The wider the reach, the bigger the market share. This is the essence of global marketing.
More than just publishing a website in another language, global marketing also has to do with building a customer engagement strategy and then zeroing in on which channels and types of content will effectively reach those customers.
Without these cornerstones, global marketing can become a very costly yet unsuccessful affair.
That you are reading this means you are interested in engaging a global audience for your product or service. To know if your business is ready for global (online) expansion, discover which five questions you need to ask yourself by downloading this free Digital Content Guide.
To reach the German market, website optimizer Unbounce hired a local marketing ambassador to adapt their English content and expand the company’s social media presence among the German language community.
Looking at the experience of companies that have successfully deployed a global marketing strategy shows one common factor: an impactful multilingual content strategy.
Starting small, F.C. Barcelona expanded into China by simply launching its Chinese social media accounts. Only after finding success in social media did the football club build its Chinese website. Read more about the global marketing strategies of Unbounce, F.C. Barcelona, as well as global giants McDonald’s and Coca-Cola here.
“Globalization and the Internet have dramatically lowered the barriers to entering new markets. But if you don’t communicate with customers in their voice and take cultural differences into account, you risk losing out to local competitors” — Digital Content Guide
Of course, other marketing components (e.g., product, pricing, etc.) also play into global marketing success. Given the events of the past year, however, a successful multilingual content strategy directly correlates with global success now more than ever before. Find out which factors to consider before investing in multilingual content by downloading this free Digital Content Guide.
How a Multilingual Content Strategy Hits the Mark
One oft-cited paragon of global marketing success is Apple. It is one company that built its strategy around a consistent customer experience no matter where that customer happens to be. Crucial to this strategy is its customer-facing content. Here are five strategies worth stealing from the Apple school of global marketing.
So what goes into a successful multilingual content strategy? As mentioned, for any multilingual content strategy to work, one cannot stop at merely making a website available in more languages.
For example, a study by the US’ most valuable startup, Stripe (USD 95bn at press time), showed that the main reason why Europe’s top 450 e-commerce websites lost a lot of customers was a lack of translation and localization at the point of checkout. Not only did 74% of checkouts not have local language translations, they also failed to offer the most relevant payment options for international customers.
“In some cases, translated microsites and landing pages can serve foreign-language regions, enabling you to keep costs down, while still targeting foreign markets” — Digital Content Guide
Another overlooked factor of multilingual content strategy is transcreation, which involves an entirely different process from localization. Companies ready to budget for it can transcreate taglines and marketing copy for specific markets and then reap the benefits when their content resonates culturally. But what if the size of the business is not quite ready for such an investment? In that case, the company needs to push out content with multicultural appeal.
Then there is that important question: How can a company and potential global customer find each other in the vast ocean of online noise? Well, it typically hinges on multilingual SEO. The goal is for a company’s online content to appear higher up in a target customer’s search results.
Depending on where that customer is located, optimizing for Google may not be enough. For example, the dominant search engine in China is Baidu; in Russia, it is Yandex; and in Korea, Naver.
There are other factors that also impact search rankings, such as URL structure, whether your content is tailored for mobile devices, and much more. Check out five recommended SEO actions for multilingual content by downloading this free Digital Content Guide.
If you need help creating a winning global marketing strategy, feel free to reach out to K International. Email contactus@k-international.com for more information.
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