You will have noticed straight away that this article isn’t written in Spanish, and so you might think that advice on targeting Latino markets isn’t going to be pretty thorough here. You might also make the mistake of thinking that, while the number of Spanish speakers across the world is massive, tapping into these markets is more difficult for American or otherwise foreign ecommerce sites. Well, whether that is true or not is down to a number of factors, but it certainly doesn’t need to be true.
For one thing, the number of English-speaking Latinos is also massive, and many of them reside in the U.S. That is a massive potential market to tap into. Also, the number of Latinos across Central and South America who also speak English (the global Lingua Franca) is similarly large, and so this market is very much available. It depends on what you are offering, but there is a large potential customer base.
Nevertheless, the first question you should ask yourself is how Latino-specific the product/service you are offering is. This can be “very specific”, “not at all” or, preferably, somewhere in the middle. It is not like there aren’t many ecommerce product swhich might be slightly more popular within Latino communities but are in fact popular outside of these as well.
Plurawl are a company specializing in Hispanic-themed clothing and prints, and they also produce a Hispanic podcast which focusses on specific American Latino issues. This demonstrates one way of finding amarket niche but bear in mind that while T-shirt designs and podcast topics will be pretty Latino-specific, not all products are like this.
Just because a product is less culturally specific on the face of it does not mean there is no specific interest in it among Latino communities. A product or service doesn’t need to be draped in cultural regalia before a specific group of people will be interested. Indeed, certain very neutral-seeming products might well be of great interest within specific communities.
What’s Most Popular?
The best way then to figure out how to market to Latino communities as an ecommerce site might well be to consider which ecommerce products are already popular within those communities. That said, you will also need to be careful that you’re not tapping into an already saturated market. Here follows some of them:
English-Learning Services
This type of service is naturally immensely popular among Spanish-speaking communities, and for obvious reasons. The massive success of apps such as Duo lingo also proves that they have real business potential anywhere. To offer this, you will need some Spanish experts on your staff, of course.
Spanish Learning Services
The same is true the other way around. Moreover, this type of service can be of interest less out of necessity and more because of ideas of cultural attachment. Many Latinos in the U.S., for example, do not speak Spanish, but there is a whole world of culture and family heritage there that they could be interested in accessing.
Latino Clothing Brands
There’s no doubt that Latino communities in the U.S. can often have their own subcultures, and within that their own fashion styles. Selling clothing items in this direction is certainly tapping into a promising Latino market.
Media Services
Spanish language media can be extremely popular among Latino communities – and for obvious reasons. This market is already pretty saturated, with many Spanish-language streaming services available. Nevertheless, this could be a good idea for an ecommerce venture if you can take a fresh angle.
Ultimately, marketing to a specific cultural group requires understanding. If you can manage that, a solid market niche awaits.