By Mario Carrasco, Media Post

For the third year in a row, Google has opened the doors of its New York office for its annual Multicultural Marketing Forum. Since its inaugural year, Google has expanded the focus of the then-U.S. Hispanic Marketing Forum to include African-American, Asian, and LGBTQ audiences. While the forum now covers more verticals, this event is still a game changer for Hispanic market researchers.

This year’s theme, “Marketing in a Multicultural World,” doubles down on the shifting demographic reality in the United States, informing attendees — primarily marketers and researchers — that multicultural marketing does not operate in a silo. It is a larger paradigm shift that all brands should acknowledge, especially when looking at younger generations such as cross-cultural Gen Z.

Presenting a fusion of proprietary Google research and client case studies, The Google 2017 Multicultural Marketing Forum (#MMF17) was a who’s who of multicultural thought leaders and practitioners.

Margie Bravo, the senior marketing manager at Nestle USA, revealed the secrets of how to get senior-level executives at large organizations to buy into the importance of multicultural audiences for topline growth. To make her case, she spoke from the perspective of the lonely internal champion and provided real-world methods for getting the c-suite to listen and take action.

Nikki Newsome, group director at OMD USA, walked through a compelling case study on how State Farm connects with Hispanics by understanding their audience and being intentional about engaging with them in ways culturally meaningful to them. Actionable research was the foundation of their strategy, and those insights were carried all the way through execution and measurement.

by Mario Carrasco - ThinkNow

Only seven weeks in, 2017 is already showing signs of being a big year for multicultural marketing. Corporations are doubling down on diversity initiatives. Strategic purchases and mergers have occurred and projected multicultural spend is trending upward for the year.

But despite this year’s momentum, I just can’t shake the notion that targeting and segmenting via ethnicity is weighing us down.

The execution and creation of quotas based on census demographic data is what drives market research. Essential to creating representative samples, especially in the multicultural space, is ethnicity. And for decades, this has given marketers accurate reads of ethnic cohorts across the U.S.

The Rise of Cross-Cultural Marketing

But times are changing and even the Census is grappling with how to ask about ethnicity in their surveys. When you combine that with the rise of cross-cultural marketing, one starts to ask the question, “How relevant is ethnicity when building representative samples?”

Cross-cultural marketing is quickly becoming a reality for many brands, and not because it’s trendy. Marketers have realized that culture is fluid and that different ethnicities are embracing a multitude of cultures other than their own.

We saw that play out in our recent “We Are Gen Z” report. The data revealed that the majority of Gen Z consumers across ethnicities are open to trying foods from other cultures. This is telling because food is one of the most critical components of culture. To see a cross-pollination of food choices and preferences across ethnicities, in my opinion, illustrates that this fluidity is here to stay.

Diluted Traditional Ethnic Quota Models

Traditionally, market researchers have built ethnic quotas based on ethnic background coupled with other demographic data such as census regions, income, and education. For example, a bicultural Mexican-American from Los Angeles would be representative of a West Coast Latino and a low acculturated Dominican from Brooklyn would be representative of an East Coast Latino.

This classification now seems dated as the bicultural Mexican-American could have more in common with an African-American millennial from the Bronx than a fellow Latino from Los Angeles.

Technology and Passive Behavioral Data

So how do we construct quotas that are inclusive of culture? And how do we define the different cultures that will comprise these quotas? I mentioned in my previous column that we need to move beyond segmentation for segmentation’s sake and that is a good place to start.

Technology has accelerated the cross-cultural makeup of the U.S. (and the world). With that shift comes a wave of data that marketers have barely penetrated due to the sheer volume of it.

The key to creating relevant cultural quotas, in my opinion, lies in the analysis of passive behavioral data. Specifically, mobile behaviors, which give us an unprecedented look into the habits and preferences of the majority of Americans.

Creating digital cultural buckets based on these preferences will enable market researchers to go beyond ethnicity and create meaningful quotas for custom market research.

