Who Should Use Multilingual Website Marketing?

Posted In: International Marketing . By dens

By: Anton Stoutjesdijk

Change is something that’s always going to happen, no matter how hard you try to resist it. The world is shrinking as a result of technology making it much easier to communicate across national countries. The internet has made multilingual advertising a strong possibility. In order to market a business’s products and services to the international market, the internet is your best and most useful tool.

English was once considered the main language that people spoke around the world, but if you’re operating in a local market and want to expand internationally, this is irrelevant.

* In Asia only around 10% of the searches done on the internet are actually in English.

* In the European union 87% of the searches are not in English – Remember Europeans speak German, French, and Italian…

* 70% of trade with the UK is to countries which do not speak English

* The English language now accounts for less than 13% of internet searches within the EU and less than 10% across Asia. Businesses who only market themselves with web sites written in English are clearly missing out.

When an internet user visits a webpage in their own language they are 4 out of 5 times more likely to stay reading that website. They are also much more likely to buy from that website as they feel far more secure and confident.

If you take the worldwide market then you will realize that over 75% of the available markets on the internet do not speak English. Any business which doesn’t develop multilingual website marketing strategies will be losing out on this extra revenue. The businesses which adopt these strategies will be the ones that survive in the long term.

Multilingual website marketing is a very powerful strategy which can allow you access to many more people. If you built a website for 5 different languages then this would allow you potential access to a staggering 412 million extra users of the internet! This means that you could potentially quadruple your sales and with a well crafted roll out campaign this figure is more likely. Using multilingual website marketing it is possible to increase the number of people that can be reached. This is why it is so important for businesses to spend time developing their own international market strategy paying special attention to non-English speaking markets.

The United States was seen as being the most important country concerned with international internet marketing, however now the UK and Canada are now seen as the most active countries in this field. Europe and Japan are two of the main hubs with foreign internet trade and spending occurring at around 37% of international internet purchasing activities.

This shows that international internet marking is continually evolving and changing in line with the market demand. Multilingual website marketing is one of the most important and useful tools that global businesses possess to market their products and services to the entire world. Multilingual marketing allow these international businesses to enter new markets which were previously out of reach due to a number of barriers. Using the internet is also much cheaper than other methods of entering foreign markets. International marketing strategy is particularly important to achieve the aims of most businesses. These international aims of businesses have been simplified as a result of globalization.

International internet marketing processes rely upon creating website templates which can then be used for multilingual advertising. It is important that the templates are easy to customize based on preferences and culture of the local consumer. Certain countries want information presented in a specific way. By using multilingual marketing you are able to present your customers with useful information which is presented how they expect it to be. Content should be used to relate to the customer’s culture, paying attention to special occasions is a good idea. It’s common to offer discounts at Christmas, however you should also consider discounts at Chinese New Year in china! This will interest a great number of your global customers.

When a business devises its international marketing strategy it is important to remember a few important points.

* Time should be spent identifying the demographics of the market that you want to target.

* Translating and presenting your multilingual marketing activities in such a way which will interest consumers all around the world and in particular, the new market being targeted.

* Use search engine optimization and other methods of internet marketing including press releases, articles, pay-per-click advertising in multiple languages.

* Establish multilingual phone & email support to provide order fulfillment and to service your websites international clientèle.

Multilingual marketing has made it much easier for businesses to enter foreign markets and benefit from a booming global economy. Multilingual website marketing activities can use your existing website as a template. Any packaging or promotional materials can also be translated without having to change the design. By setting up a multilingual website your business is able to attract far more visitor then if your website was in English alone, any visitors that you do attract will be twice as likely to continue reading the site. These visitors will also be four times as likely to buy from you when your website is in their native language.