Latin America is home to slightly over 300 million digital buyers, a figure expected to hit 360 million by 2025. The e-commerce adoption in Latin America is booming, and as more natives get acquainted with smartphones, the industry is expected to hit over $160 billion by 2025. Mexico and Brazil are the industry leaders in the e-commerce market, contributing 28% and 31% of online retail sales, respectively. Argentina, Colombia, and Peru follow suit, with Argentina about to take center stage.
Why Expand Your E-commerce Business to Latin America
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Latin America’s fastest growing e-commerce markets are Argentina and Colombia, a growth fueled by the upsurge of the middle-class population. The region ranks among the top 10 e-commerce markets in the world, thanks to its population’s aggressive smartphone adoption. In Argentina, smartphone penetration is at 80%, Colombia at 72%, Mexico at 60%, and Brazil at 75.6%. That shows the abundance of Latin America’s e-commerce market for small and established businesses. When expanding your e-commerce business to Latin America, maximize these tips.
Study the Markets
Choose a Latin American county with a fast-booming e-commerce market and study it. Use an Argentina location proxy and robust web scraping tools to analyze consumer buying habits, product buying trends, and market prices of different items. For example, most Argentinian buyers shop for food, sportswear, beverages, and clothing online.
Invest in cultural research or use local partners to study regional purchase habits. Study the modes of payments widely preferred by shoppers in your target region. Additionally, harvest and analyze data about competitors in the area. When you have this information at your fingertips, study the legislation guarding cross-border markets and logistics.
Adjust for the New Markets
The cultures, languages, and linguistic inclinations of the people in the newfound Latin American market are unique. For instance, if you’re contemplating expanding to Argentina, you must understand the language of the locals and localize your website. Out of 45.38 million natives, 41.7 million Argentinians are native Spanish speakers, making up over 85% of the population.
Get your English website translated into Argentinian Spanish. Hire native speakers to translate your website as they understand the cultures, linguistic preferences, words, phrases, and ideas that populate the country. Then, convert all product prices into Argentine Peso while ensuring the payment solutions are standard for the local markets.
Offer Friendly Customer Support
For Argentinian markets, replace your English-speaking customer support with competent Argentinian Spanish-speaking support personnel. Hire customer care representatives who understand the local culture and local slang as they’ll have to interact with your clients at a personal level. Ensure they know the Argentinian local market and the needs of different locals in the area. That’s a sure way to engage residents, win local partnerships, and sail your business high.
Choose Proper Marketing Strategies
Start by building partnerships with local influencers, loyalty programs, bloggers, and websites. Seal deals with regional celebrities to help positively influence your business’s growth and reputation. Take advantage of the special events and holidays of the locals and ensure to offer goodies and freebies to your clients during big celebrations. That will help you attract loyal customers to your site and increase sales and profits.
Smartphone penetration in Latin America stands at over 70%. To connect with your audience, utilize the right mobile and digital marketing strategies, including social media, email, and SMS marketing.
Adopt Local Payment Methods
You’re penetrating a new Latin American market, and clients in such markets have familiarized themselves with different payment solutions. They may not be ready to adopt new payment gateways; if they do, they will take time before fully embracing them. The e-wallets and checkout process you use for clients in other markets might not be familiar to Latin Americans.
Adopt payment methods and simple checkout processes the locals have accustomed to. Key payment approaches in Latin America include debit cards, cash vouchers, and domestic credit cards, so adopt them in your e-commerce business.
Conclusion
Are you contemplating taking your business to the Latin American markets? Have you been wondering how and where to start? This article showcases some key strategies and tips you must observe when expanding to this fast-growing region and good reasons to do so as soon as possible.