Over the last 3 months I’ve been posting facts about the Hispanic community because I believe that Hispanic marketing holds HUGE promise for car dealers. The facts are loud and obvious if you listen. They scream out why you, as a car dealer, are crazy if you don’t have an active marketing campaign when you have a large Hispanic population in your area. Let’s look at facts and see what they tell us, what arguments people use against Hispanic advertising, and what you should do as a smart business person.
Facts Mean Something… If You Pay Attention to Them
The facts about changing demographics in our country are persuasive. The Hispanic community is becoming a powerful economic force in many parts of the country, a trend that will only grow over time.
Let’s look at the facts:
- Hispanics are the fastest growing group in the US and are fast approaching 20% of its overall population.
- The majority of the Hispanic population is concentrated in just 5 states but is growing rapidly in pockets around the country. The 5 states are California, Texas, Florida, New York and Illinois.
- Targeting Hispanics in Spanish significantly increases the likelihood that they’ll buy from you.
- Over 50% of Hispanics consume online content in Spanish and English.
- The average age of Hispanics today is 30, compared with 42 for non-Hispanic Americans. That translates to 12 potential years of additional car-buying life for the average Hispanic.
- 24% of Hispanic U.S. households earn more than $75,000, up from 14% in 2000. That is a massive rise.
- Sales to Hispanics outpace the overall market.
- It is estimated that new car sales to Hispanics will grow by 8% over the next five years, compared to a 2% decline overall.
I have a ton more facts which could fill a book, but that would be a waste of time if your bias is that the Hispanic market isn’t worth the investment, or if you just don’t care to take advantage of the facts. If you fit into either of these two categories, then you might as well cash out and go live on a beach in Florida while you still have money.
Arguments Against Hispanic Advertising will Hurt Your Earnings
We’re not a big operation but we’ve talked to a lot of dealers about Hispanic advertising. Reasons why dealers don’t advertise to the Hispanic market tend to break down into the following statements:
- don’t have anyone on staff that speaks Spanish. This is probably the biggest challenge, but also the easiest to solve. All you really need to do is put together a program to hire bilingual staff. It’s not that hard and we can help you with a free hiring packet (and paid support if necessary). Drop us an email for the packet.
- They should speak English if they want to live in America. We’ve encountered this comment a few times from good people who are letting a political perspective cloud their good business judgement. One dealer, who said this to me, sat in an area with hundreds of thousands of Hispanics within 25 miles of his dealership. How do I know there were that many? We wrote an app to profile all dealerships across the country. Despite telling him the numbers, he didn’t want anything to do with Hispanic advertising.
- I don’t have any Hispanics in my area. This may be true, in which case we advise you just to monitor your area and adapt if things change. But if you don’t know, then find out because your lack of information may be costing you money. We can help you with that. Drop us an email and we’ll send you a Recon Report.
- I don’t have time to start anything new. I understand this view. Starting new initiatives is a pain in the back side, but let’s think it through. IF you have a large population AND you want to make more money in a tight market, THEN you would CRAZY not to take advantage of building a Hispanic advertising initiative. How’s that for some quick logic? Again, we can help you with this. hiring-bilingual-staff-for-car-dealers/I don’t have anyone on staff that speaks Spanish. This is probably the biggest challenge, but also the easiest to solve. All you really need to do is put together a program to hire bilingual staff. It’s not that hard and we can help you with a free hiring packet (and provide other support if necessary).
- They should speak English if they want to live in America. We’ve encountered this comment a few times from good people who are letting a political perspective cloud their good business judgement. One dealer, who said this to me, sat in an area with hundreds of thousands of Hispanics within 25 miles of his dealership. How do I know there were that many? We wrote an app to profile all dealerships across the country. Despite telling him the numbers, he didn’t want anything to do with Hispanic advertising.
- I don’t have any Hispanics in my area. This may be true, in which case we advise you just to monitor your area and adapt if things change. But if you don’t know, then find out because your lack of information may be costing you money. We can help you with that. Drop us an email and we’ll send you a Recon Report. Just give the name of your dealership and say “I want a recon report.”. ?
- I don’t have time to start anything new. I understand this view. Starting new initiatives is a pain in the back side, but let’s think it through. IF you have a large population AND you want to make more money in a tight market, THEN you would be CRAZY not to take advantage of building a Hispanic advertising initiative. How’s that for some quick logic? Again, we can help you with this if only via a quick conversation to outline your options.
Simple Case Studies are Always Helpful
We have a customer in Illinois who won us over to the truth of Hispanic advertising by showing how smart a move it was for his business. This car dealership is an Independent in the Chicago area so he has some hard core competition.
But as a smart guy, he reshaped his company so that he has a bunch of bilingual staff, good knowledge of how to work with the Hispanic market, a website that is in Spanish, and smart targeted advertising campaign that consistently produces results. He has 3 dealerships all targeting the Hispanic community very aggressively.
How many Hispanics does he have around his dealerships? One has over 280,000, another has 1,3 million, and another has almost 1.4 million. (Yes, those are real numbers… and they are not uncommon!),
What’s the result of his efforts? His car dealership is doing really well. Competitors who didn’t adapt have actually gone out of business. He’s a smart adapter who is making his Independent car business work while others struggle.
We’re Collecting More Facts for You!
So far, much of the knowledge that we’ve gained is from direct experience with our case study, existing research on the Hispanic community, and data collection using our SurgeRecon tool. All are good, but we because we wanted new data, we’re doing our own survey work now.
In a few weeks we’re going to release our first Hispanic Car Buying Study which sought to identify Hispanic car buying patterns and attitudes. Our goal: Get data to help dealers sell cars to the Hispanic community. To note, some of the data is pretty shocking in that it challenges assumptions many people are likely to hold if a young Hispanic couple walks into a dealership to buy a new car. Hint: It ain’t the guy who is always making the car buying decisions… Ping us if you want to pre-order a copy. Just write “Want to pre-order the survey” and we’ll send it to you when it’s finished.
Our next study after the one we mentioned above is going to talk to car dealers. Our goal is to identify obstacles that block a dealership from doing Hispanic advertising. We want to identify all the objections that might block success so that we can create solutions to help you succeed.
All that said, we’ve already started on one solution that we’ll have available for you next week. It is a HR Hispanic Help Pack that you can use to institute bilingual hiring practices to adapt some staff for Hispanic sales. Fun stuff. Message us so we can send you a copy.