by Mary Beth McCabe, DBA

Did you know how many cars cross the border each year at San Ysidro? Did you know that it is the busiest Border Crossing in the Western Hemisphere? Ten percent of all travelers visiting the United States enter through the San Ysidro-Puerta Mexico Port of Entry.

24 Northbound lanes, 4 of them SENTRI lanes
6 southbound lanes into Mexico

For 2007, Northbound Border crossings (Source: Customs and Border Protection (CBP)
There were 15, 696, 262 passenger vehicles, carrying 28,464,192 persons in total. In addition, pedestrians were 7,756,569.
(Source: Sun Marketing, 2008)

San Diego Hispanic Television Station Boom!

When I moved to San Diego in 1982, there were no TV stations here that promoted themselves to the San Diego Hispanic Marketplace. By that time, I had worked for three years for an affiliate of what is now Univision, I knew things would change here, and they have. Now San Diego is home to many Spanish language Television stations.

Here’s a brief summary of Spanish TV in the San Diego area.

XEWT started to promote to the San Diego region in the mid-80’s. This Televisa station has been around since 1960 broadcasting on VHF Channel 12 from Tijuana.

KBNT, which started in 1990 was the first U.S. Univision affiliate in the region. Now we have Telemundo, TV Azteca, and on cable, Azteca America and Galavision. If you have cable and over the air options, you could be watching three Televisa stations, three Azteca stations, well, let’s just say you’ve got choices. There are now nine over the air stations in the San Diego/Tijuana region plus cable.

And if you subscribe to satellite, you’ll have a choice of Spanish language Telefutura, ESPN, MTV and Discovery.

The media pie for Spanish Language TV is getting sliced up in many ways. And in addition, there are networks in other markets that target only English speaking Latinos, such as SI TV.

We are only minutes from Mexico. And so often we forget that the broadcast signals don’t stop at the border.

Here are some of the facts regarding the U.S. Hispanic Population. It is nearly 40 million currently.

By 2025, U.S. Hispanic population will be nearly 66 million. It is, and will continue to be ranked the second largest in the world, just behind Mexico.

Current US purchasing power: $570 Billion Dollars annually.

Mean household income: $58,466 (San Diego, 2003).

Have you been to Fashion Valley Mall in the daytime lately and seen Hispanics shopping? Amazing.

Why is the growth happening?

Two reasons: Higher birth rates and immigration.

The California Hispanic Market is mostly Mexican, which makes it much easier to approach culturally.

One of every three U.S. Hispanics live in California.

One of every three persons in California is Hispanic.

Hispanics make up nearly Half of all births in the State of California (48%).

From 1990 to 2000, the Hispanic market grew 58% while Anglos increased 6%.

By 2040, Hispanics will make up nearly half of California’s population (48%).

Sun Marketing is a media expert in both Spanish and English language television and radio and has worked in the San Diego/Tijuana market for 23 years.

A Fresh Marketing Plan

Differentiate your business now or plan not to be in business much longer...

Start now with a fresh marketing plan. What outcomes do you predict? Then what are the steps you need to get there?

If you’re like most marketing and advertising people, you know you need a marketing plan, but don’t want to actually write it. You want someone else to do it for you. That’s not going to happen nor would it be effective.

I remember the first marketing plan I wrote for my business, looking at a blank piece of paper for a long time before I began. Then, once I got started, it was hard to finish. I just kept thinking of things to add, and then I had to stop because it became too long. So I edited it and kept revising after that.

When was the last time you wrote or even looked at your marketing plan? If it’s been more than a few months, you’ll need to update it.

Here are some ways for you to bring the plan up to date:

1. Summarize: Begin with the current status of your industry. If it’s experiencing layoffs and cutbacks, then you should describe it. If it’s expanding, give reasons why and elaborate.
2. Communicate: What is the current message you are sending to your customers? Is it sensitive to the economy? Static or shrinking marketing budgets will demand conservative, high-impact tactics and essential communication skills sharpened. Are your messages focused on value rather than status? Are you playing up the experience and trust factors?
3. Service: Branding is a reward the firm receives when they really value long-term customers. Are you worthy of the reward? Retaining existing customers is more important than ever. So don’t procrastinate the personal touch whenever you can in customer service.
4. Differentiate: How are you differentiating? What are you first at? What attributes do you own? The explosion of choice is upon us. It used to be national vs. local. Now it’s a global market with everyone competing for everyone’s business everywhere.
5. Customers: List the ways in which your market has changed. Has the demographic shift of consumers or business changed in the last period? If you serve a single marketplace, has it shifted to multiple needs, locations, or styles? Does everyone speak the same language as you?
6. Strategy: Examine the level of turbulence in your industry. If it’s constantly changing then you need to constantly change, too. If there are only minor changes, then you don’t need such large adjustments, only minor tune-ups. We need to differentiate our products, our services, and our customers. That’s what our marketing plan can do for us. It can guide us to the road where we can recognize and focus on the differences, so that we can communicate those to others. A former San Diego Ad Club speaker, Jack Trout, has written books on Positioning and Marketing Warfare for 20 years. Like positioning, Trout believes that differentiation takes place in the mind. Trout’s most recent book, Differentiate or Die, Survival in Our Era of Killer Competition, is convincing. There is no other way to succeed.

by www.TheMediaAudit.com

A new study from The Media Audit shows the increasing number of Hispanics who are becoming more important and targeted by the automobile industry.

