CarMax wanted to create an MVP Spanish language web experience that could better support Hispanic consumers arriving from Spanish language digital advertising.
A key challenge was continuity. Spanish speaking consumers could encounter CarMax through Spanish advertising but then move into a primarily English language website experience. Nativa helped CarMax begin closing that gap by developing Spanish language content that created a more consistent journey from the first marketing touchpoint through the website and ultimately to the in store experience.
CarMax formally engaged Nativa to provide language translation consulting services, creating the foundation for the Spanish language digital work.
Rather than approaching the project as direct word for word translation, Nativa focused on selecting the appropriate Spanish tone, terminology, and messaging style for CarMax’s target Hispanic audiences, including consumers in markets such as South Florida, Atlanta, and other major U.S. Hispanic markets.
The objective was to make the experience feel clear, approachable, and consistent with the CarMax brand while helping Spanish speaking consumers navigate the vehicle shopping journey more confidently.
Nativa began by evaluating CarMax’s English language website content through the lens of the Spanish speaking customer experience.
The team translated and culturally adapted key website messaging to support the initial Spanish language landing page experience being developed for digital advertising campaigns.
The work included:
Nativa also conducted social listening analysis around CarMax to better understand the broader digital conversation surrounding the brand.
The dataset included 5,313 CarMax related mentions across Twitter, forums, mainstream media, blogs, and Facebook. Twitter represented the largest source of conversation with 3,566 mentions, followed by forums with 1,538 mentions.
The analysis captured signals including ethnicity, sentiment, detected language, keywords, location, engagement, and media source, allowing Nativa to look beyond overall conversation volume and better understand how different audiences were interacting with and discussing the brand.
This combination of language expertise and audience intelligence helped ensure that decisions about the Spanish language experience considered not only translation accuracy but also how consumers naturally communicated about CarMax online.
Nativa helped CarMax establish an initial Spanish language digital experience that created stronger continuity between Spanish language advertising and the website journey.
By focusing on translation, cultural adaptation, and tone, the work helped move CarMax beyond simply converting English copy into Spanish. Instead, messaging was developed with the needs and expectations of U.S. Hispanic consumers in mind.
Key outcomes included:
The project demonstrated the importance of looking beyond direct translation when building a Spanish language customer journey. For brands reaching Hispanic consumers through digital advertising, the experience after the ad matters just as much as the message that generated the click.
By connecting culturally relevant language, digital experience, and audience insights, CarMax was able to begin creating a more cohesive experience for Spanish speaking consumers across the customer journey.
Connecting Brands with Hard-to-Reach Audiences Through Data-Driven Insights & Culturally Relevant Content
