When you think of your target audience for your business, does the Hispanic population play a role? If it doesn’t, you’re missing a big – and growing – opportunity, business and sales leaders say.
Consider the numbers: In the last year, 51 percent of the U.S.’s 2.2 million-person population growth was among Hispanics. Here in Denver, the Hispanic population is expected to grow nearly 10 percent over the next five years. And their purchasing power here is anticipated to grow to almost $30 billion by 2024, up from nearly $16 billion in 2014.
“This is a market that should definitely be considered in your marketing strategy,” Abel Corral, a local sales manager for Telemundo Denver, told Gold-level Denver Metro Chamber members at a recent Gold Program.
Telemundo Denver President and General Manager Andres Chaparro agreed.
“When more than 21 percent of the total population in Colorado, more than 32 percent in Denver County and at least 66 percent of students in Denver Public Schools are Hispanics, those figures should spark the interest of any company or organization to learn about our Hispanic community,” he said. “They have an annual buying power and consumer spending of at least $16 billion, and I ask everyone, are you getting your fair share?”
So, you’re ready to start segmenting your marketing audiences – but do you know where to start? Business and marketing experts offered their tips, based on their own experiences marketing to a Hispanic audience.
Do your homework
No matter the audience demographic, you need to “dig a little bit deeper … think about who you’re trying to target,” Laura Sonderup, managing director of Heinrich Hispanidad a multicultural communications firm that is a division of marketing agency Heinrich.
That also means deciding on what your measures of success are – which may help you further segment that audience and find the right places to spend your ad budget – and your time building relationships.
Meet people where they are
Strong relations build life-long customers and referrals.
“Go to the people … they want to connect to you,” advises Sawaya Law Firm Managing Senior Partner Michael Sawaya.
When the Denver Broncos focused on growing their Hispanic audience – their “fanaticos” – they began hosting more events at the stadium, and they went to neighborhoods where their fanaticos live, serving carne asada and introducing fans to Myles the mascot and Broncos cheerleaders.
“It’s about being authentic,” said Ted Santiago, the Broncos’ director of marketing.
They’ve grown those events by 50 to 60 percent, says Fan Development Manager Marisol Villagomez.
“We knew that we had to put in the time to develop trust,” she said.
Create loyalty – in good times and bad
For the Broncos, that means even during a losing season that people still feel connected to the team.
“We want our fans to feel a part of our success,” Santiago said. “When we lose, we want them to be mad; we want them to feel that pain … we want them to feel this is going to get better and I’m a part of this through good and bad.”
Language matters
Experts agreed that while younger generations of Hispanics speak more English and consumer more English-language media, but Telemundo National Sales Manager Drew Wilson emphasized that Spanish is a language of comfort for native speakers.
“More important,” he added, “it’s the language we make decisions in.”
Villagomez agreed: “I work in English; I think and I feel in Spanish.”
And, it means better conversation: Spanish-language ads were four times more effective in driving sales than their English-language counterparts.
So, while adding “se habla Español” to your business card is a good start at building trust and differentiating yourself from your competitors, Corral said, “imagine what the next level is.”
A note on our usage of the term Hispanic: Our panelists noted that there is a debate on whether Hispanic, Latino or Chicano best identifies this audience. We use the term Hispanic to mirror the usage from the data shared during this program.
Sara Crocker is the communications manager for the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce.
As an employer, if you had the opportunity to significantly increase productivity while reducing costs by investing in your employees, would you turn a blind eye?
Consider the new imperative for employers—integrating mental health in employee wellness programs.
Why? The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recognize mental illness as a major public health issue, and is the leading cause of both injury and disease for people around the world.
More days of work loss and work impairment are caused by mental illness than many other chronic conditions such as diabetes, asthma and arthritis. According to the CDC, depression is estimated to cause 200 million lost workdays each year at a cost to employers of $17 to $44 billion. In a 3-month period, patients with depression miss an average of 4.8 workdays and suffer 11.5 days of reduced productivity.
By improving an organization’s commitment to mental health wellness for its employees, there are notable benefits besides increased productivity—including saving lives. Just as organizations recognize they can make an impact on reducing heart disease by encouraging exercise, they can also make an impact on reducing suicide by promoting mental health, through early identification and intervention.
The Working Minds program, offered by the CU Helen and Arthur E. Johnson Depression Center, is one resource available nationally to employers that provides a forum for dialogue and critical thinking about workplace mental health challenges. The program encourages help-seeking and help-giving behaviors among employees, and also helps organizations identify the warning signs of mental illness and suicide.
