If we look at the search statistics on Google Trends, we see that search volume for the Mexican-American food items “tacos” and “burrito” have grown dramatically in the past eight years:

Not surprisingly, we can see that states with large Hispanic populations, like California and Texas, represent the heaviest search volume for terms that include the word “taco.”

More specifically, we can see from this list on Google Trends all of the variations of search terms that include the word “taco,” of which “fish taco” is the most popular.

Eight years ago, “fish tacos” were hard to find. Today you see them on menus far more often and even some restaurant chains, like Wahoo’s Fish Tacos, position themselves around this specialty.

The trade website Food Navigator USA reports that “The growing Hispanic market holds huge opportunity for food manufacturers in the U.S., but understanding cultural dynamics is vital to new product success.” Developing successful new products in the food business requires understanding the Hispanic market.

Taking a deeper look, Food Navigator USA suggests that “Flavor trends blending familiar ingredients with formerly exotic tastes such as Mexican caramel (cajeta) will drive food product and restaurant menu innovation in the coming year.”

In the years ahead, the market research company Packaged Facts predicts that the Hispanic food and beverage market is expected to grow aggressively as companies pump more dollars into innovation around Mexican flavors and Hispanic marketing.

Ironically, even though there is a lot of debate around the immigration and legalization of Latino immigrants in the U.S., Gustavo Arellano, the nationally syndicated columnist of Ask a Mexican!, says “The biggest fans of Mexican food in this country [the United States] hasn’t been Mexicans, it has been Americans” in the following interview:

Arellano explores the history of Mexican food and how it has become as popular as pizza in his insightful and entertaining new book Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America.

This post originally appeared on Acento.com

A lot of research shows that Latinos, both in the U.S. and in Latin America, over-index for using mobile devices. But are they finding the information and services that they need?

The future growth of the Internet will come from low-income users, exactly the opposite of how the Internet began with professors and executives using it. In order to satisfy the new wave of mobile phone users, many of whom are disadvantaged, marketers need to bring new approaches in how to design mobile websites and services, even looking to Latin America for inspiration.

Latinos More Likely to Own Mobile Device
The Interactive Advertising Bureau’s recent report with BIGinsight, “Digital Hispanic Consumer” shows that when Hispanic consumers go online, they are more likely to do so via a mobile device: more Hispanics own an iPhone than the general population (27% vs. 20%), an Android (34% vs. 26%), or an iPad tablet (21% vs. 16%), according to the study. Yet, unsurprisingly, the IAB report finds that Hispanic users are less likely to own a desktop (40%) compared to general consumers (48%).

If we look at Mexico, the country-of-origin of most U.S. Hispanics, the percentage of mobile-only phone users is even more staggering. 40.9 million Mexicans have Internet access whereas there are 91 million mobile phones out of a total population of 112 million, according to the Mexico’s National Institute of Statistics, INEGI. With two times as many cell phones as Internet users in Mexico, most Mexicans first Internet experience will probably happen on a cell phone versus a laptop. Some countries in Latin America, like Brazil, actually have more cell phones that citizens according to Bradesco, one of the largest financial services companies in Brazil, which reports that Brazil has 224 million cell phones but a population of 194 million.

This past summer, I put together my own research project with the migrant farm worker advocate Peter Eversoll, the co-founder of the non-profit NC Field, which “empowers farmworkers through education and leadership development of their children.” We wanted to find out how low-income, migrant Spanish-preferring Latinos use cell phones, in part because their agricultural lifestyle parallels that of many Latin Americans.

Amazingly, we found out that these mainly poor Hispanics actually utilize smart phones more than what the IAB study indicates. Here’s what we found out:
• 94% of the respondents have a cell phone
• 53% have smart phones
• 46% share the cell phone with someone else
• 88% use pre-paid phones
• The most popular providers were those that have pre-paid plans (and don’t require a social security number) like Boost (34%), Cricket (14%), and US Cellular (28%)
• 50% have all-inclusive phones with calls, text messages and data
• 18% use the Facebook application on their phone
• 22% use Google applications on their phone
• 23% watch YouTube videos on their phone
• 86% do not have a home phone
• 88% do not have Internet access at home
• 65% do not use the Internet on shared computers (e.g. at a local school or library), meaning that their cell phone is their only access to the Internet
• Twice as many respondents use Facebook to keep in touch with family in their country of origin (19%) in comparison to email (10%) and instant messenger (8.5%)

At the same time, a few responses indicate that these Hispanics are not early adopters of Internet services like Skype or PayPal:
• Less than 1% use Skype to call their family in their country of origin (which is free between Skype members); whereas 42% still use phone cards to keep in touch with their family
• 79% send money to family in their country of origin; Of those, the majority (63%) send money via Western Union or MoneyGram while 16% transfer money from a bank account. None used services like PayPal or Xoom.

Leylha Ahuile, the Multicultural Analyst for Mintel International says, “These results make sense because if you have a limited budget, a smart phone helps you avoid spending money on a home Internet connection and instead utilize one on-the-go device. In addition, since Hispanics are younger than the overall population, they tend to go online more often simply because they are part of the younger generation and grew up with digital media.”

Many Features for Low Cost
“Being price sensitive isn’t unique to Hispanics. It’s also true among students, for example,” says Dr. Felipe Korzenny, the Director of the Center for Hispanic Marketing Communication at Florida State University (FSU). “People who have a limited budget oftentimes choose a smartphone because it offers a number of features in one device for a low cost. In addition, people who are less affluent oftentimes have a more mobile lifestyle. As a result, mobile phones work well for them. Pre-paid phone plans also appeal to cost-conscious, low-income customers because they can track what they spend. Overall, the research that we have done at FSU shows that Hispanics, Asians, and Blacks all use cell phones about twice as much as non-Hispanic whites.”

