Wired Latinos

Blaire Borthayre, CEO of Hispanic Marketing Resources (HMR), wants marketers to learn the necessary skills to reach and serve the immigrant Hispanic community. These skills can be learned in the form of online seminars, aka webinars, offered on demand through the HMR website.

HMR has been helping businesses reach the Latino consumer through culturally appropriate behaviors and messaging training since 2000. However, the recent economic downturn forced HMR to reassess and innovate and they started offering webinars online as a way to offer a more affordable way for marketers to reach the growing Latino market.

"During tough economic times, training and travel are the first to be cut in the budgets of most companies. Webinars are an affordable convenient way for them to learn and/or reach a certain segment of the market without having to pay exorbitant travel or marketing costs," says Ms. Borthayre.

In a time of online sophistication, webinars are another tool to help many different industry specific groups reach the Hispanic market by overcoming language and cultural barriers. Among HMR's wide library of webinars we found webinars for Attorneys, Bankers, Retail, Physicians and now Dentists.

"For example, there is an misconception that immigrants avoid going to dentists simply because they can't afford to do so and this is just not true," explains Borthayre. The truth is that "[there] is a dire need for marketers who can overcome cultural and language barriers to help our community."

It is a known fact that once cultural and language barriers are overcome, Hispanics are loyal consumers who will refer many family and friends to their favorite product or service and that is the message HMR is driving with all their webinar products.

Each webinar is 90 minutes long and just needs a computer with speakers and a phone line or internet service to access. There is also the choice of downloading a copy of the recorded webinar instantly.