This unique program is designed to be facilitated in a variety of workplace environments including large and small businesses, non-profits and healthcare organizations. The CU Johnson Depression Center offers two training options:
Many organizations are taking advantage of the Working Minds program. Mercer Communications, Denver Public Schools, and RK have recently integrated Working Minds into their wellness programs and are seeing immense value from implementing the training.
“We place a great importance on mental health, both internally and for what we recommend for our clients—we try to practice what we preach,” said Maddy Winslow, Project Manager at Mercer.
RK, a large mechanical contractor based in Colorado, is also proactive in implementing mental wellness via the Working Minds program into their company culture.
“The Working Minds training program will give our workforce more internal and external resources to support them if they are in mental distress, or are contemplating suicide,” said Russ Sullivan, manager of learning and development at RK. “Our employees are the source of our success. If we don’t help our employees during their challenging times, we will not be successful. Our investment in employees’ mental health is part of the RK Experience – our term for putting people first.”
For more information or to schedule a training, please contact Alex Yannacone, community programs manager at the CU Johnson Depression Center at alexandra.yannacone@ucdenver.edu or 303-724-8768.
Alex Yannacone, community programs manager at the CU Helen and Arthur E. Johnson Depression Center
Read about our members in the news: eWranglers, State of Colorado, Otten Johnson, Comcast and Colorado Succeeds.
Our members work hard every day to make the Denver metro area a great place to do business. We want to keep you in the know about the important work of our members, whether they are opening new business locations, hiring more people or creating new partnerships.
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Congratulations! You've launched your business, hired the right people and operations are humming along smoothly. But before you get too comfortable with success, realize it won’t be too long before you need to gear up for the next step of you company: Growth.
In order to effectively compete in the market, leaders must celebrate successes but also keep an eye on progress. To achieve this, they need to create an organizational culture that encourages and supports continuous growth on the corporate, cultural and individual level.
Here are three things leaders can do to construct a corporate environment built for advancement.
Appoint informal leaders. As you communicate your vision, mission and strategy, you’ll want the rest of the company to be on board, too. Just because employees submit to directives, doesn’t mean they embrace it. For successful implementation and companywide buy-in, you’ll need to appoint informal leaders throughout your company.
These informal leaders can translate initiatives in a way that’s relevant to the rest of the staff and serve as crucial sounding boards for your ideas. Their on-the-ground perspective can provide key insights that may not have jumped out at first blush, and their keen eye may help refine and finalize your corporate strategy and communication plan.
Let people own their work. On top of informal leaders, you’ll also need formally appointed people who will be in charge of these new projects and processes. By sharing responsibility, people can infuse their own unique ideas and creativity, take ownership of their work and see how their efforts contribute to the overarching vision.
For this to be successful, make sure each project has an appointed leader, with clearly defined roles and tasks. Each team member should know what they’re responsible for and how metrics for success will be measured. They should also know how their work furthers the company vision, and, perhaps most importantly, see how these new responsibilities directly help them achieve their personal career goals.
Establish effective processes. Just like with individual growth, it’s crucial to document corporate transformation with clearly defined goals and metrics for success. This may come as a surprise, but documentation doesn’t need to be a complex process. For example, our Comcast Business Cloud Solutions allow businesses to collaborate through a wide variety of powerful software tools, such as a file sharing and web conferencing. Regularly updated spreadsheets can also suffice. The goal is to ensure every task and expenditure of energy and time helps achieve the company vision.
Documents can also be supported by checklists that ask simple but key questions like, “Have we met as a group? Are we regularly brainstorming? When’s the last time we checked our work?” By creating a checklist, managers are anticipating unforeseen changes, keeping track with simple project management tools and providing documentation for overcoming future obstacles and challenges.
Our Comcast Business customers in Colorado know change is an inevitable part of growth, but building an environment fit for continuous change doesn’t have to be complicated. By appointing informal leaders as sounding boards, letting staff take ownership of their work and establishing effective processes, change can be a positive and predictable part of your company culture.
Stay in the know with more resources from Comcast Business.
Shawn Adamson is the vice president of Comcast Business for the Mountain West Region
Read about our members in the news: Grand Canyon University, University of Colorado Colorado Springs and Xcel Energy.
Our members work hard every day to make the Denver metro area a great place to do business. We want to keep you in the know about the important work of our members, whether they are opening new business locations, hiring more people or creating new partnerships.
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Only 18 of 100 students will graduate high school, enroll in post-secondary, complete that degree and immediately start work. It’s a number that business and education leaders said must change.
