Latinos aren't signing up for the Affordable Care Act's healthcare marketplaces in droves, as President Obama's administration expected. Now a Hispanic market research firm in California says it has the reason why: the marketing was all wrong.

Much has been said trying to answer the question of why many Latinos aren't signing up for health insurance benefits under the "Obamacare" Affordable Care Act -- whether its unfamiliarity, a lack of community involvement, or fear. Or Spanish language websites that aren't actually in Spanish.

But Hispanic market research firm Santiago Solutions Group told the Washington Post on Thursday that it was a series of marketing mistakes that really failed the Obamacare push. The Latino marketing group, which has previously consulted for big healthcare clients like Cigna, Blue Cross, and HealthNet, criticizes the messages and marketing implementation by California's "Covered California" initiative for failing to reach that state's large Latino population. By Dec. 20 of last year, for example, only 13 percent of enrollees in California's healthcare exchange were Hispanic, though 38 percent of California's population is Latino.

Simple mistakes, according to Santiago Solutions Group's Bessie Ramirez, led to the lack of registrations. For example, all of the early television ads for Covered California ended by giving a web address to visit for more information, but no phone number or physical location was mentioned. Ramirez says that's an example of not understanding how the vast majority of Latinos would want to shop for such a complicated choice like health insurance.

"Hispanics are heavily on the internet, and they are growing very fast on the Internet," granted Ramirez, which, as we've previously reported, is absolutely true. "However, they're not transacting on the Internet," said Ramirez. "They transact on a personal basis. Hispanics will wait to go to a 7-11 until 11 o'clock, [if] at 11 o'clock, they know that [their friend] Juan is on duty," said Ramirez to the Washington Post.

Another big mistake was simply translating the ad messages for Obamacare into Spanish, without considering the differences in emphasis and meanings that might appeal to a Latino audience. Covered California, for example, played up the fact that Obamacare didn't allow anyone to be denied coverage on the basis of pre-existing health conditions. But as many of the Latinos Obamacare was trying to target never had health insurance, that point didn't resonate: that problem wasn't particularly important.

Another Covered California ad -- the organization's first Spanish language ad -- was a direct translation of the English ad, with healthy-looking people saying to the camera, "Welcome to a new state of health. Welcome to Covered California." The "state of health" translates correctly into Spanish-language grammar, but the double meaning in English that's meant to grab the audience's attention falls completely flat in Spanish, according to Ramirez -- leading to a dull commercial.

According to the Washington Post, California spent almost $5 million on its Spanish language ad campaign in 2013, and plans to spend more than $8 million before March 31, the final deadline to sign up for coverage.

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