Gone are those days when businesses in the United States used to pay no attention to the Latino community. Nowadays, they are the apple of every businessman’s eyes. And why not? This third largest ethnic group in the United States boasts a $1.4 trillion purchasing capacity. Now, that is a market that every business wants to enter.
Now, before concentrating on how businesses can win the Latino people over with, take a quick look at why businesses have ignored them so far? A few years back, it was thought that the Latino people are too loyal to change their brands and that they are not interested in luxury products.
However, the recent years have proven things otherwise. Today, thanks to the rise in purchasing capacity, the Hispanics are willing to experiment with brands and luxury products. Hence, more and more businesses are getting increasingly interested in conquering this marketplace.
However, entering this market has not been as easy for the businesses as entering other markets. There are some tight spots that businesses have to come out of first. And in order to do so, they will have to know what those tight spots are.
Dealing with Latino community, businesses often face language issues. As most Latino people use Spanish as their first language, businesses have to do their promotions all over again in order to approach the Hispanic audience.
Similarly, the Latino people have a very different culture than the US. So, in order to make them buy a product, businesses have to adapt to their culture and convince them that the products or services they are offering are in perfect harmony with the Latino culture.
While both of these were very tough challenges for the businesses, they came up with some exciting solutions for these challenges.
Challenge 1: Language Issues
Solution: As most people of the Latino community chiefly speaks Spanish, the promotions and customer communications has to be in Spanish.
For promotions, everything from print, radio and TV ads to infomercials has to be in Spanish, so that it reaches the highest number of audience.
As for customer service, Spanish should be the prime mode of conversation. For this, businesses can have an in-house Spanish contact center or hire a Spanish call center service from Central America. While in-house contact center can be a pricey option for businesses, hiring one is an economic solution. It also allows businesses to render world class service to their customers.
Challenge 2: Cultural Issues
Solution: In order to deal with the cultural issues, companies have to introduce Latino culture in their marketing and promotional activities. For example – they can offer a discount during Latino festivals; hire a Latino celebrity for the promotional activities for the businesses. It will help them come closer to the Latino community, which eventually adds to their benefit.
Apart from these two major issues, there are some other issues a business has to keep in mind while entering the Latino marketplace.
Just changing promotional and customer relation strategies are not going to be enough to stay in the Latino marketplace. For that, businesses need to make some changes in their management structures as well. They must have a member of Latino community in the top management in order to oversee the best interests of the Latino consumers.
Having a Latino brand ambassador can also be a good strategy on behalf of the management.
However, in order to fit into the Latino marketplace, a company must not give up its long term goals. In fact, it should make the changes necessary while keeping its long term goal in mind. A lot of businesses have opted for this strategy in the Latino marketplace and has become immensely successful.
