Search Marketing en Espanol

[AussieWebmaster]

Having a company that employees a large base of Portuguese speaking tech people is a good start towards entering the market.

[Luis Morais]

Originally Posted by AussieWebmaster

Having a company that employees a large base of Portuguese speaking tech people is a good start towards entering the market.

Yes true, Aussie . One has to value the possibilities behind good beginnings and I agree with you.

Cheers mate!

[Kal]

Originally Posted by Nacho

Keep your antennas up and stay in frequency. You should be hearing about SES Latino 2006 very soon.

SES Latino - how exciting! My husband and I have the opportunity to live in Mexico for a year (still considering it) and if my Spanish is up to scratch by next July you may well see me there Nacho!

[Nacho]

Originally Posted by Kal

SES Latino - how exciting! My husband and I have the opportunity to live in Mexico for a year (still considering it) and if my Spanish is up to scratch by next July you may well see me there Nacho!

I look forward to see both of you there! Here is the SES Latino 2006 website for you to bookmark.

Nacho, your opinion on quepasa was helpful--I am running an ROI-based, geo-targeted campaign for a major cell provider and we're considering a trial paid search program aimed at the hispanic market. Any intel on the rural/urban distribution of hispanic online population you cited-or online hispanic population by major/metro or DMA? Also, our ads are currently appearing on the english version of Quepasa--any idea which of my paid search partners is providing the ad to Quepasa?

Originally Posted by Nacho

The online Spanish speaking community across the entire world (according to 2004 figures from Synovate & this ClickZ article):

All of these Spanish speaking markets are very important to all of us marketers, because of the existing market value of reaching these consumers and what they will be worth in the future.

Since there is so much variety, as a consultant and search engine marketer I have chosen to focus on the largest online market in terms of buying power. COMscore MediaMetrix reported that Internet purchasing behavior among the U.S. Hispanics is reflected in the increase in online spending which grew from $4.3 billion in 2002 to $5.6 billion in 2003. Therefore it is clear that purchasing online is a reality here in the U.S. by these Spanish speakers.

If you are interested in learning in more depth detail about the Hispanic Market, I welcome you to read my white paper “Search Engine Marketing to the U.S. Hispanic Market”. This report covers more statistics on the Hispanic market, buying power, segmentation, internet statistics and facts, a case study and recommended search engine marketing strategies you can use to effectively get your hands on this online community.

It used to be a relatively easy task translating paid ads into Spanish and/or optimizing web pages for top ranking among the most popular search engines, but now this has turned out to be a complicated process requiring research, analysis and skill that needs to be very personalized for wining a market share in the U.S. Online Hispanic market through search engine strategies.

[Luis Morais]

Just to let you guys know that one of the (if not the) most influential Brazilian magazines, Veja, has run an article on 10 August about Google's investment in the SE market in Brazil.

The article has highlighted Google Earth and MSN Virtual Earth as well as the local search services already provided by Google, MSN and Yahoo and made a quick comparison of what is offered to the Brazilian public. They also confirmed what I said some time ago in the post about Akwan's acquisition as a means to get into the market and acquire a Brazilian database to guide them into it.

Veja also noted the comment of, Emerson Calegaretti, a Brazilian employee of Google: 'In economical terms, these countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) do not represent the same as the European or the American market. Nevertheless Google is counting on their young and open to technology populations.' Hmmm, true but an unfortunate comment since Yahoo has been around in Brazil since the times of 52kbps dial up modems and always seemed to understand the difference between emerging, developing and developed economies and never risked to offend the magpie by comparing the robin with the eagle.

Different birds different eggs, but still eggs worth an omelette, Mr. Calegaretti.

As a conclusion, Veja says that Yahoo is still ahead in this niche market with the acquisition of TeRespondo and the search wars will be won in the local markets with local searches. Once again something that I said earlier in this post.

What I think of the article? It was good on Google's side but it has called the attention to all the similar services the competitors offer. If Google is succesful in implementing the local searches as they have done in the US and EU, they have a great chance in becoming leaders in the market.

But once again, don't forget about MSN. Microsoft has a tradition in launching products that starting small and ugly become big and erm... ugly (I am thinking of IE6) and trendy (Xbox) and global (Office, Windows, etc...). The lawsuits have taught them not to make services such as browsing via their own IE, for example, the linchpin of the whole OS but I can almost see history repeating itself, or is it just me that noticed that whenever you try to enter a search keyword in Google's IE toolbar the focus always reverts to MSN's search field, if your start page is MSN?

In any case, the welcome is extended to Google.

[AussieWebmaster]

Nacho always seems to find the numbers...

[Chris Boggs]

for those that may not have seen it, here is the blog coverage of the session Nacho, Barbara Coll and Lucas Morea presented regarding the subject of Spanish Language SEM.

