ONLINE HISPANIC MARKETING & SPANISH INTERNET MARKETING

An excerpt from: A Gringo's Guide to Online Hispanic Marketing

By Brian Krogstad & Miles Houck

Online Hispanic Marketing

The Internet can be a very positive place to do business. It is not the same as it was before the Internet bubble burst. During that time the Internet was a little out of control. Scams were common place, and many were making money for doing nothing. It is a little more challenging to do business on the Internet today because legitimate businesses are now competing fairly, right? The beauty of the Internet today is that any business, small or large, can compete fairly and the business with the best skills and planning will win. Is not this the way it should be?

If you experiment with the different approaches in this article, you will find which works the best for your business. As with any marketing campaign, proceed with caution. Start slow, evaluate the results, then ramp up the approach that is the most cost effective and yields the results you are looking for. When you see the desired return on your marketing investment, by all means, throw more money or effort at it. Then monitor the results and repeat the cycle.

Internet Marketing Options

Now let’s first introduce the many types of online marketing options available that are not targeted to Generation Equis but to all Internet users. Then we will give you specific information on how to execute a targeted marketing plan for Generation Equis online. The concepts are the same. The important differences are how you message (the text and visual presentation) and which online channels you use.

Affiliate Programs

Affiliate programs allow you to sign up resellers, or advertisers, of your products and services and have them earn a commission, or referral fee, for the sales that they generate or the visitors that they send to your website.

The key considerations when launching an online affiliate program are:

• Determining whether you are going to launch your own affiliate program or use the services of an affiliate network such as Commission Junction, LinkShare or Click Bank.

• Determining the commission, or referral bonus, structure you will offer to your affiliates. It is important that you offer a competitive payout that will motivate your affiliates to promote your website versus that of your competition.

• Identifying how you are going to track traffic, sales, and commissions as well as how you are going to deliver this information and payments to your affiliates. When you use an affiliate network, they will manage this part of the affiliate program for you.

• Developing an affiliate marketing area with sales tools such as; banners, text and product images that your affiliates can download and use to promote your website and sell your products.

• Creating policies governing the terms of your affiliate program that your affiliates must accept to participate and procedures to avoid Click Fraud. When you use an affiliate network, they will manage this part of the affiliate program for you.

• Just like a new website, your affiliate program will need to be promoted and advertised to potential affiliates.

When using affiliate programs to do business online with Generation Equis, it is important for you to provide all of your materials in Spanish and focus on bringing in affiliates with Spanish websites. Examples of this would be Spanish:

• Policies, terms and conditions.

• Affiliate website, newsletters and emails.

• Banners, text and product images.

• Affiliate advertising and marketing.

Banner Advertising

Larger websites, online newspaper, search engines and even some blogs offer space on their website for banner ads which are graphical advertisements that link to other websites.

Placing banner ads on other websites that link to your website will drive immediate traffic to your website. This translates into sales, strengthens your brand online and in some cases the banner ads can even be counted as inbound links that increase your placement on the search engine results page.

The key considerations to effectively utilize banner advertising campaigns are:

• Establish a banner advertising budget, your targeted return on investment, or conversion percentage, and determine what websites that you would like to see your banner ads displayed on.

• Design marketing focused banners, in all of the traditional sizes, which are product or service specific and determine which page of your website that each banner should link to.

• Create a banner advertising marketing plan that combines paid banner advertising and banner exchanges with other websites.

Please familiarize yourself with the banner advertising vocabulary below before launching a banner advertising campaign.

The key terms are:

• Banner – An ad image on another website linked to your site.

• Hits – The number of times that a webpage is “hit” or visited.

• Cookies – Files stored by a computer or web browser, and passed to your website, used to identify users and their activities online.

• Impressions – The amount of times a banner has been seen.

• Cost per Mille (CPM) – Cost per thousand impressions.

• Run of Network (RON) – A cost effective banner ad buying option in which an ad may appear on any page of the target network or website.

• Clicks – The amount of visits you receive from a banner.

• Click Through Rate (CTR) – Percentage of clicks received versus total impressions.

• Conversions – The percentage of visitors clicking through a banner to your website that make a purchase, fulfill your goal or respond favorably to your call to action.

When using banner advertising to do business online with Generation Equis, it is important that you design your banners with the same principles as developing a Spanish website in mind. Your banners should have content, a look and feel and an offer that will appeal to Generation Equis. Banner placement also must be considered. Banner exchanges should be limited to other Spanish websites as you do not want to display English banners on your Spanish website nor do you want your Spanish banners to be displayed on English websites.

