The Importance of Branding, Marketing, and Multilingual Content
Promoting your brand or business in multiple markets likely means adjusting some of your content to that target market's language. Unfortunately, tactical initiatives like strict website translation tend to be the focus even in these cases. Multilingual content remains a minor tactic, applied as needed rather than with a larger concept, strategy, or process in mind.
Market research demonstrates that most global consumers value brand interactions in their native language over price when purchasing. However, most businesses promoting their products globally still require a multilingual content strategy.
When done correctly, multilingual content connects directly to a more effective branding and marketing strategy. It is equally important in attracting, engaging, and converting audiences across markets and building crucial brand equity over time.
Considering Branding in an International Context
Branding is a core need for businesses regardless of concept. However, it becomes especially vital when moving into international markets.
At its best, building a brand means creating awareness and a base level of trust with your current and potential customers. It allows you to establish a strong identity in your audience's mind, becoming a part of their consideration set when they’re ready to move forward and make that all-important first purchase.
Any business looking to build an international or even global brand should consider several areas.
Brands of all shapes and sizes can require assistance incorporating local cultural elements within their more extensive, streamlined logistical infrastructure.
A successful branding strategy in one locale may be less successful in others based on how audiences like to buy and consume products. Understanding your audience can make all the difference.
These factors are so significant that you cannot make assumptions while transferring your domestic brand into new markets and cultures. Instead, creating a global branding strategy that keeps nuances like these in mind is vital.
Where Multilingual Content Fits In
Part of that branding strategy must include and feature multilingual content. The ability to communicate with your audience on their terms, in their language, and with their culture in mind can go a long way toward building the trust and credibility you need for long-term success in any market.
How Marketing Changes Based on Cultural Contexts
Another vital consideration in addition to strategic branding is a marketing strategy designed to communicate your product and business to your target audience. As top-level branding has to flow differently based on the culture and market, the natural conclusion is that marketing efforts must do the same.
In high-context cultures, communication tends to be indirect. Contextual clues, like body language, eye context, and visual language, matter as much as the written word. Meanings are built based on shared knowledge, often passed down through the generations.
In this context, marketing strategies have to be highly visual. Videos, graphics, animation, and colors will draw your audience's eye. Emotional language is most persuasive in getting potential consumers on board with your message and vision. Subtext has to be a primary consideration.
In contrast, low-context cultures communicate more directly. There is less subtext, and messages can be taken for their word. Communication tends to be rational rather than emotional. Shared knowledge becomes less important as knowledge of the language is all that participants need to understand each other.
In these types of cultures, informational and educational content is king. Content that is backed up by plenty of evidence is even better. Language is not sweeping or full of metaphors but direct and concise to get the point across as quickly as possible. Visuals that cannot be interpreted in multiple ways or misunderstood easily are vital.
Of course, few countries fall into one or the other extreme. Thus, a core part of international marketing has to focus on understanding where your target market falls. Then you can develop your marketing and content strategy accordingly.
Multilingual Content as a Strategic Marketing and Branding Initiative
The combination of international branding and marketing, in turn, leaves us with the tactical adjustments that need to fit into this strategic alignment. That is where multilingual content enters the equation.
English is indeed the most-spoken language in the world. However, a fact that is just as important, even if it might be cited less frequently, is that English is also a distant third in native speakers around the globe, far behind Chinese and Spanish and only slightly ahead of Arabic and Hindi.
That matters mainly because three-quarters of potential online buyers prefer to research products in their language. Also, 56% of consumers consider native language content to be even more important than the price of your product. A strategy to truly embrace multilingual content through your marketing and branding efforts can satisfy that need when expanding into non-English native countries.
Create a Systemic Approach
Businesses need more than just content translated directly into the second language. A strategic approach to multilingual content requires a few steps, including:
Researching your new target market. Learn about linguistic and cultural nuances that color how they consume content online.
Researching your competition in the new market to understand their content approaches. Then you can build a better picture of what audiences see on the owned channels of other competitors.
Creating an international branding strategy. This positions your business and builds credibility and trust in the eyes of your target audience.
Creating content that embraces the variables outlined above and the varied needs of multilingual SEO. Embracing multilingual SEO will help ensure your audience can easily find your content.
Aligning your content throughout your channels. Establish a consistent experience that creates a brand image in your audience's mind.
Conducting regular check-ins and analyses. Determine the effectiveness of your content, along with potential improvement opportunities to approach your target audience.
Finally, approaching multilingual content as a core component of your larger marketing strategy also requires embracing the concept of localization. Many of the above steps already move in that direction, considering content creation as more than just translation. Localization keeps audience and cultural nuances front and center as you build content to attract and engage your new markets.