Afterthoughts on SES Latino

It’s hard to pin down why I liked SES Latino as much as I did. Tropical destination? Short plane ride? Two-day format? Part of it might be the session I participated in. Targeting Spanish/Portuguese Search Ads by Demographics and Behavior had some of the best case studies and tips that I’ve ever seen shared in a session.

Latino Search Marketers as a group have proven to be incredibly bright and strategic. This is likely due to the issues they have had to overcome to be successful day-to-day. Latino SEMs whether they realized it or not have been practicing segmentation and targeting as long as they have been doing PPC. With various languages, countries, seasons, behaviors, and even different keywords meaning the same thing they are forced to be skilled marketers and think about marketing in ways highly aligned with the best digital practices.

However, while I have seen some improvement since last years event with the relevancy of Spanish language ads on English Google, ads on the Spanish language SERPs are laughably irrelevant or barren. Look at this query for the <a href="http://www.google.com.mx/search?hl=es&q=nissan+platina&btnG=Buscar&meta=
“>Nissan Platina, one of the most popular cars in Mexico or this SERP for the VW Golf, one of the most popular cars in Brazil. Clearly the opportunity for Latino marketers to leverage this situation is huge. Also, the opportunity for Google to grow PPC revenue in these markets is huge. Why do I only mention Google? Well according to the experts in the Latin American markets Microsoft has minimal market share and Yahoo is simply too difficult to deal with since you must establish and manage campaigns individually with each country. Just like in America, in Latin America Google rules.

With so much strategy available to cover on targeting I boiled down my presentation to Targeting by Behavior and Demographics figuring that the other panelists would cover the ads and language issues more in depth (they did). I presented a small case study on work we just completed for a client that delivered relevance to Spanish language visitors on Google by simply targeting the host language parameter (hl=) in the URL. This provided them a 47% lift in conversion rate for this segment.

https://s3.amazonaws.com:443/slideshare/ssplayer.swf?id=66834&doc=mendez-ses-latino073304

One thing that really caught my interest was that two of the speakers presented the matrix of Spanish/English possible combinations from keyword to ad to landing page to exemplify the challenges that they face as marketers since many Latinos, especially in the young and social demographic navigate their daily lives and search behavior between both. Though I didn’t get a chance to speak on this at the conference this challenge seems easily met with a multivariate test array that covers all three touch-points. Look for that presentation at next years SES Latino. 🙂

Congratulations to Nacho Hernandez for creating an exciting agenda and chairing a great show. The quality of content, namely the mix of more advanced strategies with the basics seemed to offer something for everyone. So, with all this search talent available, all the great education that’s being provided and boundless market potential, I have one question for Latin American businesses and Agencies. What are you waiting for?