Why Your Firm Must Market To Hispanic Prospects
The following is adapted from Beyond Se Habla Español by Liel Levy and Natalie Fragkouli.
Latinoamerica.
Hispano.
Americanizado.
Nueva Latina.
Ambicultural.
Understanding all the terms of the Hispanic market will help your law firm better market to the Hispanic population.
For Latinoamericanas and Hispanos, this requires marketing to them in Spanish, the language they’ll use when they search for help online. Your campaigns should also stress the fact that your firm doesn’t just create Spanish marketing materials. You should also have attorneys who can speak with them in their native language or at least staff who can translate on their behalf.
Latinoamericanas and Hispanos may not represent the largest Hispanic demographics in this country, but they do represent promising client segments for your firm if you know how to properly market to them. Just like anyone else, they get in car accidents and need personal injury attorneys. They get hurt at work and need help with workers’ comp.
In short, they need law firms like yours to represent them.
Show them that they’ll be comfortable coming to you for help — just as you would with any other demographic — and Latinoamericanas and Hispanos will quickly grow your firm.
What makes them so vital to the future of your law firm?
LATINX ARE THE FASTEST GROWING DEMOGRAPHIC IN THE COUNTRY
If you had to choose between a market that isn’t growing, one that’s actually declining, and one that is skyrocketing in size, which would you choose?
We’ll give you a minute.
If you picked the third option, we agree, but then your law firm needs a plan for engaging the Latinx community.
They are, by far, the fastest growing demographic in the country and it isn’t even close.
Currently, Hispanics account for more than half of the US population growth that has taken place since 2016. By 2040–2045, experts believe they’ll account for as much as 80 percent.
TECHNOLOGY. TECHNOLOGY. TECHNOLOGY.
It’s not just their growing population that makes Latinx such an important demographic for your digital marketing strategy.
It’s that they are on the internet a lot.
Sixty percent of Hispanics were either born or have grown up during the Internet Age. For non-Hispanic Whites, that number is just 40 percent.
Ninety-eight percent of Latinx own a smartphone compared to 95 percent of the rest of the population. This number takes into account everyone from the age of two and up.
They actually over-index the rest of the population by 9 percent when it comes to owning smartphones, which explains why an incredible 99 percent of Hispanic households rely on wireless phone services. These households are well ahead of the curve there.
Toddlers aside, if you focus on actual adults, you’ll be interested to know that, among Hispanics thirty-five and older, their smartphone ownership exceeds that of the rest of the US population by 5 percent.
On average, Latinos spend twenty-seven hours a week on their smartphones visiting websites and using apps.
Fifty-seven percent of Latinos say they are interested in watching videos on their smartphones over-indexing non-Hispanic Whites once again by 22 percent.
So, if explainer videos would help better engage your prospects, make them with this growing population in mind.
Finally, it can’t be emphasized enough how important it is that 27 percent of Hispanics live in multigenerational homes.
This means younger generations are helping older ones keep up with technology. In fact, those who are fifty or older over-index non-Hispanic Whites when it comes to using electronic gadgets by 36 percent!
SOCIAL MEDIA IS VERY POPULAR AMONG LATINOS AND LATINAS
This love of technology means Latinx also love social media.
Fifty-two percent of Hispanics spend at least an hour a day on social media, compared to just 38 percent of non-Hispanic Whites. Twenty-four percent of Hispanics actually spend three hours or more on social media a day compared to only 13 percent of non-Hispanic Whites.
Twenty-seven percent of Latinx report that finding out about products and services is one of the most important reasons they visit social media sites. So, by all means, run social ads knowing you’re not interrupting their experiences.
LANGUAGE IS AN EASY MEANS OF CULTURAL CONNECTION
As you probably know all too well, a big part of your job as a lawyer is about building trust with your prospects — fast.
One simple — but effective — way you can do this with Latinos is by using Spanish when marketing to them.
Consider the following from the Nielsen report:
• Seventy-two percent of Hispanics and 75 percent of Hispanic households speak Spanish at home.
• Seventy-three percent of US Hispanics agree that it’s important to them that their children continue their family’s cultural traditions.
• Seventy-three percent of US Hispanics agree that their cultural ethnic heritage is an important part of who they are.
Along with understanding the accepted terminology for each group, showing that you appreciate how important language and culture is to Hispanics is a great way to make the right first impression with potential clients.
LATINX CLIENTS ARE LOYAL CLIENTS
Lastly, focusing on Latino clients might be one of the best ways to reliably grow your law firm’s business for one very important reason. It’s not just that they represent such a large percentage of the population or that they’re so comfortable with the internet.
It’s also that they’re extremely loyal to the companies that earn their business.
When Customer Communication Groups analyzed Latinx buying habits, they found that:
“The 2019 study found that 53 percent of Hispanics report they tend to find a good source for their purchases and stick with it. This is compared to 37 percent of Americans overall and 46 percent of African Americans who said they stick with a good source for purchases once they find it.”
Obviously, giving their business to a law firm is different than a retail company, but there’s no reason to think that kind of loyalty doesn’t hold in other circumstances — provided they are happy with the service received.
Furthermore, as we’ve covered a number of times now, the Latino population is family-focused and very social among their communities.
This is a huge advantage for your law firm because Nielsen reports that 38 percent of Hispanics say they like to share their consumer experiences online with reviews and ratings.
In other words, give your Hispanic clients incredible service, and they’ll do a lot of the marketing for you.
To learn more about how to market to Hispanic prospects, Beyond Se Habla Español can be found on Amazon.
Liel Levy, Head of Partnerships at Nanato Media, is also the co-host of In Camera Podcast, a weekly podcast dedicated to legal marketing. He has conducted several workshops at Google Austin as part of the Google Digital Coaches program, which helps local Hispanic and Black small-business owners leverage the power of Google and digital platforms.
Natalie Fragkouli, Head of Digital at Nanato Media, is a former corporate strategy and business marketing lecturer at the University of West London in the UK. With over ten years of experience in legal marketing, building and managing in-house teams, Natalie is a frequent guest at conferences like Google Marketing Live, an invitation-only gathering for top Google Ads experts.
