Four Steps for a Successful Multilingual Marketing Strategy

team plannning a multilingual marketing strategy

Studies show that English accounts for 20.27% of the world population (around 1500 million speakers). This means that companies who rely only on this language to communicate with international markets could be losing sales opportunities. With personalisation continuing to gain traction, developing multilingual content (as well as crafting a multilingual marketing strategy or aiming for multilingual UX) is something companies need to consider to remain competitive.

A CSA Research found that 76% of online shoppers prefer to buy products with information in their native language. They also show that, when it comes to spending time on a website, people are six times less likely to stay if the page is not in their native language. Going multilingual matters: Giving your customers what they want will have a direct effect on your business.

What Is a Multilingual Marketing Strategy?

The term “multilingual marketing strategy” is straightforward. However, the fact that companies continue to use it incorrectly shows that there is still room for improvement. A multilingual content strategy involves carefully developing a translation plan supported by market research to reach your business goals. It defines your business target audience, the type of localisation workflow, the resources, and the technology involved. Additionally, it defines SMART goals for your strategy and requires continuous monitoring and analysis of the strategy results. Besides, developing a successful multilingual marketing strategy will involve adapting your message to different audiences and using multiple channels to engage consumers.

Steps to Develop a Multilingual Marketing Strategy

1. Understand Your Core Message Before Thinking about Going Multilingual

The premise is simple: Put your content together, translate it, and show it to your new audience. But localising content is rarely that straightforward. And odds are that any given text will require a myriad of decisions before being final. Are you thinking about multilingual SEO? Is multilingual UX something that your current website considers? These types of questions can easily demand your attention and make you lose focus on your original core message. If you try too hard to adapt to the tastes of every market, you may start to risk the brand image you worked hard to build. 

To avoid this, companies need to be very clear on the message they want to transmit to avoid steering too far from it. It is one thing to adapt, but another to change everything completely. A multilingual content strategy should not be about changing your core message. 

#OptimationalTip: Writing down your core message will help you keep your focus once your translation and localisation projects start.  

2. Develop Content That Is Easy to Localise

Creating content that can be easily localised to fit your multilingual marketing strategy is key. This will help keep costs down and meet tight schedules. Besides, approaching transcreation with anything other than highly specialised professionals can have serious consequences and lead to translation errors.

Creating content that is easy to localise does not mean removing your brand’s voice from it. It just means minimising cultural idioms, local jokes, phrasal verbs, and over-complicated language. This way, working with foreign language professionals will become a lot easier.

#OptimationalTip: Avoiding cultural idioms, local jokes, phrasal verbs, and over-complicated language will help you create content that is easy to localise. This is a great way of simplifying your multilingual marketing strategy.

3. Spend Time on a Multilingual SEO Strategy

Tackling multilingual SEO means optimising your content and your website for different languages. This way, you will be searchable in new markets and reach new audiences.

When it comes to multilingual SEO, there are certain matters you need to consider:

  • Ensure that people are seeing the correct pages for their location (but avoid penalties for duplicate content.)
  • Translate your page’s metadata.
  • Stick to one language per page.
  • Use dedicated URLs, meaning language indicators (such as .fr, or .com/fr/), so that search engines can identify your page’s language from the URL alone. 

Check out Google’s best practices for multilingual SEO for a clear idea of what you need to do to improve your rankings. And remember: A multilingual SEO strategy can only help you when it comes to creating a solid multilingual UX journey for your website.

#OptimationalTip: For a solid multilingual SEO strategy, make sure to use dedicated URLs, avoid duplicate content, stick to one language per page, and translate your website’s metadata.

4. Integrate Your Multilingual Content Strategy

Regardless of the size of your marketing efforts, companies need to ensure that all communications (online and offline) are integrated. This will allow them to solidify their presence in the audience’s mind. The same stands true for multilingual content. Your messaging should be consistent across all channels and all languages. This will make your brand’s voice identifiable throughout all your content.

#OptimationalTip: Establish your brand’s presence by making sure your multilingual content is integrated across channels and languages. This will help you solidify who you are and why they should choose you in your customer’s minds.

Final Thoughts: Creating a Multilingual Marketing plan

Developing a multilingual content strategy to pitch your business to new markets is the right step towards growth and success. However, doing so carelessly can do more harm than good. Your multilingual content needs to reflect the expressions, habits, and mannerisms of your potential customers.

If your company is looking to develop multilingual content, make sure you do so with the help of a translation partner. Reach out to us for a chat and start taking your business to new heights.