By Craig Witt,
MotionPoint
Summer is a good time for vacation, relaxation and preparing
for the important back-to-school shopping season—after all, it’s the second-largest
shopping event in the U.S., behind only the Christmas shopping season.
U.S. retailers should make sure they don’t ignore their multicultural
customers, especially Hispanics. If anything, companies should actually put more focus on the Hispanic market: A
recent survey
found that U.S. Hispanic parents are expected to spend $148 more during
back-to-school than the average shopper.
More People, More Purchasing
The number of Hispanics in the U.S. — both with children and
without — continues to grow. The Hispanic population has been the principal
driver of demographic growth in the U.S. since 2000, accounting for half of total
population growth. And the Hispanic
population continues to expand, reaching 58.6 million in 2017.
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As the second-largest racial or ethnic group in the U.S., this
group plays a significant role in the nation’s population trends. With one in
four children of Hispanic origin
or descent, retailers should be thinking about how they can target the U.S.
Hispanic consumer around back-to-school this year.
More Hispanics Are Attending Schools And
Universities
Because education is so highly valued within Hispanic culture,
high school dropout rates have continued to decline while college enrollment
rises, according
to the Pew Research Center. Research shows that:
·
The Hispanic dropout rate fell from 16% in 2011
to 10% in 2016.
·
The percent of Hispanic high school graduates
ages 18 to 24 enrolled in college rose from 32% in 1999 to 47% in 2016.
·
The number of Hispanics enrolled in public and
private nursery schools, K-12 schools and colleges rose from 9.9 million in
1999 to 17.9 million in 2016, a jump of 80%.
This represents an opportunity for businesses to demonstrate
that they are in touch with Latino culture by marketing their products to the
U.S. Hispanic population — and doing so in the language many prefer to speak at
home: Spanish.
Best Practices
To effectively reach this population, companies should
engage in three best practices:
Be Active in Engagement:
Retailers’ Spanish-language web sites should have newly created landing pages
devoted to back-to-school supplies, clothing and electronics. These pages
should be actively promoted across marketing channels.
But companies shouldn’t just have a Spanish-language “microsite.”
In theory, microsites can be easier to manage, but they can alienate
Spanish-speaking Hispanics who expect to be treated as important customers. Microsites
deliver limited experiences, limited capabilities and diminished consumer
value. Spanish-speaking Hispanic customers expect content parity in their
local-market web sites. It’s a turn-off when a local site’s content quantity
and quality is “less than” a company’s primary-market web site. Instead,
companies should invest in a fully-translated version of their flagship web site
when possible, preserving the complete content experience for Spanish-language
customers.
Stay Relevant with Content:
Marketing and promotional messaging should be tailored for U.S. Hispanics on
Spanish-language web sites to demonstrate a company’s commitment to — and
understanding of — this population’s specific needs. For instance, NRF’s latest
back-to-school shopping survey broke down the average budget for the Hispanic
shopper. It found that, generally, Hispanic shoppers spend more
money on clothing than they would on other items, such as electronics or school
supplies. For retailers who carry a diverse product assortment of various items
that could apply to back-to-school, promotional messaging should emphasize
product assortment accordingly.
Make Sure You’re Mobile-Friendly:
Companies must make sure their localized web sites can be accessed by their
customers’ preferred devices, since Hispanics are “power users” of mobile
devices:
·
Nearly 85% of Hispanics use
their mobile devices to research products while they shop.
·
Hispanic shoppers are influenced more by mobile
coupons and deal apps than television advertisements, social media,
or in-store displays.
·
WhatsApp,
a mobile messaging application, is used by Hispanics more often than any other
demographic group.
Grow Your Customer Base: Engage
Hispanics During Back-To-School Season
Companies that pay attention to the way that Hispanic
families shop during back-to-school season — and communicate with them in their
preferred language, with a complete customer experience that caters to mobile
devices — have the opportunity to substantially grow their customer base, brand
loyalty and ultimately their bottom line.
Craig Witt is the
Executive Vice President of Global Sales and Marketing at MotionPoint,
a company that solves the operational complexity and cost of web site
localization. He has 28 years’ experience in building, leading and scaling high
performing Go-To-Market teams at global enterprises.