Pairing this research with behavioral data will allow marketers to unveil key consumer insights at a deeper more meaningful level, empowering cross-cultural marketers with the tools to develop creative that resonates beyond ethnicity to what matters — culture.

Your Editor Explains It is not the ethnicity, it’s the culture that matters.

Dealer Marketing Magazine

To help capture this growing market, there are companies that translate auto industry websites for the Spanish-speaking U.S. Hispanic market, helping businesses reach consumers through search engine optimization, social media, and more. Bilingual …

Tap into the demographic that will drive 50% of America’s population growth over the next five years, and will represent a buying power of $1.7 trillion by 2020

By Charles Whiteman

When it comes to identifying new customers—and finding creative ways to market to them—few businesses are as nimble as U.S. automobile dealerships. They’re quick to spot underserved markets and craft resonant, authentic communication.
For more than a decade, the industry has witnessed and adapted to the increasing cultural diversification within the U.S. There’s no better example of this than the Hispanic market, which has grown dramatically in size, cultural influence, and buying power.

The savviest OEMs and dealerships have courted these consumers for years. Toyota and Nissan in particular have led the industry in wooing Hispanics. In 2014 alone, Hispanics contributed to nearly 40% and 30% of total brand growth for Toyota and Nissan, respectively.

Game-changing opportunity

Auto purchases by Hispanic buyers are on track to double from 2010 to 2020, growing at a pace of 116%. Hispanics will buy nearly 2 million new vehicles this year. In the first two quarters of 2016, new vehicle sales to this demographic grew six times more than the general market’s.

On average, these car buyers are about 30% more likely to be buying their first vehicle, and are increasingly likely to buy a new vehicle over a used one. Hispanics are also 50% more likely to buy a luxury car as their first vehicle—great news for the industry.

Dealerships can increasingly court these consumers, thanks to the internet. Americans now conduct research online and comparing car prices more than ever, and the Hispanic market is no exception.

About eight in every 10 new vehicle buyers use the internet to help them make a purchasing decision; they conduct about 14 hours of online research before making a purchase.

Insider knowledge

To help capture this growing market, there are companies that translate auto industry websites for the Spanish-speaking U.S. Hispanic market, helping businesses reach consumers through search engine optimization, social media, and more.

Bilingual fluency among Hispanics is continually increasing, but serving these consumers in Spanish remains critical. About 75% of Hispanics speak Spanish at home. Nearly four in 10 prefer to read online and offline content in “all Spanish” or “mostly Spanish.”

Those are huge numbers, considering the Hispanic population has grown more than 58% since 2000, will drive 50% of America’s population growth over the next five years, and will represent a buying power of $1.7 trillion by 2020.

Capturing even a fraction of this market’s attention and revenue can mean huge gains for local dealerships.

To make an impact from a website development and technology standpoint—and understand what Hispanics are looking for when engaging with a website in their language—it’s vital to examine the performance of top translated automotive sites in operation in North America markets.

Examining engagement metrics such as traffic, bounce rates, and more allows marketers and translation service providers to identify key behaviors among online Hispanic car shoppers.

For starters, Spanish-speaking Americans are ravenous content consumers. They view 10% more pages per site visit than other demographics.

Nearly half of the website traffic coming to Spanish auto sites is organic, including traffic driven by Spanish-language keywords.

And although the second-largest traffic source to these sites is direct traffic, the third-largest source hails from referral traffic from car brands’ English sites. Spanish sites have a higher percentage of referral traffic than other demographics examined.

Smart dealers should mention their Spanish sites in local marketing efforts—and provide links to Spanish sites on their primary English sites—to help increase awareness among these consumers.

Bounce rates on U.S. Spanish sites are generally higher than other demographics’, though this is due in large part to considerable inbound Spanish-speaking traffic from Latin American countries.

Indeed, U.S.-based sites provide marketing cross-border marketing value; they often provide rich content experiences not available to international users in their own markets.

Research concluded that sports cars represent the most-researched vehicle type among Hispanics. Subcompact cars claim second place. Third place goes to compact cars.

