How well do You really know your Audience?

This is a follow up to our blog “Should I Reach Out to Hispanics in English? Spanish? Or Both?”.  If you read that entry, you’ll know that asking that question first is not the best approach.  The focus has to be on the target audience/customer.  They will dictate the language and the discussion.  Your job is to find a way to be a part of that discussion.

How do you do that?  First, you need to get to know your target audience better.

So, if you think you know your audience/customer well, can you answer these questions?

– What does your target audience like about your brand/company?

– Where and when are they having discussions about your brand/company?

– How does your audience engage your brand/company?

– What do they do if they dislike something about your brand/company?

– What are the five hottest topics of discussion?

– How do they make decisions?

– Do you know who influences them?

– After you’ve answered those questions, THEN ask if they are having the discussions in English, Spanish … or both.

If you don’t know the answers, you’re not alone.  The good news is the answers are available.  You simply need to go and listen.
Your customers ARE out there talking about you.  You want to be part of the conversation, right?  It’s no longer good enough to simply push messages out and hope people engage.  Savvy marketers are searching for where the discussion is happening and meeting their customers/potential customers there.  It’s almost like a game of Where’s Waldo?, except in reality it’s called “Where are our customers?” and “What are they doing once we find them?”.

Do you have a program in place to listen to your audience/customers?  I think this is one of the main reasons large corporations aren’t spending big money in the Hispanic market.  It’s because they haven’t been given good evidence of where and how they should spend the money?

We know that more money spent in the Hispanic market will yield results.  But think of this from the CMO’s point of view.  He/she may not know the market as well as we do.  The CMO knows, anecdotally, that the US Hispanic is a growth market…but CMOs work with evidence, not anecdotes.  They need solid evidence as  to why spending money is a good thing.  Those of us in the Hispanic market can show the way, but it will require a new perspective.

Yes, most traditional media targeting Hispanics is in Spanish….for now.  I think we can all agree that will start to change.  The census showed us that half of the Latinos in the US were born here.  That means they are all likely English-dominant.  They may be bi-lingual, but are more likely to be speaking English outside the home.  So, we need to figure out when and where they are speaking English and/or Spanish.  And that is going to be different for every brand and every company.  There is no cookie-cutter approach.

Develop an approach that will find where your customers are having their discussions about you and find out what they are discussing.  This will provide you with the answers you need to develop a successful strategy to engage those customers.

It all goes back to what many of us were taught in developing programs.  Do the research, and the findings will dictate the strategy.  Many have strayed from that as years of experience have taught them how to engage without necessarily doing all of the research.  And many got (get) away with it because it worked.  The Internet and social media have changed all of that…especially in the Hispanic market.  We need to go back to square one and re-learn.  That is, if we want to be successful.

Courtesy of TeleNoticias.