Moreover, my colleagues and I at Sensis have published a primary research effort we’re calling the “Hispanic Persona Project” – aimed at creating personas representing the entire U.S. Hispanic Internet population. I encourage you to download the free report at www.HispanicPersonaProject.com.

However, in this last installment of a 3-part discussion on Hispanics, social media and personas, I want to take the final results of the Hispanic Persona Project and apply them in the real world of online Hispanics. A “how-to” guide to using Hispanic personas specifically and personas more generally.

Establishing a Primary Persona

The first step in using personas is to identify your primary persona. We developed 4 personas as part of Hispanic Persona Project, and generally speaking, organizations create 2-4 personas. But personas are not meant to be weighted equally – they are most effective when a primary persona is identified that will take preference and priority over the others. There are different ways to identify a primary persona, but a good rule of thumb is to select the persona whose needs most overlap with the other personas.

Now the fun part –using personas to plan marketing programs. Let’s apply Hispanic Personas across three dimensions: 1) Paid Media, 2) Planning interaction and 3) Planning experiences.

Planning Paid Media

Paid media planning is a good place to start using personas. Starting with targeting, we can utilize context. For an example, let’s look at the Carlos, the “Nostalgic Newbie.” We know from his persona that connecting with his home country is a key element of his behavior. U.S. geo-targeted digital media buys on Latin American Websites and ad networks will be highly effective. However digital media offers even more advanced targeting capabilities, such as behavioral targeting, that can help us plan paid media programs. Using Ivan, the “Tech-fluential” as an example, it would be very difficult to “target” him based on his media consumption in a scalable way simply by buying the handful of Websites he visits that are different from his general market counterparts. However, behavioral-based media buys, where you target him on mainstream sites based on his “long-tail” behavior visiting smaller Hispanic sites and blogs can be powerful. Finally, recent research from Yahoo! shows that factoring in mindsets can have a big impact on the effectiveness of paid advertising – advertising has to be contextually relevant when people are engaging in online passions, while users connecting with friends or consuming entertainment will be much more amenable to “unexpected” offers and ads.

Planning Experiences (Owned Media)

Personas also provide useful texture to identify and optimize owned digital experiences, such as Websites, mobile pages, and social media platforms (Facebook pages, YouTube channels and Twitter skins, etc.). Looking at Sandra the “Social Techie,” it’s clear that we need to establish consistent, yet customized experiences available across multiple devices – such as browser-based Websites, mobile Websites, and potentially destinations accessible via new devices such as tablets. We can also use personas to prioritize features and functionality. Whereas an electronics company might provide Ivan the “Tech-fluential” with links to online retailers where he can buy their product, they would emphasize price comparison information and product specifications with Armando the “Utilitarian Explorer.”

Planning Interaction (Earned Media)

Personas arguably provide the most value (vis-à-vis other planning tools) when we begin to plan digital interaction that generates the type of earned media that is the holy grail of social media marketing programs. How do we get someone to “like” a brand page on Facebook? How do we motivate a small percentage of Hispanics to share content with their online network? What motivates someone to create content that is favorable to your product or service? Looking at the 4 Hispanic personas we created, it’s clear that two of the personas represent the majority of the opportunity – the “Tech-fluential” and the “Social Techie.” In this sense, if your campaign is emphasizing social interaction, you will probably want to prioritize and focus on one of these personas. Digging deeper, you can establish your social media campaign objectives based on their behavioral profiles. If your target is Sandra the “Social Technie”, then you can realistically expect sharing of content and establish KPIs around that kind of interaction. However, if Armando is your target, you should manage expectations to focus on impressions and “time spent” metrics.

Where the rubber really meets the road with personas is in their ability to help organization understand what motivates users. In social media this is critical, as motivation will drive online behavior and interaction. With Ivan, the “Tech-influential,” that motivation is influence – this persona places a high value on being “in the know,” so offering him social functionality, like the ability to retweet content or influencing the opinion of a prominent blogger he follows will be highly valuable. With Sandra, the Social Techie, the motivation is popularity, staying in touch, and being heard. She will be highly influenced by the behavior of her peers and giving her the ability to easily share portable content will pay big dividends.

Takeaways

While this article was a hypothetical application of broad personas, the value they provide only amplifies when you create your own personas (Hispanic or not) and focus your application on a specific industry, product category or segment. Moreover, personas are dynamic planning tools that are meant to be “enhanced’ with additional data points. After going to market, you should regularly optimize your personas with Web analytics data, digital media tracking results, and social media monitoring outputs from past campaigns.

(an edited version of this article originally ran on MediaPost’s Engage Hispanic blog on 5/5/2011)

While there was nothing that jumped out as particularly “earth shattering” and surprising, I found the importance placed on online “window shopping” to be interesting. You have to figure that a lot of that type of activity was related to clothing, electronics, and other “lifestyle” categories, and a lot of that time was likely spent on sites like Amazon.com and BestBuy.com.