“It’s nowhere near the numbers we need in our pipeline,” Denver Metro Chamber President and CEO Kelly Brough told 650 business leaders today at its State of the City, presented by United Airlines. “We have to close that gap.”
Through partnership of the public and private sectors and an innovative initiative being supported by the Chamber and Mayor Michael B. Hancock, that change is possible.
That initiative is Prosperity Denver. It would fund scholarships and support services through a .08 percent sales tax increase – less than a penny on a $10 purchase. Those eligible (18 to 25-year-olds who hold a high school diploma or GED and have lived in the city for at least 36 months) would be reimbursed for their education, from certificates and apprenticeships to two and four-year, once they complete that education. Brough said this may be a model for how communities across the state can get more students to and through education.
“We all must be committed to our labor pipeline, creating that talent pipeline,” Hancock said. “We must ensure that kids today can fill those jobs that we’re preparing for tomorrow.”
That matters because by 2020, 74 percent of jobs in Colorado will require some post-secondary education.
“We will require the most educated workforce in the country because of the economy we are building,” Brough said. “We have a lot of work to get our kids there.”
She and a panel of business and education leaders shared their strategies for building that pipeline while also recognizing that 85 percent of jobs that will exist in 2030 haven’t even been invented yet.
Build a strong foundation. Because tech and AI are rapidly disrupting industries and jobs, Colorado Community College System President Joe Garcia cautioned on focusing too much on specific job skills and instead focusing on skills that will transfer in a knowledge-based economy. “We need to make sure we’re providing students with a foundational background,” he said, adding that building a career “takes a different kind of training” than finding a job.
Provide real-world experience. After traveling to Switzerland and Germany, Pinnacol Assurance President and CEO Phil Kalin was all-in on the apprenticeship model. The company has taken on 20 students who are learning all aspects of the business, from marketing to claims, thanks to a partnership with CareerWise Colorado. “This is not about doing good deeds in the community. This is about how we as business leaders work with schools,” Kalin said, adding that the goal is to bring on talent that not only gets their business but also their culture. “Hopefully they will become part of our business.”
Partner, partner, partner. There are a number of ways to partner, from businesses to other credentialing and training groups. The University of Colorado Denver, for example, provides 12 credit hours to students who have completed a program through Galvanize. “Every job is going to have a software component. Every employee needs to have those competencies,” said University of Colorado Denver Chancellor Dorothy Horrell. “We think that looking at these kinds of new programs … these kinds of credentials, how do we make them stackable?”
Scale up. While access to downtown businesses can be challenging, Aurora Public Schools has found success engaging local small business owners, said Superintendent Rico Munn. “For us it’s about accessibility and scalability,” he said, adding that their students all have a plan for their education and future goals.
Mayors Share State of the Region
Hancock and Golden Mayor Marjorie Sloan celebrated the accomplishments of the region but urged forward-thinking solutions for challenges ranging from affordable housing to transportation.
Sloan, who also chairs the Metro Mayors Caucus, applauded the Chamber’s work to address the state’s crumbling transportation system and urged others to join the Chamber and the mayors in supporting Let’s Go Colorado – an initiative that would fund state, local and multimodal transportation solutions through a .62 percent sales tax increase.
“In our region we’ve accomplished a great deal working together,” Sloan said. “Passage of this measure is critical make it easier to live, work and play in communities all across Colorado.”
Hancock celebrated gains made in the city after the recession. Since 2011, when he became mayor, 90,000 jobs and 6,600 new businesses have been created. And the city continues to focus on greater equity in access to great jobs, a strong talent pipeline, increasing woman and minority-owned businesses, affordable housing and focusing on mobility.
“It is time that we as a state get serious about our roads,” Hancock said.
Judge Gary Jackson Receives Monte Pascoe Award
Recognizing his leadership, work to improve the community and efforts to fight for justice and equal opportunity for all, Denver County Judge Gary Jackson was named the recipient of the Monte Pascoe Civic Leadership Award – the first jurist to receive the award.
Prior to taking the bench, Jackson practiced law for over 40 years. His practice included representing attorneys and judges in attorney regulation matters, employment litigation and complex personal injury litigation.
“It is a real thrill to receive this prestigious award,” Jackson said. “(Monte Pascoe) was such a remarkable man.”
Jackson noted Pascoe’s work to integrate Denver Public Schools and noted the collaboration required to create change: “Denver is a great city because we have worked together to make it a great city.”
Data Security doesn’t have to be complicated. This guidebook will give you the essential insights you need to protect your data and help you assess where you are as a business.
This guide, in partnership with Xlingshot, will give you the tools to start your security plan with these tips and more:
