As marketing director David Witherspoon goes back through his sales files at Palm Harbor Homes Inc., he’s troubled by what he doesn’t see: customers with Spanish surnames.
The manufactured-housing company has 130 sales lots across the nation, including many in areas with large Hispanic populations. Yet, less than 5 percent of its customers are Latino.
“We’d like to figure out why,” Witherspoon says. “One-third of Texas is Hispanic, and that’s the market we want to go after.”
Addison, Texas-based Palm Harbor may have taken a big step in that direction. In August it launched a Spanish version of its English-language Web site, joining a growing list of companies nationwide.
It hopes to tap into a burgeoning Hispanic population in the United States that not only has doubled in the past decade to just more than 30 million, but also continues to see huge gains in Internet usage.
One research outfit determined that, by percentage, more Hispanics use the Internet than Caucasians do. The number of Hispanics online is growing faster than the general population. But beyond the staggering numbers is basic marketing sense.
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“You can have a much better impact over a larger audience,” says Ramon Cisneros, president of Webspanol.com in Franklin, Tenn., which has translated Web sites into Spanish for carmaker Saturn Corp. and Al Gore’s presidential campaign, as well as for a local Toyota dealership, a Marriott hotel and a Wal-Mart store.
Companies send online visitors to Spanish versions of their sites either with a button on their main Web site or through a separate address.
Palm Harbor has both, with a second Web address, www.sucasa-palmharbor.com.
“Companies have found out that if you give the person the opportunity to receive the information in their own language, you get a better result,” Cisneros says. “I do understand and write a lot of English, but I will use Spanish if I have the opportunity to use it.”
No figures are available on the number of companies that have started Spanish-language Web sites, or how fast the idea is catching on.
“I say it’s still a trickle, but it’s quickly turning into a trend,” says Eva May, managing director of Espanol Marketing and Communications Inc. in Cary, N.C., which advises companies on marketing to Latinos. One client, Countrywide Home Loans Inc., just introduced a Spanish version of its Web site devoted to first-time homebuyers.
She says some Fortune 500 corporations, such as Quaker Oats Co. and Procter & Gamble Co., are out front with Spanish-language sites.