Marketers Meet to Swap Secrets at Executive Forum

March 11, 2008

Leading marketers including Best Buy, Ford Credit, and 1-800-Flowers met in Palm Beach, Florida yesterday and today to share insights on how to tap the ballooning U.S. Hispanic market which is approaching the $1 trillion mark.  The executive forum was hosted by MotionPoint Corporation whose technology is used for Spanish-language conversion of the websites of those attending the meeting.

Michael Tchong -- an internationally recognized trend watcher -- gave the keynote address and called for marketers to "embrace the Internet and in particular Web-enabled cell phones, which are becoming the preferred tools of an on-demand society – providing consumers with the right information at the right time – in their preferred language of course."

Other presenters included Javier Delgado of Dieste Harmel & Partners and Luis Cabrera of Bravo Group.  Both Hispanic marketing agencies stressed the importance of using small tailored landing areas to smoothly transition Spanish-speaking visitors from highly relevant advertising placements to a translated version of the firm’s transactional website.  Mr. Cabrera explained that “this transition is important to preserve the flow which brought the visitor to your site in the first place, but that without an ‘equal, but translated’ transactional experience, you will lose their trust … they’ll assume that the information is out-of-date, the prices are different, or the experience is in some way substandard.”

Conclusions of those attending the meeting included:

1.     The size and growth rate of the U.S. Hispanic market creates tremendous opportunity.

2.     While a translated website isn’t the entire marketing solution, it is the right first step to penetrate this market.

3.     It is critical to establish the timeliness, reliability, and security of a translated website if the goal is to process transactions.

Participants left the two-day meeting invigorated and armed with new ways to better serve the U.S. Hispanic market.  Interestingly, a post-event survey showed that attendees were unanimous in both their willingness to recommend the MotionPoint Executive Forum to other multi-lingual marketers and in their desire to participate again in next year’s forum.