Advice and next steps

How can dealerships best serve this ever-growing market? Creating authentic, culturally relevant online experiences for Hispanics—accessible in their languages of choice, on their devices of choice—goes a long way.

Reaching these online-savvy shoppers starts by deploying a Spanish version of a dealership’s website, and ensuring it remains in sync with the content and inventory found on the dealer’s English website.

For instance, when new services or sales promotions are unveiled on the English site, they should immediately appear on the Spanish site. When vehicles are sold on the lot, their product pages are removed from the English site—and the Spanish site updates in real time.

Years ago, this represented a technically complex, costly endeavor. These days, affordable solutions exist that can deploy secure, translated sites in weeks. Daily maintenance is performed automatically.

Translation is a necessary first step, but delivering authentic experiences is also especially important. A 2015 Google study indicated that 70% of Hispanics believe in the importance of a website’s content being culturally relevant.

To address this, dealerships should consider customizing text, graphics, or promotional elements on their translated sites to woo Spanish-speaking consumers. Apply this method to traditional advertisements, social ads, and in-language pay-per-click campaigns, too.

Making this content available on mobile phones is also mission-critical. For years, Hispanics have over-indexed in mobile phone use, using their smartphones far more than the non-Hispanic average.

More than 35% of Hispanic car shoppers find in-app mobile ads persuasive, according to a study commissioned by NBC Universal.

The study also revealed that these customers are very active on social media. Up to 50% of Hispanic respondents discuss brands online, and use brand hashtags in social posts.

Finally, make sure your team on the ground can linguistically accommodate Spanish-speaking consumers when they visit the lot. This means leveraging Spanish-fluent sales team members, and providing in-store signage, dealership, and product information—and purchase contracts—in Spanish.

Charles Whiteman is senior vice president of client services at MotionPoint Corp., a leading enterprise localization platform. He may be reached at [email protected]. MotionPoint helps world-class brands grow by engaging and enriching the lives of new customers in markets around the globe.

Your Editor Discovers: Overindexing

Audi, Anheuser-Busch, Airbnb and other Super Bowl advertisers risked controversy this weekend with ads that were seen as having a progressive edge. But how risky is it, really, for advertisers to take a progressive stance in a mass-market setting?

At least in regards to one hot-button topic, diversity, a recent survey suggests audiences—especially younger ones—may actually favor ads that highlight diversity.

A September 2016 survey of US internet users from Barkley and Futurecast found that a significant majority of respondents of all ages said they favor ads that “show real people, not just gender stereotypes from the past.”

When respondents were asked whether or not they agreed that “changing ideas about gender are allowing more people to be themselves,” 60% of Gen Zers (ages 15 to 19) and 58% of millennials (ages 20 to 35) said yes, compared with 52% of baby boomers. These younger users were considerably more likely than baby boomers to agree that they “like seeing ads that show diverse types of families.”

Barkley and Futurecast’s poll aligns with findings from a survey from The Harris Poll conducted earlier in 2016, which showed that younger US internet users tend to be more open to issues surrounding multiculturalism. Nearly seven in 10 millennial respondents (ages 18 to 34) said they prefer watching movies and TV shows with multicultural casts, compared with 56% of total respondents, while 65% said they would shop more at a retailer that offers a wider selection of multicultural products, vs. 49% of total respondents. And nearly half of millennials said they would pay more for a brand that really understands their multicultural needs.

The survey results reflect the makeup of the younger groups: Millennials, and to an even greater extent, members of Gen Z, are more racially and culturally diverse than any generation before them, and according to a study conducted last year from J. Walter Thompson (JWT), tend to be much more accepting of nontraditional gender roles.

“We’re seeing a more multicultural, diverse and open society, especially among millennials,” said Quim Gil, head brand planner at Richards/Lerma, a Hispanics-focused agency, in an interview with eMarketer. “We know that these new, modern consumers share an endless curiosity and openness to new cultures, no matter what their skin color. They want to learn new languages, travel and hear different opinions—they don’t want to be siloed.”

Your Editor Agrees: Openness to new cultures enriches all