As a business owner, your aim is to achieve as much success and visibility as possible, your marketing and communication strategy must be effective for your message to be heard. Multilingual international marketing can often be the missing link for your company to reach your corporate goals. Why is it so important and what is the role of translation and localization?
What is multilingual marketing?
A Multilingual Marketing Strategy concentrates on translating mark
eting content across multiple languages, while keeping the original messages intact. To develop a successful multilingual approach, cultural differences must be taken into consideration to translate and localize your content. The strategy should take advantage of every available marketing channel that is fit to the socio-cultural context of a specific region. This includes localizing your website, social media channels, advertising campaigns, blog, and other marketing content.
Why is it important?
English is the language of business and this will not change overnight. Either big or small, all companies use English as a primary language for their marketing material such as websites, flyers and online stores. However, when expanding in a new market you would want to do business with people in their own language, simply because people are more responsive to messages in their local language. Hence, if you want to reach your target group, cross cultural multilingual marketing is a prerequisite for success.
Adapting your company’s message to the local market is good but to know how is essential. For example, one of the infamous marketing flops was the KFC marketing campaign in China, the fried-chicken franchise did not make a first great impression when it first set up its restaurants in China. It is infamous slogan ‘Finger-lickin’ good’ was lost in translation. Instead, it promoted the phrase ‘eat your fingers off’. Also, Ford produced a massive marketing flop when it was communicated to Belgium that ‘every car has a high-quality corpse’. What they meant to say is that ‘every car has a high-quality body’.
Having a multilingual marketing strategy will not only help you avoid this kind of severe mistakes but can also boost your business by:
Attracting new customers by addressing them on their languages.
Establishing trust with clients
Securing your competitive lead over other businesses. When you offer content in multiple languages, you will immediately be several steps ahead.
Expanding your target clients base because with multilingual marketing the boundaries of language and geography are ceasing to exist.
Expanding through international SEO. This can be a quick win as adding multiple languages to your website boosts your engine ranking, hence, visibility.
Choosing the right people for the job
Automatic online translation has always been a cheap quick option, but do you really want to go cheap when expanding your business?
In fact, multilingual marketing is much more cost-effective than you think. First, hiring local writers for multilingual translation services to make sure that your message gets communicated the way you want is CRUCIAL. This can be done internally by your own marketing team but it is not recommended. They need to familiarize themselves with the native preferences, which take us to back to option 1. Your will end up spending more time and money.
Then, how can one find the right translator and verify if the translated content is 100% accurate? That is where Language Service Providers (LSP) or translation companies can help you. Translation companies will help in choosing the right translator considering your target dialect, intended audience, domain and much more while ensuring the quality of the translations. Apart from this, they also help in choosing the language that is best suited for your requirements. Dealing with translation companies ensures a much smoother stress-free experience.
Despite the fact that translation is essential to your multilingual marketing strategy, it is only a part of a broader localization process which is adapting a message from one language to another, while maintaining its intent and adapting its content, design, language. Localization makes content more appealing for a specific target client in a specific socio-cultural context. Mastering this very fine balance will be key to the success of any cross-cultural efforts.
Do you need support with your company’s multilingual marketing content or with creative translations of marketing texts?
Are you looking for an efficient translation partner to achieve your business goals?
For tailored language solutions send us an email via contact@new-bridge-translation.com
Comments