Korzenny goes on to describe mobile phones as “technologies of liberation” because people who have been deprived of these technologies become free to do business or partake in activities that they could not do before. This can significantly change the economies of rural villages where farmers can skip the middleman and make more money selling directly to the end buyer.

As an extreme example of the importance of cell phone service among the poor, The Economist recently reported that researchers in Kenya have found that poor cell phone users “would, for instance, forgo meat at meal time, in the hope of making a call or sending an SMS that would enable them to put more food on the table later” (Vital for the Poor, Nov 10, 2012).

New Mobile Services for Latinos
Taking into account this consumer behavior, a handful of companies have developed new services for low-income mobile phone users.

In North Carolina, David Iberkleid started “Pase La Voz,” Spanish for “spread the word,” in 2011 to provide Hispanics with news via text messages on weather, jobs, emergencies as well as English vocabulary. Today, over 107,000 users now belong to the mobile community, which has evolved into providing members with alerts about police and immigration checkpoints. Iberkleid, originally from Bolivia, created the parent company of “Pase La Voz,” WhyEquals, to “design digital experiences that help communities gain equal participation in digital media.” Its website describes a future where “equal participation in digital media will bring economic prosperity and fair policy to these communities.”

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), part of the U.S. Department of Labor, created a Heat Safety Tool in Spanish for Hispanics. Its mobile application allows workers and supervisors to calculate a heat index for their worksite and displays a risk level that corresponds to the weather and location. Users can also get reminders about protective measures that should be taken at certain risk levels to prevent heat-related illnesses such as reminders about drinking enough fluids, scheduling rest breaks, planning for and knowing what to do in an emergency, training on heat illness signs and symptoms, and monitoring each other for signs and symptoms of heat-related illness.

In Mexico, Banamex, Citibank’s division in Mexico, launched “Transfer,” a service designed for the “unbanked” that enables mobile payments, transfers, cash withdrawals, and balance inquiries via SMS text messages, all without a debit card. Transfer created an opportunity for an estimated 66 million Mexicans who already have a cell phone, but don’t have a bank account, to access financial services and banking transactions, that were previously unavailable to them. The new service became successful for two reasons. One, Banamex made it easier for the unbanked to sign up for an account by reducing the amount of information that was needed to do so. They did this by partnering with Telcel, the largest cellphone provider in Mexican, where each customer’s cell phone number becomes their Transfer account number. Two, Banamex developed a strong word-of-mouth strategy where Transfer paid clients $20 Pesos for each friend that signed up for a new account. Transfer’s Facebook page became popular because of a feature that allowed users to gauge the amount that they could earn in incentives by encouraging friends to sign up.

And lastly, in Brazil, PagPop has developed a device that connects to smartphones and turns them into credit card payment platforms, similar to Square in the U.S. Cleaning ladies and gardeners, for example, can use their cell phones with the PagPop device (as seen in the photo below) to swipe their clients’ credit card to receive a payment for their services.

Many U.S. Hispanic and Latin American cell phone users are more likely to be “unbanked,” or not have a bank account. Latin Trade Magazine recently estimated that up to 70% of the Latin American and Caribbean population, or 400 million people, across the region do not have a bank account. Still, we know that the future of financial transactions will involve less cash and move towards “virtual” or credit card transactions. With this in mind, products like Banamex’s Transfer could have a huge impact on the financial services industry and especially money transfers from the U.S. to Mexico, which brought in over $21 billion USD to Mexico (INEGI, Mexico at a Glance 2011).

“Marketers may be ignoring certain parts of the population because whites are more profitable today, says Dr. Korzenny. “That creates a gap in strategic thinking. Emerging minorities [in the U.S.] adopt mobile phones more aggressively and so these audiences will become much more profitable and important in the future.”

In conclusion, mobile platforms (websites, applications, and SMS services) need to be designed more simply and visually to accommodate a much larger and on-the-go audience, yet one that may read at a lower level and have no experience visiting PC-oriented websites.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau recently released a report with BIGinsight called the “Digital Hispanic Consumer,” which shows that when Hispanic consumers go online, they often do so via a mobile device. More Hispanics own an iPhone than the general population (27% vs. 20%), an Android (34% vs. 26%), or an iPad tablet (21% vs. 16%), according to the study.

Photo by Peter Eversoll

2013 looks even more promising. In the next six months, according to the study, Hispanics are 37% more likely than the general population to purchase a mobile device.

“This report tells an underappreciated story,” says Sherrill Mane, Senior Vice President, Research, Analytics and Measurement at the IAB. “Hispanic consumers are already having a potent economic impact in the American marketplace and that they are already in the vanguard of digital media and device usage.”

“Hispanic consumers live their lives on-the-go and lean on their mobile devices accordingly,” says Pam Goodfellow, Consumer Insights Director, BIGinsight. “Brand leaders would be well-served to recognize the economic power of the Hispanic community and harness their appetite for goods, services and online content – especially via mobile devices.”

Download the complete IAB “Digital Hispanic Consumer” study here.

Dr. Felipe Korzenny, the Director of the Center for Hispanic Marketing Communication at Florida State University (FSU), reported on his blog that “Hispanics are eager users of mobile technology,” citing research from Experian Simmons.

