By: Anton Stoutjesdijk

The global economy as a whole may be booming, however the American economy is pretty sluggish to say the least. Emerging markets such as India and China have started expanding at a huge rate, and this has made globalization a serious consideration for almost every business. It’s certainly the right time to start a new business as you can easily have access to a worldwide market, thanks to the internet. The internet has made globalization so much easier, there have been a number of new marketing strategies developed such as multilingual advertising and multilingual marketing. Due to these new innovations it is possible for businesses to dramatically expand their customer base. International internet marketing isn’t always easy, in fact it rarely is.

Multilingual website marketing overview

Multilingual website marketing is actually a pretty simple concept it basically means that you can build websites in a number of different languages which makes them suitable for a much larger audience. Yet, marketing the website in all these languages is where the challenge begins. Having an international marketing strategy is a very important concept in modern business environments, it is extremely important for businesses to consider their international internet marketing activities. Large businesses use about 0.1 percent of their revenue on multilingual advertising strategies. This may not seem like a lot, but it’s actually $1 million for every $1 billion earned by the revenue. For multilingual marketing to be a success it requires substantial investment. You must carefully consider your budget before you decide whether or not multilingual website marketing is suitable for your business.

Run a CMS

Many companies have a decentralized CMS or content management system to control their multilingual marketing activities. This makes it easy to make adjustments in the design across all of the websites at once instead of editing each website individually. It is always advisable for businesses to use this central CMS in order to reduce costs associated with maintaining multilingual marketing websites. When using multilingual websites it is important that the business is sure that the meaning of the translated text is identical to the original meaning. You should write the content bearing in mind that you will get it translated in the future, don’t make it too difficult. Many businesses use Global templates to organize their multilingual website marketing content so that they can standardize the websites to look the same. Global templates mean that all of your websites can look the same which should enhance your brand image.

Cost considerations

An international market strategy must be conducted at the same time as international internet marketing; both of these are very closely related as the internet allows for a significant amount of research. This makes sure that your budget will cover all of the necessary expenses. You need to consider the expenses of marketing, website development and writing documentation in all of the different languages.

It is a good idea to create a website which acts as a gateway to your individual sites. I’m sure you’ve typed in a company name and had either a page in English or a page with welcome written in lots of languages. By attracting visitors in this way multilingual advertising is more likely to be a success. Don’t make it difficult for them to change the language, but at the same time you don’t really want a separate address. Most people will access your website directly using your domain name, you could even consider using cookies to remember the user’s selection and navigate there by default the next time.

Testing your angle with ongoing marketing.

You shouldn’t just translate the content of your site, it is also important to translate the Meta data contained in your HTML code this will ensure that your multilingual website marketing strategy is a complete success. SEO (Search engine optimization) should also be carried out for each of these sites, make sure that they are all submitted to the popular search engines. If you take a look at Google this is a good example of a multilingual marketing web page, you can easily select to view it in many different languages.

There’s no doubting that multilingual advertising is quite difficult, however you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Pick up inspiration from some of the leaders of multilingual marketing such as Google. Multilingual advertising makes people twice as likely to read your website, and also makes them four times as likely to buy products from you.

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