Needless to say, some interesting food for thought for a lot of brands in those lifestyle categories, especially after the 2010 Census figures come out. I anticipate some big, surprising numbers on the Hispanic youth market this spring.

Hispanics and e-commerce is a fascinating topic. A topic that has been covered in almost every major research report on Hispanic Internet use since 2000, yet it is rarely given more attention than a small section of a larger white paper or a one-off report from some research firm tangentially involved in the retail space. Why is that?

It’s not because it doesn’t represent a viable market opportunity: U.S. Hispanics (according to the limited research on the topic) spend quite a bit online – $12.8 billion in 2008 with projections to reach $21.6 billion next year (JupiterResearch, 2007). That’s 11 percent of all e-commerce purchases (not too far below Hispanics’ percentage of the U.S. population). I think that Hispanic e-commerce doesn’t get the attention it deserves not because it isn’t a large, growing market, but because it is a complex subject, where the opportunity for retailers is amorphous and not very clearly understood. Furthermore, I would posit that there are not a lot of experts with actual experience in the arena of Hispanic online shopping (at least at the large retailer level). That theory is validated when you scour the Internet for case studies on the subject and find only the well publicized Best Buy and Home Depot cases.

Whenever I start looking at Hispanic e-commerce, four big questions continually come up. We can answer the first three fairly quickly:

1. Do Hispanics buy online?

Yes. The JupiterResearch data I reference above shows that Hispanics represent a vibrant component of the growing e-commerce market. While a significant percentage of Hispanics do not shop online due to various obstacles, it’s clear that English-, Spanish-speaking and bilingual Hispanics shop online in varying degrees.

2. Are Hispanics relevant to most Internet retailers?

Yes, particularly the larger Internet retailers offering broad product mixes. While there are thousands of niche Internet retailers that are completely irrelevant to Hispanics, a quick glance at the Internet Retailer 500 list would show that most of these sites have broad appeal that crosses over to the 50 million+ Hispanic market. ComScore data on Hispanic traffic to retail websites validates this – they reach 74 percent of online Hispanics (16 million).

3. Are Internet retailers already effectively reaching / selling to Hispanics online?

The answers to questions 1 and 2 show that a segment of Hispanics are already being reached by Internet retailers. However, an inverse look at the ComScore data reveals that there are potentially 36 million Hispanics that are not being reached by the top Internet retail Web sites. That’s a big chunk.

4. Are there differences between Hispanic online shoppers and their general market counterparts?

This is the million dollar question. This last question is actually at the core of how retailers should approach the Hispanic e-commerce opportunity.

Most of the focus of the Hispanic e-commerce debate has revolved around the language of the shopping platform and experience. I would posit that the fundamental question and opportunity regarding Hispanic e-commerce lies in understanding Hispanic online behavior.

There is some data out there that supports my theory:
• Hispanics that are comfortable buying online but will typically go to English versions of e-commerce sites (Internet Retailer/Omni Direct, 2010)
• Online Hispanics generally perceive English language Web sites as more comprehensive, detailed and useful than Spanish-language versions (AOL Cheskin Hispanic Cyberstudy, 2010)
• Concerns about providing personal information online (32 percent) and the desire to touch and feel products before making a purchase (30 percent) were the two leading reasons why Hispanic Internet users refrained from buying online (Forrester, 2008)
• Less than 20 percent of visitors to Best Buy’s Spanish Web site toggle back and forth between the English and Spanish sites (Best Buy Survey, 2008)

Maybe translating an online store and offering a mirrored English-Spanish e-commerce environment isn’t the answer? As someone who has been helping clients large and small build Spanish Web sites for 12+ years, I can tell you I’ve never been a big fan of wholesale Spanish translations of Web sites. Not only are Spanish Web site translations expensive and difficult to maintain, they are usually a strategic “cop-out.” Instead of spending the time and effort to understand exactly what online Hispanic consumers are demanding and focus on addressing those needs, you take a “shotgun” approach to just translate everything to Spanish. I’ve rarely seen this approach work.

Let me suggest that the real Hispanic e-commerce opportunity lies in understanding and addressing other aspects of e-commerce:
• Personalization
• Product offering / Product mix
• User experience / Visual design
• Emphasizing product research over product sales

Furthermore, as technology advances, and Hispanics continue to show a propensity towards early adoption of digital technology and devices, mobile commerce and kiosks might represent interesting new “channels” to sell to Hispanics electronically.

[E]ven though they are slightly less likely to have broadband than the average US adult Internet user, online Hispanics were 211% more likely to download digital content.

That’s a lot of downloads. If you’re a marketer looking to sell downloads, this indicates that you really need to consider reaching out to the Hispanic market. Additionally, if you’re a Hispanic marketer, you should consider some way to utilize this propensity to download to your advantage, through music, video, podcasts, or something else clever.

However, what I found was interesting was the huge amount by which Asian-Americans over-index in online shopping and buying. Seventy percent of Asian-Americans say they shop online, as compared to fifty-six percent of all Americans.

Looking at these numbers, I am surprised that more money isn’t focused on that market.