Korzenny quoted Max Kilger, the Chief Behavioral Scientist for Experian Simmons, who showed that mobile phone usage by Hispanics nearly equals that of non-Hispanics over a 7-day period. 86% of Hispanics use mobile phones in a 7-day period whereas 89% of non-Hispanics whites do. If we break the numbers down further, the Experian Simmons study showed that 51% of Hispanics used mobile phones in a single day, 4 percentage points higher than the 47% of non-Hispanic whites.

Read the full blog post here. And download the complete Experian study of “The New American Consumer: Trends in Hispanic Consumer Demographics” here.

All in all, smart Hispanic marketers will want to consider incorporating mobile marketing into their 360-degree marketing mix.

In conclusion, we leave you with a conversation that our CEO, Roberto Orci, had with Mike Ritter, the Chief Marketing Officer, at Verizon.

This article originally appeared on Acento.com

PepsiCo launched PepsiCo10, an incubator program in Brazil, UK and the US to take a leadership position in identifying innovative digital start-ups and pairing them with its brands to execute marketing programs. With the accelerated pace of digital media, this offers PepsiCo the opportunity to understand what new trends are happening in mobile marketing. The company hopes that the initiative will drive growth while offering these start-ups visibility and experience working with a major marketer.

PepsiCo10 started as an experimental program in the US in 2010, expanded to the UK in 2011, and launched in Brazil during year three in September 2012, its first program in Latin America. Brazil represents a market of strategic importance for PepsiCo where it is the #1 snacks player.

PepsiCo10 invites young entrepreneurs and tech-savvy university students in Brazil to submit business ideas for its digital incubator program. The four submission categories include entertainment, mobile, retail, and sustainability, all four of which are priorities for the company in Brazil.

The inaugural 2010 PepsiCo10 initiative in the U.S. received more than 500 submissions from entrepreneurs that provided insights into important trends such as social TV, experience-based gaming, and crowd-sourced content creation. In addition, the initiative also supports the company’s strategy for attracting and retaining top talent by giving it the chance to communicate with some of the brightest and most creative and entrepreneurial minds.

How PepsiCo10 works

Pepsi invited start-up companies and students to apply for the Fall 2012 phase via a tab on PepsiCo Brazil’s Facebook page. Pepsi evaluated proposals based on an applicant’s ability to partner with PepsiCo brands and commercial viability. Judges included executives from PepsiCo, venture capital firm Highland Capital, and PepsiCo’s advertising agency partners iThink and Omnicom. The PepsiCo10 Brazil winners were then offered an all-expenses paid trip to New York City in 2013 for the opportunity to meet with PepsiCo’s marketing leadership team and network with US-based digital influencers.

Previous Winners

Some of the companies previously funded companies in the US and the UK include:

AisleBuyer, a Boston-based start-up, provides a mobile self-checkout solution that aims to improve in-store shopping by eliminating the need to wait in line. In April 2012, AisleBuyer was acquired by Intuit for a reported $100 million USD.

Tongal combines crowd-sourcing and performance games to harvest content from a worldwide community of creators. Tongal worked with Brisk to crowd-source concepts and production needs for an animated commercial. Brisk engaged 1,500 Tongal users from over 50 countries.

Slingshot, a software program that allows consumers to place items within an online shopping basket via Facebook or a mobile device, teamed up with Doritos on a pilot project to drive online sales through a Facebook page integration. It resulted in a 49 percent conversion rate where nearly half of the consumers who put an item in their digital shopping basket actually purchased the product.

These three start-ups enabled PepsiCo to move ahead of the curve and develop innovative, attention-getting ideas using: in-store mobile checkout, crowd-sourced animated commercials, and shopping on Facebook.

And Here’s a Visual Overview of the PepsiCo10…

The story of Souchi.com exemplifies the incredible effect that optimizing a website and the digital marketing that leads people to it can have on e-commerce sales. More specifically, it highlights how tapping into the right social network, Pinterest in this case, can dramatically grow a business online. In only five months, we grew traffic to the website over 1000% and e-commerce sales by over 630%. Here is how we did it.

Company Background

Suzi Johnson founded her company, Souchi, in March of 1998 to sell her line of luxury cashmere sweaters to (mostly) upper-income women. Six months later, Souchi was selling to stores and boutiques across the United States. Her breakthrough moment came when one of her product appeared on the September 1998 cover of Seventeen Magazine. This led to her sweaters appearing on the TV shows Friends, the original 90210, and Melrose Place. Subsequently, her products have appeared in the pages of Elle, InStyle, Lucky, People, Vogue, and W Magazines. Celebrities like Jenifer Aniston, Cameron Diaz, Gwenyth Paltrow and January Jones as well as reality stars Kim kardashian Kristen Cavallari have donned her designs.

Suzi launched her website to sell her own luxury sweaters as well as items from high-end designers such as Corey Lynn Calter and Johnny Farah. In addition, she needed to showcase her products for the retailers that sold her product as well as an email newsletter and website that enabled her to keep in touch with the customers that visited her own retail stores. She had spent thousands of dollars on her website – Souchi.com – but realized that it had underperformed relative to what she had invested in it. She knew she could sell much more merchandise through it.