[danay]

I can't believe this topic hasn't received any new posts since August. I'll look around and see if it hasn't been moved to another forum or something.

I keep coming back and searching for the keywords that Nacho posted back in 2004 citing miserable results, and here we are in 2006, same issue, bad results.

There is a ton of opportunity and the numbers to back it up. Why aren't things changing as fast as I personally predicted they would?

[Nacho]

I have actually seen great movement in some areas like mortgage, real estate, hotels and a few others. What I do still see as a shame is targeting in English when a user types "Hoteles in Las Vegas" in Spanish. Advertisers need to understand that if the user is searching in Spanish, it's for a purpose of communications preferences. You mess that up and you might as well not care about messing up your conversions as well.

[danay]

Sorry, I should have been more specific. I meant Paid search campaigns. I look at comprar un carro versus buy a car and there is such a difference in the number of ads. Of course it can be attributed to the available inventory of searches.

Haven't really checked monthly searches or anything.

I also see alot of ads in English for searches which were done in Spanish. Can't believe people are wasting their ad dollars like that.

[Carlos Chacón]

Originally Posted by danay

...
I also see alot of ads in English for searches which were done in Spanish. Can't believe people are wasting their ad dollars like that.

You are right, it is a shame how some people don’t know how to manage PPC campaigns. What I believe is sometimes people think the entire target speaks English and Spanish at the same time and they are two different markets especially on some areas around the world.

Latin America for example needs more education on this topic, and even more resources to learn how this new marketing tool can be adopted on their business and industries.

It will take some time to show the people about SEM and SEO dynamic world and how this works. Next SES Latino Conference will help a lot for sure.

[danay]

Yes, I am looking forward to being there. I'm trying to decide whether my company should exhibit, as we operate an affiliate network that has started to branch into offers directly targetted to Hispanics, both US Eng/Span speakers, and Int'l.

I would love to meet some good search marketers in this market to sign up.

My mind is almost made up.

[AussieWebmaster]

I now that with Nacho down there the show will have great representation of all types of advanced level Spanish speaking marketers as well as tech people to explain how to use the numerous tools in the industry.

It makes for a great start for the industry to realise that marketing to different cultures takes alot of skill.

[Carlos Chacón]

For sure! SES Latino will lend a hand to hundreds of small and middle business. My country for example uses the tourism as primary industry so you can find many hotels and related business with it who wants to get attention around the world by the Internet.

[Nacho]

Here are a few new sources with updated information:

Special Report From MarketingProfs: Marketing to the Hispanic Market (Part 1 of 2)

Special Report From MarketingProfs: Marketing to Hispanics (Part 2 of 2)

Follow up Articles:

Paid Search Slow to Enter Hispanic-Targeted Sites
by Mindy Charski
for Marketing y Medios

U.S. Hispanics Not a One-Size-Fits-All Market from MarketingVOX

Enjoy!

[AussieWebmaster]

Thanks Nacho.... got to love not having to do the searching ... and they are solid articles.

Getting ready for the Miami SES.... how are you doing for speakers?

[Nacho]

I need a lot of speakers! Panels are limited. Please send me an email and I will send you the guideliness to a formal pitch.

Here is another article, by the way:

http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?1003926

[Carlos Chacón]

Thanks Nacho, excellent articles.
I’m agreeing with this:

“If Latino-focused ad agencies merely add SEM or any other Internet-based programs to their list of services as if it were just an SKU and pretend to know how to implement them—but don't deliver results—clients will rightly be frustrated. As a result, such agencies are damaging the entire industry”


It’s hard to believe it but this could be happening sooner or later. You know more than this subject as I do for sure, but the last years I’ve seen many “companies” or agencies offering SEM/SEO to many businesses around here. What they are doing is stealing the customer’s resources doing unethical techniques to promote websites on the SE and other bad Internet’s campaigns.

It has been hard to me for example report spammers or taking legal action in order to stop what they are doing. So, people around are losing their idea and belief on what really the search engine marketing means.

I know that it will take some years to pull up the SEM industry on Latin-American but the establishment is not really helping the most important objective it should have. I haven’t numbers to demonstrate this but I’m taking my own experience on my country to judge that.

[AussieWebmaster]

Alot of the problems you outline are not specific to any language/national/ethnic market - bad practices are everywhere. The people entering the web to market to the Latin market may - in some cases but not all and a little more possibly than the web in general - be completely unschooled in Search Engine Marketing etc....

In many cases people are promising some savy marketers that they can do things in the Latin market that they really have no skill or even an idea of what and if it is possible to do.... translations, cultural differences etc all create problems and smart internet marketers are looking for real people to help them - get more highly knowledgeable people into the space and it will grow....

True there is the problem of monetizing from the Latin web population - but this is fast becoming less of a problem.

Events like SES Miami will go a long way to help grow the industry and get it th attention it needs to grow.