Spain is one of the most popular travel destinations in Europe with plenty to offer both tourists and expats. The warm southern areas of the country are perfect for enjoying the warm climate and visiting beautiful cities while the snowier north offers a contrast in scenery and lifestyle.

As with any country, living illegally or in the country without proper documentation can be difficult. For English speakers, learning a new language is also a challenge, especially if you already know Italian or German. If you’re looking to enter the Spanish market, here’s some useful information on online marketing in Spanish.

Where to Start

There are many different options for marketing a business in Spain, from digital marketing through social media to paid ads and billboards. Each of these methods has its pros and cons, so it’s important to research which one is the best for your situation. To get started, you first need to identify the primary target audience for your product or service. Once you have this audience, you can develop marketing strategies to reach them.

The truth is that digital marketing is the best option for most businesses, especially those in the tourism and shopping industries. Thanks to advanced Google Analytics tools and social media platforms like Facebook, the data becomes easier to digest and more accurate. Email marketing still has a place in the marketing mix, especially in B2C environments, but the era of the push email hauls is over. People have become accustomed to getting instant gratification and businesses that use outdated sales techniques will struggle to keep up.

Why Spain?

Even if you’re not planning on doing business in Spain, it’s still important to be familiar with the country’s trends and issues. Spain is a bit of a contradiction when it comes to marketing. It is among the most popular travel destinations in Europe, yet it also has one of the lowest online marketing participation rates. This can make the country an interesting market to explore, especially for digital marketers who want to push the envelope a bit.

One of the major issues that digital marketers face in Spain is Google AdWords and Facebook’s targeted ad tools. Both allow for incredibly precise advertising, which can be great for brands, businesses and marketers that want to target a very specific audience, but they have major disadvantages. With the way Google and Facebook work, targeting audiences means that you will almost certainly end up with a great deal of demographic and behavioral data about a group of people that you have no real connection with. The fact is that people don’t like to be classified and, as a result, most people don’t want to be part of a marketing campaign. This makes the whole concept of targeting very dicey.

Digital Marketing

If you’re new to digital marketing or unsure of what it is, basically search and social marketing are the terms used to describe online marketing activities, including SEO (search engine optimization), PPC (pay per click), and social media, (broadly defined as using social platforms to market your product or service).

SEO is the process of getting traffic to your website from a virtual (or organic) search on search engines like Google. To do this, you will create content that is helpful and interesting to your target audience, as determined by your brand analysis. When someone types in a search query into Google, the search engine will look for keywords throughout the content of your website and its associated social media platforms – including articles, videos, and blogs – and use a combination of these to determine what result to offer, based on what the user is looking for.

PPC, or pay per click, is similar to SEO in that you are trying to gain traffic to your site from the internet, however, with PPC you are paying for each click. When someone clicks on an advertisement or search result in Google, you will pay the agency that placed the ad a certain amount of money, based on the anticipated clickthrough and conversion rate for that ad.

Social Marketing involves using social media to promote your product or service. To do this, you will post on social platforms like Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram, as well as blogs, using keywords and hashtags to gain the attention of potential customers. You can also set up automated tweets and Instagram stories to post at pre-defined intervals, ensuring that your content is always fresh and available for potential customers to see.

Mobile Marketing

Thanks to the iPhone, mobile marketing is more important than ever before. When users access the internet on the go through their smartphones, they expect to be able to access all of the content they need, regardless of whether it’s on a desktop computer or tablet. Therefore, if you don’t have a mobile-friendly website, you’re losing out on a potentially large audience. If your website is not optimized for mobile viewing, it will show up as a blurry mess on a smartphone screen, completely unreadable. In other words, make sure that your website is set up for mobile users.

Apart from needing a mobile-friendly website, you also need to consider what type of content you will offer on your mobile platform. The truth is that not all content is suitable for mobile viewing. When users access content on their smartphones, they will often have small screens to accommodate them, meaning that a vertical, text-heavy website, with huge amounts of content, will not display well on a tiny screen. Think about the content that you have on your current site and how it would look on a smartphone.

For example, videos are great for desktop viewing but they do not always translate well to smaller screens. Consider how you could segment and label your video content so that it’s suitable for mobile viewing without the need for a full-size computer.

Traditional Marketing

If you’re still relying on traditional marketing methods – like billboards, radio ads, newspaper ads, etc. – you will need to make some adjustments to ensure that your advertising dollars are being used effectively. For instance, while billboards are great for catching the attention of passers-by, they are not very effective if you are looking to connect with people and allow them to learn about your business, brand, or product.

This is why digital marketing has become so popular: it offers a variety of effective and affordable marketing tactics that allow businesses to connect with potential customers at scale.

Overview Of The Spanish Economy

The Spanish economy expanded by 1.8% in 2016, with an anticipated rate of inflation in the country of 2.9%. In 2017, the Spanish economy expanded by 2.2% compared to the previous year. Thanks to a rise in corporate profits across the board and strong holiday demand, especially in the second half of the year, exports saw a significant uptick, rising by 7% compared to the previous year. This was mainly thanks to strong demand from Germany, the U.K., and other Northern European countries.

Tourism is one of the major industries in Spain, and it grew by 11% in 2017, attracting 19.9 million foreign and 3.2 million domestic tourists. This followed a 25% hike in 2016 and a 23% increase in 2015. The biggest draw for foreign tourists is the country’s vibrant nightlife, especially in the larger cities, making it a favorite destination for solo travelers and backpackers. For those interested in business opportunities, Spain is one of the world’s most popular travel destinations, offering a wealth of historic sites, luxurious resorts, and world-class restaurants.