I first met Suzi in early 2012 through her web developer, Pete Rosenzweig. As her digital marketing consultant, I worked with Suzi and Pete to improve the usability and navigation of the website, putting myself in the shoes of the user and interpreting what they saw from their perspective. We also optimized the website for search engines, implemented cost-per-click advertising, and measured results with Google Analytics, the free website measurement tool. Every month, I pulled statistics from Google Analytics such as: unique visitors, page views, time spent, total sales, and unique orders. With these numbers (plus adding complimentary statistics such as Facebook “likes”), I calculated the traffic and sales growth as well as the conversion rates. We set new goals every month based on the results from the previous month, studying what worked and what did not.

Much like other small businesses owners, Suzi manages everything in her business: product design and development, store operations, website operations, and marketing. So, I worked towards getting the most out of her small budget and at the same time clearly prioritizing what we should and shouldn’t do. This forced us to focus on the tactics that delivered the highest ROI (return on investment).

We knew that social media would play a key element in our success. Nevertheless, I was surprised at the dramatic impact that a new visual, fast-growing social network would make on the site: Pinterest.

So what exactly is it? Pinterest is a virtual pinboard that connects people based on their common interests. Its users organize and share inspirational images that they find across the web. People use pinboards to figure out how to decorate their homes, organize their favorite recipes, or simply discover beautiful photos from people who love fashion, for example.

Three Phases of Optimizing Results

We worked together in three phases to improve the results of the website. In phase one, we overhauled the design of the home page and significantly improved the usability of the website. We added a tagline to the top navigation bar, “Luxury cashmere sweaters by Suzi Johnson,” to explain to new visitors what exactly the website offered. In addition, we implemented a number of search engine optimization (SEO) techniques to improve results in Google and other search engines, such as improving the site copy and integrating Suzi’s blog within her e-commerce site. Previously, her blog had been hosted on a separate website. Blogs oftentimes drive a significant portion of new visitors as search engines reward websites that update content more often. We also integrated Google maps into the “Boutiques” page of the site so that visitors could more easily find her physical stores. Lastly, we fixed the “Pin It” button from Pinterest, which previously did not work. Her visitors could then easily share the photos of her designs on the fashion-oriented social network.

Once we implemented the changes, Souchi’s traffic grew 5700% almost overnight, almost entirely because of visitor’s response to one sweater on Pinterest, her “Claudia cashmere cowl neck sweater,” as seen here:

We immediately became smitten with Pinterest because of the outstanding jump in traffic that it delivered but also because of the increase in sales that it generated. Nevertheless, we still knew that Facebook was #1. We tried to generate more traffic from the social juggernaut in phase two by developing content and a product giveaway specifically for Souchi’s Facebook page. In addition, we launched a Google AdWords (keyword) campaign to drive sales for both Souchi’s products and a few of her featured designers. Lastly, we re-designed and optimized the email newsletter.

The Facebook promotion and content, surprisingly, did not deliver. The #1 referring source of visitors continues to be Pinterest to this day. And in another surprising twist, Pinterest’s mobile application maintains the #4 spot for delivering visitors to Souchi.com, just after Google.

With this in mind, in phase three, we focused on developing new ideas to maximize visitors from Pinterest as well as a new Google AdWords campaign to drive sales of Souchi’s new line of sweaters.

What we learned

During the course of the five months that we implemented these changes, we learned a tremendous amount, most notably how “niche” social networks can deliver far better results than the #1 social network. That being said, we also realized that while one channel, Pinterest, delivered the most results, all of our efforts optimizing the site worked in tandem. We couldn’t have increased sales so dramatically from Pinterest without also optimizing the homepage, fixing buttons, adding a tagline and so on.

Here is how other marketers can replicate the success of Souchi.com:

• Research what social networks and websites your target audience uses. Just because everyone uses Facebook doesn’t mean that you need to make it your main digital marketing platform.
• Put yourself in the shoes of the user. What do you need to explain to them when they arrive on your website? Would a new, explanatory tagline help?
• Website visitors respond better when they experience a clean, clear home page. What can you remove from your home page to provide an easier, cleaner experience?
• Think about how your digital marketing elements will work together. Don’t just rely on one tactic. While Pinterest worked the best, we learned that each tactic worked together synergistically with our other efforts.
• Set monthly benchmarks for what you want to measure; compare growth month over month. Set new goals based upon what works.

To this end, OLPC has designed the hardware, software and content to promote collaboration and self-learning. With these tools, children take their own education into their hands. They can learn, share, and create together. They connect with each other, the world and “a brighter future.”

OLPC’s product, the XO Laptop, evolved out of the educational research of Seymour Papert, an MIT mathematician, computer scientist, and a founding faculty member of the MIT Media Lab. Since the 1960’s, he has promoted the idea of children using computers as instruments for learning and for enhancing creativity. Papert is known as the creator of “constructionism,” an educational learning theory that suggests that students learn best by doing, often with little intervention from teachers. Teachers take on a “mediator” role rather than an “instructionist” position, in a constructionist learning environment. Teachers assist students to understand in a hands-on way versus teaching “at” students.

With this philosophy as the basis for the new product, Seymour Papert, Nicholas Negroponte and Alan Kay launched One Laptop Per Child in 2005 to implement constructionist learning principles by providing low-cost laptops to every child in the developing world. The organization’s five guiding principles include:

1. Ownership – The kids keep the laptop (and bring them home)
2. Focus on early education: 6 to 12 years old
3. “Digital saturation” so that no one feels left out
4. Connectivity
5. Free, open source software enables the OLPC platform to grow and update more easily

The XO laptops ingeniously incorporate the target users’ needs. Their rugged, drop-resistant design utilizes very little power (2 Watts vs 20-40 watts for regular laptops) from solar panels oftentimes in locations where electrical connectivity is not available. The screens can be viewed in broad daylight, specifically made for schools with outdoor classrooms. The XO’s devices come pre-installed with a variety of educational applications, designed to appeal to the naturally inquisitive nature of children.

