The Untapped Hispanic Market: Hispanic-owned Businesses

By now, many marketers have heard of the tremendous opportunities the United States. Hispanic consumer represents in terms of numbers and purchasing power. However, in the age of hypersegmentation and targeting, Millennials and bi-cultural Hispanics have risen to the top of marketer’s go-to Hispanic sub-segments. While most companies focus on this target, there is an untapped consumer segment that has serious growth potential, Hispanic business owners.

Many consumer marketers dismiss this segment as a B2B target. What they fail to remember, however, is that there are people behind businesses; business owners are people too, making them a unique B2C marketing opportunity.

Per a recent study by the Stanford Latino Entrepreneurship Initiative (SLEI); Latino firms continue to be created at faster rates than the national average. While new business creation slowed through the recession overall, Latinos continued to create firms at similarly high rates as before. The 2012 Census counted 3.3 million Latino firms, making up 12% of all U.S. firms. When you factor in Hispanic firms owned by two or more Latinos and family owned and operated businesses, that translates into almost 1 in 10 U.S. Hispanics being business owners.

Coupled with another statistic from the SLEI study, Latino firms are located all over the United States, with 75% in majority non-Latino neighborhoods serving mostly non-Latino customers, the halo effect of targeting Hispanic business owners is tremendous and has implications for potentially reaching non-Hispanics.

Read the full blog here - Engage: Hispanics