so there is some activity showing.”
Then, to create buzz about your site, choose one medium-sized city – maybe Charlotte, which has a growing Hispanic population – and concentrate your marketing there before trying to go national. Once you see some auction action, Gomez adds, follow through with a toll-free customer service number staffed by Spanish speakers. That alone will make you stand out: Gomez says less than one-third of online businesses aimed at Hispanics now have one.
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DiggClaudio,
Try this as an interesting exercise.
Before thinking about the audience, start by looking at the products you’re auctioning. Who might they appeal to? Are there any communities or groups out there that might have a particular interest in these items? Narrowcasting like this might help you build up a core group of loyalists.
Also, these days it’s easier than ever to set your site up in multiple languages; having an english-language version might help broaden your audience.
Good luck!
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I suggest you to spend some money, even 100$ on ad in Google or other famous Spanish site. I’m sure; in this case you will get traffic from it.