Zeph Snapp will be speaking on the “Wrapping Your Brain Around the Mobile Opportunity” panel at SearchFest 2014 which will take place on February 28th, 2014 in Portland, Oregon. For more information and to purchase tickets, please click here.
1) Please give us your background and tell us what you do for a living.
I was born in Mexico to American parents, and learned both English and Spanish at the same time. This puts me in the unusual position of participating in, and being part of both cultures. People often ask me whether I consider myself to be more Mexican or American, and it is hard to say. I consume more US media (books, movies, sports), but I root for Mexico when the two countries play soccer, so what does that tell you?
Five years ago was asked to oversee the SEO efforts for the company I was working for at the time, and immediately knew that I had found something I really liked. Working on that project with them made me wonder how many agencies were doing great SEO in Spanish, specifically serving US and International companies. When I found that the answer was not very many, Altura Interactive was born.
Over the past three years, we’ve worked with companies and agencies spanning dozens of countries on four continents, worked with startups, SMB’s and multinational corporations. We were recently recognized as a Moz Recommended Company, and are the Spanish language agency of record for Shopify.
2) What is the state of the Spanish Language Mobile Opportunity in 2014?
Two years ago, mobile was the brand new thing. Now it is just everything! And Spanish as a whole is really underserved. To start off, less than 5% of the web is in non-English languages. Spanish speakers the world over are accessing the internet via their smartphones and tables much more so than from laptops and desktops. For many this is because of a lower barrier to entry, but it also has to do with young people skipping the desktop experience all together.
In the US, Hispanics are more likely than the rest of the population, and consume media in both languages on a regular basis. For example, did you know that Univision is now the top rated TV network in the US? Also, if the US Hispanic population was a standalone country, it would be one of the top 20 economies in the world? And this market is only going to grow. There are close to 40 million Hispanics in the US today, and counting.
The growth rate in Latin America is even more impressive. Spanish speaking internet users in Latin America have doubled over the past five years (for a total of around 236 million people), and the vast majority of those users who primarily access the internet via mobile devices. Spanish speaking Facebook users doubled from 2010 to 2012, and over 80% of internet users in Mexico have a Facebook account.
It is a really exciting time to be speaking about this topic!
3) Why might someone choose to develop a “mobile app” as opposed to develop “mobile content”?
That’s a great question! Building a mobile app can be really awesome, but it our experience, it is usually time consuming, expensive, and in many cases unnecessary. In my view many businesses don’t need to develop an application in order to serve their core customers and acquire new ones. Usually the best thing to do is to use the apps that exist to your advantage. Many apps now act as platforms, and can be used to provide excellent customer service, which leads to the acquisition of new customers. For example, there is a massive trend here in Mexico of using Whatsapp as service channel. College kids order food, mechanics remind clients about oil changes, hairdressers set appointments, etc.
There are some businesses, where the company IS the app, but let’s face it; most companies are not Spotify or Square, right?
We work with quite a few early stage startups, most in SaaS, and almost all of them are stoked about building an mobile app. Unless it is absolutely crucial to the customer experience, we usually suggest that be put on the backburner until we’ve refined the customer acquisition process. So before we go down the path of building and/or translating an app, we start with a detailed review of how they interact with their customers. In many cases, an app proves to be an unnecessary expense.
At this stage of the game, it is my firm belief that virtually all content should be designed to be enjoyed on mobile. We all spend such a large percentage of time on our phones, tablets, or (my new favorite) phablets, that every site should make their appearance on mobile a priority. Our emphasis is on reducing friction as much as possible. There is nothing more frustrating as a user than trying to buy/consume/share and not being able to accomplish your goal. Unfortunately many sites aren’t there yet, but then again, if they were, they wouldn’t need us, now would they?
Todd Mintz knows PPC…knows Social Media…knows SEO…knows Blogging…knows Domaining…and knows them all real well. He runs growth marketing for )and is also a Director & Founding Member of SEMpdx: Portland, Oregon’s Search Engine Marketing Association, and he can be found here on Twitter and Facebook.