Walter Bender developed Sugar, OLPC’s open source learning platform, as the default interface for its XO-1 family of laptop computers. Sugar was designed with the goal of being used by children for interactive, collaborative learning. Sugar Activities encourage critical thinking, the heart of a quality education. Designed from the ground up specifically for children, Sugar offers an alternative to traditional “office-desktop” software. The software is available in 25 languages, including native languages, and Sugar’s Activities are used every school day by almost two million children in more than forty countries.

OLPC and Sugar Labs both follow the mantra “Low floor, no ceiling” to guide its design and development. Sugar aims to provide a low floor to the inexperienced, but without any ceiling for more advanced users. The XO appears to have hardware limitations but the educational and social impact demonstrates the XO can be much more than a simple laptop.

See this infographic of OLPC’s ideals, laptop components, design evolution, setbacks, and its penetration around the world since its inception over seven years ago:

Compiled By: OnlineColleges.net

eMarketer projects that between 2012 and 2016, Latin America will be one of the world’s fastest-growing regions for online advertising spending, growing from $3.62 billion in 2012 to $7.68 billion in 2016, a 112% increase in just four years.

Yet, legacy monopolies like Televisa, creator of many of the world’s most popular telenovelas along with its competitor TV Azteca, still dominate media spending where 56% of advertising dollars go towards broadcast television while only 10% goes towards digital advertising.

Can today’s Spanish-speaking, social media-oriented start-ups break into the big time alongside monopolies to further drive digital growth in Latin America?

Social Media Taking Off
Another recent eMarketer report shows that five of the top ten countries that spend the most time on social media sites are located in Latin America: Argentina, Chile, Peru, Colombia, and Mexico. In addition, Mexico appears in third place among the top five social networking countries by consumer growth rate, behind India and Indonesia. Even with stratospheric growth in social and mobile media usage, those two categories represent only 6% and 5% respectively within all digital media spending.

Alejandro Fosk, comScore senior vice president of Latin America, says, “Nearly 100 percent of the Latin American Internet population visits social networking destinations each month.” comScore’s latest research shows that more than 127 million Latin Americans ages 15 and older visited a social networking destination from a home or work computer in April 2012. And Facebook Accounts for 1 in Every 4 Minutes Spent Online in Latin America.

Infrastructure Challenge
Geoff Ramsey, the CEO of eMarketer, points out that a lack of infrastructure in Latin America and especially in Mexico hold back digital media growth. “I hope that the infrastructure problems can be resolved so that digital media flourishes and Latin Americans have price points that attract the middle class, not just the affluent,” Ramsey said after presenting at the Internet Advertising Bureau Mexico’s annual conference. “There’s a huge skew towards the affluent here.”

eMarketer shows that 41% of Mexicans have access to the Internet, well below other countries in Latin America such as Argentina where 54% of the populations has access to the Internet, for example. Ramsey points out that the difference in broadband is even more severe: only 26% of Mexicans have access to high-speed Internet versus 47% of Argentineans, a 21% difference.

When you look at mobile penetration in the region, only 55% of Mexicans have a mobile phone, again lower than Argentina with 79% penetration and even below the average for all of Latin America, which is 65%.

Investment Lag
If we look at Internet ad spending per user as a relative measure by country, you see that developed markets like the UK or the US invest $185 and $165 per person, respectively. Yet, in markets like Brazil or Argentina, companies only invest $24 and $20 per user. And Mexico invests even less: only $10 per user. Ramsey says, “Even though you have fewer people online, Mexico’s online marketers are not investing as much per person as developed markets.” eMarketer finds a similar trend among other developing markets. China, for example, invests only $13 per Internet user.

Gian Fulgoni, the CEO of comScore who also presented at the IAB Mexico’s annual conference last month, says “In 2011, Latin America online advertising grew at a rate of 42% with Mexico growing at 36%. There is much more room to grow since online advertising represents only 8% of the total media spend in the region.” comScore shows that Latin American online advertising spending came to $2.5 billion dollars, a 42% year-over-year growth rate.

Engel Fonseca of Neurona Digital with Geoff Ramsey, CEO of eMarketer at the IAB Mexico’s annual conference in Mexico City.

Appetite for Start-Ups
With the explosive growth in social media in Latin America, clearly there is demand from a fast-growing digital audience to encourage Internet entrepreneurs in Mexico. Perhaps these start-ups can foster innovation, more competitive prices and even improve the digital infrastructure. Yet, the timing may be right for investors who are willing to look outside of Silicon Valley for the growth that Mexico and Latin America can provide. In addition, a healthy number of graduates in engineering from reputable universities like Tec de Monterrey provide start-ups with the talent they need, well below the cost of engineers in the U.S.

Techcrunch recently reported that Alta Ventures closed a $70 Million fund to invest in Mexican technology startups. The article says, “of all the countries benefitting from the investment, Mexico seems to be hottest, especially since its economy grew even faster than Brazil last year.”

And earlier this summer, 500 Startups’ founder and former PayPal executive Dave McClure announced that 500 Startups would acquire Mexican startup accelerator Mexican.VC. (Read more about Mexican.VC in my previous article here.)

500 Startups’ seed companies in Mexico include Wowzer, a video-screening tool for interviewing and recruiting candidates using technology, and Fontacto, which provides local phone numbers in the major cities across Mexico to small businesses without a local office.

Interestingly, McClure isn’t the only foreigner to invest in Mexico. Ulrich Noel recently ramped up operations in Mexico for Rocket, a privately held investment company based in Germany that rolls out Internet businesses across the world. He set up the company and hired 100 employees to launch an e-commerce website, Linio, in Mexico City this past May, according to a recent article in Expansion Magazine. Some people criticize Rocket for blatantly “copying and improving” web business models while bringing them to new markets. The company has successfully copied eBay with Alando, Groupon with CityDeal and AirBnB with Wimdu, all in Germany. Now, the company hopes to roll out similar models in Mexico and use that as a launching pad for expanding into Latin America.

What do you think? Can foreign investors in tandem with Mexico’s entrepreneurs develop a more fertile digital business environment and solve its e-commerce challenges at the same time? Respond on Twitter @JoeKutchera.

We all know that U.S. websites offer some of the best content and functionality found online. What happens when one of these websites goes multi-lingual and is offered in Spanish? The story of Amtrak.com provides a surprising illustration of how companies – and even government agencies – can expand sales beyond their “home markets.”

An Unexpected Source of Sales for Amtrak.com

In 2006, Amtrak began offering its complete website in Spanish. Its goal: to serve the large and growing Spanish-speaking audience in the U.S. The site was an immediate success and quickly turned a profit.

While Amtrak’s Spanish website accomplished its goals within the U.S., an Amtrak analyst discovered significant Spanish website sales originating from customers in Spain, Mexico and several other Spanish-speaking countries.

In 2007, Amtrak called MotionPoint – the company that operates the Spanish site – to request a German version. Chuck Whiteman, the senior vice president of client services at MotionPoint, remembers, “We were surprised. Amtrak doesn’t operate trains outside the U.S. and, as far as we knew, wasn’t marketing outside the U.S. either.”

Allen Sebrell, director of e-commerce at Amtrak explains, “The second most spoken language in Europe is German. In addition, outside of North America, Germany is one of Amtrak’s top markets. Our data showed that a high percentage of visitors accessing our website did so from German-speaking countries. For these reasons, in 2007, Amtrak launched a German version of Amtrak.com, which includes all the content and functionality found on both the English and Spanish sites.”

“Both the Spanish and German sites have been very successful and have generated much higher returns on investment than we ever anticipated. They continue to generate strong year-over-year revenue growth,” Sebrell says. Amtrak added a French site in 2010 that, like the Spanish and German sites, has also been very successful.

Latent Demand for “World-Class Websites”

Amtrak’s experience is not uncommon. According to Whiteman, “Our clients are often surprised by the traffic their translated sites attract from around the world – even from markets they don’t ship to.”

English speakers, in general, enjoy the best the Internet has to offer because they happen to speak the primary language of the world’s largest market. When an English website offers another language, previously underserved users often find the deep content, robust functionality and more competitive prices appealing. While the worldwide Web connects people with websites from anywhere in the world, users more often find, use, and make purchases on sites that they can read and understand in their own language.

Customization Engine

MotionPoint measures user behavior across a range of industries, markets and languages due to the fact that it operates localized versions of websites for hundreds of well-known brands such as Best Buy, Urban Outfitters, and Victoria’s Secret.

Whiteman describes his company as a “customization engine for websites” even though a casual observer might think of MotionPoint as a “translation company.” But with everything that goes on behind the HTML of an international website, a “customization engine” better reflects what MotionPoint does, including search engine optimization, content management, website hosting, and geo-localization.

“Domestic Spanish-speakers online represent the lowest-hanging fruit for U.S.-based retailers,” Whiteman says. “In fact, we typically see higher conversion rates and average order values among U.S. Hispanics because they’ve historically been so underserved. They react very well when they experience a world-class website in Spanish.”

Once a website is translated into Spanish, Spaniards or Latin Americans often find U.S. sites in Spanish through search and, increasingly, social media, and want to make purchases. For example, Best Buy accepts international credit cards because of the demand the company discovered from Mexico and the rest of Latin America.

MotionPoint translates websites into 36 languages, of which Spanish is the most popular among domestic e-tailers. Since MotionPoint hosts its clients’ translated websites, the company gathers deep insights into global e-commerce. Its Web analytics team reports that international, non-U.S. audiences often spend more time on its e-tailer client sites than domestic audiences.  Since fewer options on the Web exist south of the border, when Latin Americans find a website with high-quality content in Spanish, they spend more time there.

The same is true of sales conversions online. MotionPoint’s clients see that U.S. Hispanics’ purchase rates typically supersede the domestic average. In contrast, international users normally face barriers like international shipping costs and higher taxes and therefore often have lower conversion rates. But when they find a translated site that has been customized into a local currency with an explanation of shipping costs and logistics, international purchase rates approach domestic ones.

E-Commerce Growth in Latin America

Many of MotionPoint’s U.S. Hispanic e-tail sites receive 25% and sometimes even a majority of their traffic from Latin America due to the enormous growth in the region. According to Euromonitor International, Latin America achieved the highest growth rates globally between 2006 and 2011 with a 27.9% compound annual growth rate and total sales reaching more than $15 billion in 2011. North America and Australia saw the lowest. Looking ahead, Latin America will register the strongest e-commerce growth globally during the next five years reaching more than $29 billion in 2016. An increase in online users and improvements in infrastructure will drive online growth in Latin America with such advances as faster broadband services, higher household PC and laptop penetration, and improvements in payment and delivery services.

Sears Holdings owns and operates three Spanish-language websites: its U.S. Hispanic website, its site for Puerto Rico and its international website. Oscar Castro, the director and general manager of international e-commerce at Sears Holdings, says, “Given how much of the world’s population lives outside of the United States, international e-commerce is clearly a big opportunity. Technology provides people unprecedented access to goods, information and other people. As market leaders in e-commerce, we at Sears Holdings leverage technology to serve customers around the world, in multiple languages. We are proud to offer more than a million products to more than 90 countries worldwide.” Following is a screen shot of Sears’ international website.

Global E-Commerce Challenges

While the benefits are clear, international e-commerce may introduce complexities for retailers such as managing pricing in different currencies, vendor restrictions, collecting tariffs and duties, accepting different payment types, managing fraud and returns, as well as overcoming complexities in outbound fulfillment and product delivery.

Vendors like FiftyOne enable retailers to eliminate many of these complexities so that they can transact with cross-border shoppers in the more than 100 markets it delivers to worldwide. FiftyOne makes these transactions more fluid between the customer and retailer by not only providing currency conversion, but also managing international logistics and actually taking control of the inventory for part of the shipping process.

For example, a customer from Mexico will typically see the Mexican flag on the upper right corner of a FiftyOne-enabled website and all of the prices will be displayed in Mexican pesos. Oftentimes, a landing page welcomes the international visitor – explaining shipping or credit card policies. FiftyOne is also able to suppress products that are not available for international shipment.

Kevin Frisch, the senior vice president and general manager consumer with FiftyOne Global Ecommerce, says that after six months of fine-tuning an internationally optimized website, its clients begin generating international sales results, which grows to about 10% of its clients’ total e-commerce revenues.

As an example of FiftyOne’s work, Williams-Sonoma’s website offers shipping to more than 95 local markets.

Fewer Returns

On the upside, FiftyOne finds that cross-border shoppers rarely return their purchases, according to its recent study of more than half a million orders that the company fulfilled. Why don’t cross-border shoppers return as much as domestic online shoppers? International returns can be more complicated and costly. In addition, research suggests that buyers outside the U.S. simply aren’t accustomed to returning what they order.

Claim Your International Customers

Translating and optimizing your site for international e-commerce unlocks latent demand from global consumers. Amtrak.com was surprised that it could grow its sales with not only Spanish, but also German and French-speaking consumers – something the company never expected.

Google launched country-specific versions of its websites early in its history so that no one would copy them. In contrast, Groupon spawned international copycats and subsequently had to buy several of them to maintain a leadership position globally. Will you claim your international market? Or will someone else claim your market by duplicating your business in new languages and currencies?

Finding the Right International Markets

In conclusion, identifying the right target markets isn’t as simple as pulling a list of the largest economies. The opportunity is a function of your current offering as well as analyzing the number and quality of your competitors in every market.

When developing a business case for your international sales, break out the non-U.S. traffic coming to your English website. “If you see a significant amount of traffic coming from a particular country, use that as a reason to dig deeper,” Whiteman says.  “Current existing traffic from foreign countries to a company’s English website reveals latent demand. By comparing relative traffic volumes with direct competitors, you can identify markets where your brand already has a foothold and latent demand is the strongest.”

“Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning,” said Bill Gates. And the best place to find those unhappy customers today is on Twitter, Facebook and across your social media channels.

I recently flew on the Mexican discount airline, Volaris, and had an experience that highlights how not to manage both customer service and social media among an international, multi-lingual audience. Allow me to explain the details of what happened, and conclude with six lessons on managing multi-lingual and international customer service and social media.

My flight to Guadalajara was scheduled to leave from Mexico City at 6:45AM on May 28^th. I printed my boarding pass earlier that weekend and arrived at the airport one hour before my flight. I walked through security and waited in “Waiting Area B” as the departure screens instructed me to do. On previous flights at Mexico City’s airport (with Aeromexico and United), I have often waited up until 15 minutes before my flight to see the departure screens finally announce a gate number, usually just along side the waiting area.

I waited in the waiting area until 10 minutes before my flight was scheduled to depart, at which time I asked Volaris’ customer service person about the gate number. She told me that she had made numerous announcements and that the flight was already leaving. The loudspeaker system in waiting area at Mexico City’s airport is of poor quality, and so, it is difficult to hear anything. In addition, because I am not a native Spanish speaker, I often rely on visual rather than audio information.

I asked the customer service person, Gabriela, if she could call the gate to hold the plane one minute, until I arrived. No, she said. So, I ran to gate number 19 hoping that the gate would still be open. I arrived at 6:40 (5 minutes before the flight was supposed to depart) to find that the doors had already been closed and that I would need to take the following flight at 9:30.

I walked back to speak with Gabriela about changing my ticket for the 9:30 flight. Her attitude clearly communicated she didn’t care. She explained that she couldn’t do anything and that I would need to leave the boarding area, go back out to the ticketing desk and purchase another ticket. I was flabbergasted. As I spoke with her, two young Mexican men approached the customer service desk, outraged with an identical experience as mine. Sebastian and Hugo couldn’t believe what had happened.

She repeated herself saying that she had made numerous announcements about the gate number. But, she had never bothered calling us by name over the loudspeaker system. Gabriela gave them the same instructions as she had given me, indifferent to our problem. She said that Volaris was not responsible for the information that appeared on the departure screens: “That is the responsibility of this airport.”

Both Sebastian and Hugo, like me, had printed their boarding tickets online. Volaris offers its customers a $100 Pesos discount on their next flight if they check in online.  So, all three of us, with our pre-printed boarding passes, had walked through security and followed the instructions on the departure screens to wait in “Waiting Area B.”

Meanwhile, Gabriela told us that the customers that had checked in at the ticketing desk that morning had received tickets with the boarding gate number already on them! Ironically, we three Internet-savvy passengers were actually penalized for printing out our boarding passes in advance. We weren’t given the information that the other passengers had received by checking in at the ticketing desk.

After arguing with her for about 15 minutes, Gabriela finally told us to talk to the manager, Mauricio Mishua, downstairs.  Sebastian, Hugo, and I walked back through security and out to the ticketing area. We asked for Mr. Mishua at Volaris’ ticketing area. The ticketing agent told us that he was at breakfast. While she was noticeably more diplomatic than Gabriela, she told us the same thing as Gabriela had. We would unfortunately need to buy another ticket to fly to Guadalajara.

Sebastian and Hugo continued arguing with the ticketing agent, presumably waiting for Mr. Mishua. Instead, I decided to buy a one-way ticket and save my emotional energy for work that day. Mr. Mishua never returned from his “breakfast.” Suddenly, the cheapest airline ticket from Mexico City to Guadalajara became the most expensive one with my “new” $121 one-way ticket.

When I arrived at my client’s office later that morning, I complained on Twitter. My first post read “Wow, terrible customer service from @ViajaVolaris (Mexican Airline). Don’t try printing your boarding passes at home…or finding your gate.” My second post read, “@ViajaVolaris (Mexican Airline) could learn something from @billgates “your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.”

To that second post, I received an auto-response in Spanish that read, “#UnaAppQue te permita comprar boletos y obtener descuentos que nadie más tiene #VolarisApp disponible en iTunes. Ya la descargaste?” This roughly translates as, “#AnAppThat allows you to buy your plane tickets and obtain tickets that no one else will have access to. #VolarisApp available on iTunes. Did you download it?”

I couldn’t believe that not only did Volaris not listen to my complaint, but it also responded in another language, trying to sell me instead. Clearly, Volaris does not use Twitter (or presumably its Facebook page or other social media channels) to listen to its customers.

See here for a screen shot of my Twitter feed from the morning of May 28.

Volaris’ failure to use its social media channels correctly provides us with six key lessons on how marketers ought to manage multi-lingual customers:

1. In his book “How to Win Friends and Influence People,” Dale Carnegie tells his readers to “Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.” Making the extra effort to use people’s names, especially foreign passengers, in announcing boarding times creates happier customers. This is as true on social media channels as it is in person.
2. Be aware that your international customers may rely on visual information and not hear as well as your native speaking customers. Even if it’s the responsibility of the airport, it reflects poorly on airlines. So, it behooves them to make sure that the departure screens work properly.
3. Follow Bill Gates’ advice: “Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” Use that feedback internally. Bring that feedback to your vendors to negotiate better deals with them. In this particular case, Volaris can use this story to negotiate more timely listings of gate information with Mexico City’s airport.
4. Generic auto-responses don’t work on social media unless you intend to direct customers to channels where they can get faster customer service. You can, for example, include an email address or a 1-800 number in an auto-response. Trying to sell your customers when they want customer service obviously just upsets them, as it did me.
5. When you promise your best customers a discount to incentivize them to do something, keep that promise and provide them with the same service or information as you do your other customers. Or alternatively, stop offering the incentive. In our particular case, Sebastian, Hugo and I saved Volaris money by avoiding the check-in desk and increasing the speed of the check-in line for those customers who did not print their boarding pass in advance. Unfortunately, we had to pay the price of buying another ticket because we didn’t receive the gate information on time.
6. Lastly, show empathy towards your customers both in person and across social media. Empathy goes a long way towards satisfying their needs.

What companies do you know that have interesting marketing stories to share? We are looking for case studies in Latin America or really anywhere in the world.

“É-X-I-T-O en Marketing Digital: Su Estrategia en 5 pasos” (“Success in Digital Marketing: A Five-Step Process,” in English) spells out a process for organizations of all sizes to create impactful digital marketing communications programs:

1.    E – Escuche a su audiencia

• Listen to your audience

2.    eXperimente como usuario, a través de “perfiles”

• Put yourself in the shoes of the user and write your marketing plan using “personas”

3.    I – Integre su plan conversacional

• Integrate conversations into your content marketing plan

4.    T – Transforme su audiencia en comunidades

• Transform your target audience into a community

5.    O – Optimice y mida los resultados

• Optimize and measure results

Editorial Patria, a division of Hachette, will publish the book and distribute it both in paper and eBook formats (Kindle, Nook, iTunes) across Latin America, Spain, and the U.S. Alonso Fernandez of Google has served as our enormously helpful assistant, writing up three insightful case studies for the book.

We are excited to feature some great stories from 3M, Banamex (Citibank) Cinépolis (the leading movie theater chain in Mexico), Google, Grupo Expansión (Time Inc), Kimberly-Clark, LG, L’Oreal, Procter & Gamble, S.com.mx, Sears, Unilever, and a number of start ups from across Latin America.

Thank you in advance for your support! And please email me directly if you have any suggestions for case studies in Latin America.