When purchasing banner advertisements, you will most likely see a better return on investment (ROI) purchasing banners from larger Spanish websites whose visitors not only speak Spanish but could benefit from your business offering such as Soy Entrepreneur or Univision. You may even be surprised when you realize that a lot of times targeted Spanish online advertising is less expensive than traditional online advertising.

Pay Per Click (PPC) – Google & Yahoo

Pay per click, or PPC, advertising is an online advertising model used on websites, where advertisers pay the site hosting their advertisement only when their ad is clicked on and they receive a hit, or actual visit, to their website. PPC search engine advertising typically involves advertisers bidding on keyword phrases relevant to their product, service or offering versus content websites that generally charge a fixed price per click but are usually less targeted.

The key considerations to effectively utilize PPC advertising campaigns are:

• Keyword selection can make or break your PPC campaign. Similar to search engine optimization, when planning your PPC advertising campaign you need to determine the ‘key’ words that accurately describe your business, your product and what you offer. The correct keywords will attract visitors that convert.

• Establish a budget for your PPC campaign whether prepaid or pay-as-you-go. In addition to the overall campaign budget, you need to set a minimum and maximum budget for each and every keyword or phrase that you plan to advertise.

• An effective PPC advertisement will have a catchy title and text description that will pull the viewers attention away from the Organic, or free, search engine results and draw them to your advertisement. Keep in mind that you will be charged for each click on your advertisement. What draws people to click is very, very, very important. Typically people will click on something that has a catchy title and description that applies to what they are interested in.

• Make sure when they click on your ad that they find what your ad implied. It should be related to what enticed them to click on your ad in the first place and it should be a product or service you are marketing. This way you are far more likely to bring quality visitors to your website that find just what they were looking for. When you are paying for each and every visitor as you do with a PPC advertising campaign, quality is better than quantity.

• PPC advertising channels are a dime a dozen and click fraud, or fake hits that advertisers are charged for, have given the PPC advertising industry a black eye in recent years.

• It is generally safer, to avoid fraud, to use the big PPC advertisers such as; Google AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing.

Forums and Groups

Groups and forums are the online home away from home of people with similar interests. A good forum has loyal members that build friendships, share information, learn from other members and most importantly they check in, or log in, daily and love to socialize with other members. Groups and forums can be excellent marketing resources when used properly and are considered to be a secret marketing channel by many Internet Marketing Professionals.

The key considerations and benefits of targeted group and forum marketing are:

• Knowledge – by participating in groups and forums you will learn from the members, your target market, and it will help you grow your online business.

• Content – when you find yourself in need of content, you can always start a discussion on a subject in a group or forum and receive suggestions directly from members of the market that you are targeting.

• Marketing – after you become an active member of a group or forum and have a few relevant posts and discussions under your belt you can add a link to your website to your signature and profile page. If your posts are good, and on topic, they will be read and people will click on your website out of curiosity.

• SEO Friendly – in a lot of cases search engines recognize the inbound links to your website contained in the signature of your group and forum posts and this can help increase your ranking with the search engines.

Group and forum members love to talk, and share information, via group or forum posts. If you are able to join groups or forums and speak at their level, they will roll out the red carpet and you will be invited into their online community. Once you are invited in, you want them to enjoy your company and be happy that they extended you an invitation. That is the best way to ensure that you will be welcome in the future and will not be called out, or flagged, and will not get kicked out, or banned.

Some of the biggest mistakes that Internet marketers make when utilizing groups or forums to promote their websites are:

• Using the forum to blatantly advertise their website by posting information about it in or placing a link to their website in their post.

• Adding a link to their website to their profile page or signature as soon as they join without establishing a reputation as a true contributor to the forum.

• Private messaging other members and promoting their website.

• In essence the biggest mistake of all; SPAMMING, SPAMMING & more SPAMMING.

Those tactics will get your post flagged and removed before you can refresh your screen and you can even be banned for life from that community. In the case of a moderated forum, your post will most likely not even be seen by any of its members. Why? A good moderator can see through Spam in a heartbeat and will delete your post before it is even visible.

When using groups and forums to promote your website to Generation Equis, you must select the groups and forums centered on a common interest that is equally of interest to Generation Equis, your customers and the potential customers that you are targeting.

It is equally important that you select high traffic, Spanish groups and forums that are well ranked with the search engines such as; Terra, Yahoo Grupos and Hispavista.

DON'T WASTE TIME & MISS THIS OPPORTUNITY!

Please contact Generation Equis Media by email by clicking the button below, or visit our Hispanic Marketing Forums, for additional information on Hispanic marketing, SEO, Spanish Website Design, Business Consulting & Hispanic Demographics.