One thing that we have all learned due to the events of last year is how dependent we are on the internet. Ever since lockdown regulations in March, we have all been confined to our homes, with a lot of us working remotely to ensure that our responsibilities are completed.
In times like these, businesses need to cater to people of all countries. This involves investing in a multilingual marketing strategy.
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What Is A Multilingual Marketing Strategy?
A multilingual marketing strategy involves translating your branding and message into multiple other languages while preserving the essence of the original message. This helps your business to cater to people of non-English speaking countries, who make up a very large part of the world’s population.
These days, most of our obligations are completed with ease on the internet. These responsibilities included doing our jobs, getting shopping done, making sure our children are getting the right education, and making ourselves more aware of what is going on in our surroundings.
However, all of these things are possible because of our command of the English language. While only 20% of the world’s population speaks or understands English, most of the data on the internet (almost 54% of the total) is written in English. This poses a problem for the people incapable of speaking or understanding English as they become completely dependent upon translation apps that can only translate to a limited degree and often give extremely inaccurate translations. These are the people that a brand should target when they launch their newest marketing campaign.
Companies like AfroLingo provide digital marketing solutions for companies looking to increase their brand awareness by translating their campaigns into different languages. This also involves transcreation, a process in which professional translators and linguists make changes in your original translation and message to make sure your target audience gets the most out of the marketing.
Tips For Investing In A Multilingual Marketing Strategy
Wish to make your brand known to audiences who may not speak English but do not know where to start? The following tips may be helpful.
1. Research
The most important part of any marketing strategy is doing the pertinent research. Research involves looking up which languages, other than English, are used the most in the world, what parts of the world speak them, how many dialects they have, and how the dialects affect the meanings of different words.
This helps the company invest in a multilingual marketing strategy to better tweak their wording and message according to the mindset of the target audience.
2. Translation
The initial step is translating the material present on your website. This can be done with the help of companies that offer digital marketing solutions for translations, such as Contentech.
By translating the content on your website, you are making sure that all of the information available online is understandable by the speakers of a certain language.
However, the company should not rely on translation services such as Google Translate as machines fail to include the nuances that are present in several languages, making the message fall flat. A poor translation fails to impress its readers, sometimes even offending them when the phrases translate to something unsuitable.
It is thus important for brands wishing to get their content translated to employ a company that can provide native speakers for their translation and transcreation needs.
3. Transcreation
Transcreation is now an essential aspect of a multilingual digital marketing strategy. It involves making some changes when translating the brand’s message. While it may seem like a tricky endeavor, it is a necessary one for brands to be able to retain the spirit of their marketing campaigns. It is essential because more often than not, what means one thing in one language does not mean the same thing in another language.
This leads to misunderstandings that make it hard for the target audience to understand the message.
4. Search Engine Optimisation
When getting your website translated, make sure that your content has keywords in the translated material that rank well on search engines. This can be achieved by hiring individuals who have experience with SEO who make sure that only those keywords are used that are popularly searched in a specific country or language. This serves to increase the website’s visibility, leading to increased traffic and increased brand awareness.
Why You Should Invest In A Multilingual Marketing Strategy
From a business point of view, there are several benefits to investing in a multilingual marketing strategy that will boost the company’s reputation and sales in the long term.
Some of them are:
1. Greater Visibility
A brand is known to most people only because of its ad campaigns and search engine visibility. When both those things appear in not only English but in other languages as well, it leads to greater popularity, which in turn, leads to greater sales. Brand awareness (the extent of consumer recognition of a brand by its name) is also increased by translating your ads and website into other languages because it leads native speakers of that language to recognize your brand as well as the English speakers.
2. Builds Trust
By providing information in native tongues to their customers, companies build a relationship of trust with them. A brand whose ad and the message is translated in their native tongue will be preferred over a brand whose mode of operations runs only in English. This leads to increased sales for that business.
3. Gives You An Edge Over Your Competitors
Most companies do not think of investing in a multilingual marketing strategy which leads to increased dissatisfaction among non-English speaking customers due to poor user experiences on websites or while ordering. Your business can thus gain an edge over its competitors by hiring a reputable company that offers translation, transcreation, and localization services.
In a rapidly changing world, entrepreneurs must understand the importance of an inclusive brand that caters to the needs of all of its consumers, not just the English-speaking ones.
