A growth opportunity for pharma: Hispanics
When US marketing as a whole is becoming saturated, the Hispanic community offers potential growth
By on Mar 28, 2012I recently attended the Google Hispanic Marketing Forum. While Hispanics are certainly not a rare market, whenever I get a chance to attend a Google eventI go because I always learn something new.
According to the last US census, one in six Americans are now Hispanics, and this figure is rapidly growing. Although all the speakers were excellent, I’m going to share insights from the presentation that focused on pharma and a few other facts. Eric Talbot, who spent a dozen years in pharma and is currently at Univision, started his talk with the fact that about 69% of Hispanics have health insurance and currently represent 9% of the US adult pharmaceutical market. This is a growing market and represents an opportunity.
From 2006 to 2011, Latin health search keyword queries grew 588%, per Google. Television (33%) and online (29%) are the main media sources of health for Hispanics. Interestingly, 78% of Hispanics use search engines to find more info on something they saw on TV. In terms of digital, with Spanish ads a Spanish landing page is preferred, but Talbot noted that even with an English page the bounce rate is not huge. It’s important to note that overall 80% of Hispanics search using mobile devices.
Comparing the patient journeys of Hispanics to Caucasians from diagnosis to adherence, the biggest gap was in diagnosis. Both groups have similar treatment and adherence rates. According to Talbot, the opportunity for pharma is to increase awareness and provide education to accelerate and increase diagnosis. Talbot noted that less than 1% of direct to consumer ad dollars by pharma is spent on the Hispanic marketing, and many major brands have no online Spanish presence.
Although many Hispanics speak English, Talbot shared a study that showed watching TV ads in English garnered less brand awareness and decreased understanding of the medical concepts.
Language is not the only potential barrier to reaching Hispanics; there are also cultural differences. To illustrate this, Talbot screened two Flomax commercials, one in English and one in Spanish. The English-language ad focused on the discomfort the man felt while the Spanish-language ad focused on the husband’s responsibility to his family to go to the doctor. The Spanish-language ads were very successful, resulting in a 250% increase in Flomax.
Overall, it’s an interesting idea in this time when the US marketing as a whole is getting saturated.
The event also made clear that Google has recruited quality partners to make serious investments in developing content for YouTube. A number of speakers made the point that we were on the cusp of something big, and that instead of thinking of developing for a specific medium (TV, digital, etc.) it’s all about developing good content. Ben Silverman, former NBC head who has a company partnering with YouTube, said, “It used to be a broadcast-centric model; now it’s a consumer-centric model.” (For more on YouTube, see Pharma and the new YouTube layout and What YouTube can do for pharma.)
Eileen O'Brien is director of search and innovation at Siren Interactive. She blogs at Sirensong.
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