Every company, which wants to increase its international presence, should develop an effective multilingual content strategy. Before entering new markets, it’s very important to design a plan of the product localization.
If you want your business to succeed overseas, you should create content, which appeals to the specific preference market.
If you want to develop a multilingual content strategy, which will work effectively, you should conduct market research.
You should deeply analyze not only needs and wants of your target audience but also shopping behavior and habits.
Cultural backgrounds make a great impact on customers’ choices, so the more you know about the new country, the better.
You can start with the secondary research: review the official statistics, articles, marketing reports, etc.
At the next step, you should collect and analyze the primary data. You can survey to get answers to the most important questions.
There is a list of tools, which can help you to complete this task:
Survey Monkey. This resource helps to design a survey, which can be sent via multiple channels: emails, social media, and Also, it provides the detailed statistics and data analytics.
Survey Anyplace. This service assists with the creation of original surveys with a brand new design. It works great for engaging the target audience and gaining better insights.
Surveys on Facebook. This tool allows reaching out to your potential clients on social media. It works great when you need to create a buzz around your product.
Moreover, you can use other social media.
For example, Instagram provides an option to create a poll in Stories. Using this simple tool, local digital influencers can help you to conduct a short questionnaire and provide your company with the precise insights.
In any case, you should be ready to deal with the cross-cultural differences. Instead of setting your own rules, you should try to adjust your global strategy to the local business environment.
You should respect cultural peculiarities even if they are incomprehensible to you.
Translate content
When you have a clear understanding of the target audience preferences, you can translate the content of your website properly. If your company doesn’t have an in-house interpreter, you should outsource the translation services.
Don’t worry; using the world wide web, you can get professional assistance really fast and without heavy spending. You can check a review site with trusted translations reviews and pick the most reliable firm to work with.
Take into account that if your content includes very specific vocabulary, you should find a translator with the background knowledge in your niche.
In this way, you will ensure that terms and professional slang will be interpreted correctly.
Localize a message
Another advice is to give preference to the translation by the native speakers because only they can properly localize a message. If you think that readability of content is everything you should care about, then you are wrong.
It’s crucially important to create an appealing message, which corresponds to the local culture.
If you need to get an urgent content localization, you should choose a firm, which employs workers from the different countries and time zones.
They accept orders 24/7 and deliver work rapidly.
Customize SEO
Multilingual content strategy differs from your basic strategy in all aspects, including SEO. The searching behavior of users varies from country to country, so one method, which works great in your country, can fail abroad.
While Google remains the most popular search engine in the world, people in some countries prefer using local alternatives. For example, Russians choose Yandex and Chinese pick Baidu.
You should also create a localized keyword strategy, which will help to boost the global presence of your company.
You have to get assistance from the localization service experts, who know how to make SEO work effectively in few markets at the same time.
Select the content management tools
It’s simply impossible to implement a multilingual strategy without the content management systems. An appropriate CMS facilitates most of the processes, including content creation, management, and maintenance.
If you built your website with WordPress, you could utilize language plugins, which automate the content translation and localization. Most international companies choose Weglot and Transifex.
If you host your site on Shopify – select Langify, if you use Wix or another platform – pick Multilingualism.
Focus on key brand values
Development of a multilingual content strategy is a sophisticated process, so you shouldn’t rush through it. When text passes through the stages of translation and localization, it’s important to stay focused on the key brand values.
There is a risk to lose brand identity trying to adjust content to the numerous requirements of the local market.
Your company is one of a kind; never forget to mention this fact. So, try to create content, which is globally appealing and locally relevant.
Use the right channels
One more task for you is to define the most effective channels of content distribution. You should use not only your website but also social media and other popular regional resources.
Don’t hurry to choose Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. In some countries, these global social networks are useless.
Sometimes they are banned by the government, and, in some cases, they are just not as popular as local analogs.
For example, not many Russians use Facebook, because they have access to the alternative regional website, which is called VK.
The Chinese use the national biggest social network Qzone because government blocked access to the global resources and users have no other choices.
The bottom line
Effective multilingual content strategy opens the door to new business opportunities. It allows your company to enter foreign markets and gain higher profit.
Strategy development takes a lot of time and efforts, but the result is worth it.
Don’t hesitate to start researching overseas market today. It will be your first step toward your business goal.
Kristin Savage has graduated from Columbia University where she was majoring in Germanic Languages. Besides English as her mother tongue, she also speaks German and Dutch fluently. Currently, Kristin is studying Spanish and planning to obtain her Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics since she is interested in how to use her to some extent practical knowledge of language processes in everyday life.
So what’s the conclusion? The conclusion is there is no conclusion. There is only the next step. And that next step is completely up to you. But believe in the effectiveness of word of mouth marketing created by remarkable customer service. And put it to good use.
It’s up to you to keep improving your creative marketing strategies. Lessons are all around you. In this case, your competitor may be providing the ideas and or inspiration. But the key is in knowing that it is within you already.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new lessons.
When things go wrong, what’s most important is your next step.
Try. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
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Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on G+, Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.