Which brands have an established Hispanic marketing capability is quickly becoming evident during the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Never before have Spanish-speaking consumers depended as much on timely and trusted information than now, particularly information that can impact their health and lives.
As such, this pandemic has provided forward leaning brands, that already have Hispanic marketing integrated in their communication strategies, with an opportunity to demonstrate true leadership during a time of crisis.
One example is Hartford HealthCare, Connecticut’s most comprehensive healthcare network, which is constantly developing and releasing content in both English and Spanish about their efforts to curb and treat the virus as well as what people can do to protect themselves. They created a Spanish-language webpage, have Spanish-speaking medical experts available at their clinical command center, media trained their Spanish-speaking infection control doctor to conduct public relations outreach, and are printing bilingual signage and materials, among other actions.
To date, they are the only healthcare system in New England to be doing so, and one of the few hospitals or healthcare systems across the country to be demonstrating such leadership.
For those who have not, it’s not too late to begin. Here are a few tips:
- Don’t let being too busy be an excuse – while it will take some time to formulate a plan and create content, the upside to stepping up to the Hispanic market in this time is much greater. Hispanics are by far the fastest-growing market segment and will continue to be so.
- Don’t rely on translations by Spanish-speaking staff – culture plays an important role in health decisions made by Hispanic and content should be “transcreated” to ensure cultural relevance.
- Find credible experts in your company that speak Spanish and have them do outreach to the Spanish speaking media – often the Spanish-language media is more short-staffed than English media and are hungry for content and people to interview in Spanish
- Develop some Spanish-language social media posts to drive people to a Spanish landing page. You don’t need to create a Spanish-language social network at this time, you can boost the posts and use language filters to effectively reach your Spanish-speaking consumers on social media.
- Hire a Hispanic marketing agency – most are ready and willing to help brands, especially when those brands are showing a genuine interest in helping Hispanics during a crisis. Most are also small businesses, so it would be a help to them as well during an economically uncertain time.