A total of 87 metro areas were studied where 15.5% of population was Hispanic adults (21.3 million of 137.5 million) and representing 18.1% of those planning to buy an automobile in the next year (4.7 million of 26.1 million). Within the study, 11.4 million Hispanics were planning on a new vehicle purchase, and of those, 1.9 million planned to make that purchase within the next 12 months. As for what type of car, 19.5% said they were considering a domestic car, 17.5% said a foreign made car, and 17.4% planned to spend in excess of $30,000 for the new car. As for what makes are most preferred, according to the survey, Hispanics differ little from the general population with Ford, Chevrolet, Dodge, Honda and Toyota being the top picks. In addition to car purchases, the percentage of Hispanic adults in the 87 metro regions who shopped at an auto parts business in the 30 days preceding the survey was higher than the general population - 32.7% vs. 31%.

A lesser percentage of Hispanic adults took car loans at 27.3% as compared to 29.5% of all adults. As for financial confidence, the survey's Hispanic respondents indicated that 55.9% expect to be better off financially within the next six month, versus 41.1% of Caucasians. 

More information at:
www.TheMediaAudit.com

Nielsen (NSI) has no competition in the television ratings industry, and yet no one is questioning the way they add shares to no limit.

A recent article in Electronic Media states that television shares don’t add up to 100 anymore. Does anyone care?

How can the television industry gain any credibility when they don’t even know how to split a pie?

Isn’t that what share is all about? I always thought so, until now. The expert, who I have always respected, David Poltrack, from CBS research and planning, states, "when people started to add more TV sets, they started to add more shares."

To the educated third grader, this isn’t possible. Why is the television industry getting away with it? Because no one is currently competing with NSI.

This season, the pie is now 118% full. So, the broadcasting industry is exaggerating the size of the audience by 18%. That means one out of five dollars spent is poorly allocated. This deceives the advertisers into believing that they have reached their market, when in fact, they will come up short unless they spend another 18%.

Compare it to the soft drink market: If someone buys more than one type of soft drink, will the shares add up to more than 100? Never. The whole is 100%.

Where will this deception stop? Right now a share means 80% of a share. What happens when everyone’s PC becomes a TV, too? What will a share mean? When will a share really mean 50% of a share?

Where does it stop?

Why do we need innovation in the San Diego business community? We are looking for new ways to complete tasks and new solutions to old problems.

The big picture is clear; we want to reduce congestion during rush hours on the freeways so we can get where we need to be. We want products and services to be affordable and competitive in price so we will have choices as buyers in the corporate as well as consumer marketplace.

As we individualize our needs, we are a city of small businesses. 98% of the businesses qualify as "small" by definition.

Innovation means that there is value created.

How do companies innovate?

They go through a process of creating solutions that create value.

Why do we innovate?

So we can ratchet up a notch and become better at what we do.

What do we lose when we innovate?

We lose the old habits and in the process we lose some of our stubbornness.

We gain a new view of the horizon.

Companies know that to succeed, they must innovate.

Does that mean they should compete head to head for a bigger share of existing markets or to identify opportunities for distinctive products or services and break free from the competitive pack?

Fact: Between 1975 and 1995, 60% of the companies on the Fortune 500 were replaced. What the new companies had in common was that they either created new markets or recreated existing ones. The companies in decline were competing for bigger shares of existing markets, which proved to be a weak strategy.

The change has happened so quickly because the rising firms are creating and generating wealth in a knowledge economy.

Peter Drucker in his latest book, "Management Challenges for the 21st Century" discusses innovation and change. He states that we should strive to become change leaders. Be ready to innovate, he says. The test for innovation is that it "creates value." A novelty only creates amusement. Business leaders need to ask, "Do customers want it, and will they pay for it?" Drucker suggests that on a regular schedule, every product, service, process, market, distribution channel, customer and end use should be put on trial for its life. Every organization that wants to be competitive in the 21st century must ask itself, "If we did not do it already, would we, knowing what we now know, go into it?" The enterprise must be "committed to change" and "committed to action," he says.

Productivity will come as management treats knowledge workers as assets rather than costs. Costs need to be controlled and reduced. Assets need to be made to grow."

Knowledge workers "own the means of production. "For the first time in human history, individuals can expect to outlive organizations," says Drucker. It’s more than likely those bosses will no longer know more than the knowledge workers reporting to them will. So those workers will have to manage themselves by defining their own tasks.

1. Focus your efforts on the factors of change expected, and
2. Build your capabilities toward this change.

Copies of Sun Marketing articles on Hispanic Research available upon request

Hispanic Research Study

Contact us:info@sunmarketing.net

Advisors to Sun Marketing