A Guide On Using a Translation Agency To Create A Global Marketing Campaign
Technology has effectively blurred the lines between borders, making the economies and cultures of the world become more and more reliant on each other. In fact, globalization’s second wave was spurred on by technological advances from the second half of the 20th century onwards with continuously lowering transportation and communication costs.
And thanks to the Internet, people are now more connected with the rest of the world, sharing cultural influences, trends, and products. Businesses both small and large now have the advantage of being able to increase their visibility through digital storefronts not only domestically but internationally as well.
This poses both an opportunity and a challenge for brands. On one hand, it is now very inexpensive to expand one’s business internationally, requiring only bare-bones physical infrastructure to be able to provide goods and services to consumers the world over. On the other, businesses often struggle with marketing their products to a brand new audience.
Many brands feel like a one-size-fits-all approach may be a good marketing strategy to have. After all, if it worked in the domestic market, why shouldn’t it work internationally especially if brands are already established? However, it’s rarely ever the case. Creating a global marketing campaign requires a deep empathy towards one’s target audience and this includes being able to communicate on their level. And for multilingual markets, this means tailor-fitting your marketing strategy for specific audiences while utilizing quality translations with the help of a translation agency to be able to relay the intent effectively.
To help you get started with your global marketing campaign, we’ll run through a couple of practical things to remember when creating your strategy and implementing it with the help of the right translation agency.
Planning your global marketing campaign
Before getting into the minutia of implementing your strategy (and finding a translation agency to work with you), you must first take the time to prepare for your campaign. Doing your marketing campaign right is better than doing it fast. It’s important to remember that a brand’s success hinges on consumer trust. The better your brand message resonates with your audience, the greater their affinity towards your brand would be which would lead to them patronizing your products and services, in turn, would hopefully build-up towards brand loyalty. And when you lose your market’s trust in your brand, it is difficult—sometimes impossible—to bring it back.
First, identify your brand’s specific marketing goals: are you trying to expand to specific countries or regions, or are you going full international? Or maybe you already have an international presence and you want to increase brand engagement or conversions. Having a clear specific set of goals will allow you to angle your message better.
Next, identify your target demographics. When it comes to international marketing, it’s best to be specific about it. Construct a detailed buyer’s persona: identify their likes and dislikes; illustrate their lifestyles; understand their buying habits; and find out the trends they subscribe to. And with a multilingual and multicultural audience, you need to be able to create diverse personas for each market. By creating a detailed buyer’s persona, you gain a better understanding of and have empathy for your target consumer. You are able to understand their consumer journey and figure out how they arrive at considering a specific product or service.
If you do not have the time or resources to do the market research on your own, it’s wise to work with a local marketing consultancy not only for your demographic research but also for planning your campaign. As professionals who operate within your target locales, they have a deeper understanding of the people and their culture.
When you have all the relevant information required, you are now ready to formulate a global marketing campaign that’s in line with your brand’s goals.
Successful international marketing initiatives are often those that either bank on universal appeal or localize their campaign to fit the values and preferences of the specific country while retaining the essence of their core message. It really depends on the country or region you plan on marketing to which works best.
But if there’s something that’s true for every brand in every country, it’s that consumers do not like the hard sell. The greatest brands all try to tell their brand’s story in a way that resonates with the target audience. Consumers are not only buying your product but they are buying into the narrative. And if you’re not sure how to go about creating an impactful marketing strategy, you can always find inspiration from brands who have succeeded in resonating with a global audience.
Translation agency key considerations
The next thing you need to figure out is what the translation solution would work best for you. And for the specific purpose of global marketing, it’s best to go with professionals.
Sure, there are tons of cheap or even free apps that can translate for you, but their reliability particularly for nuanced communication is poor. Freelancers are also relatively affordable and as human translators, they can provide professional quality translations, but they often lack the industry experience to be effective when translating your marketing campaign. What’s more, is that as freelancers your working relationship may end at any time without any guarantee that you would be able to find a replacement soon.
This is why for something so crucial as your global marketing strategy, working with a translation agency yields high-quality translations with fast turnaround times. In addition to that, established translation agencies such as Tomedes, PoliLingua, and Lionbridge have decades’ worth of experience working with international brands, offering scalable end-to-end translation solutions. Having that industry expertise as well as better term flexibility and project management allows a translation agency to give you seasoned advice on how to communicate better with your target audience.
Collaborating with your translation agency
What’s great about incorporating a translation agency into your global marketing strategy is that you have an extra pair of eyes to take a look at your messaging. This is why when you work with a translation agency, you must not keep them siloed away from your marketing team and other consultants that you are working with. Instead, you must work together as one well-oiled machine from planning all the way to implementation and evaluation. It should look like this: Having language experts in your arsenal can help you get rid of any costly mistakes from as early as the planning stage so that you won’t find yourself trying to send out errata for a poorly communicated marketing slogan. Visit Languex Translation if you require an accurate and affordable language translation service.
A holistic and proactive approach to marketing is important, especially when endeavoring to target multiple countries at once. While smaller, more boutique translation agencies are used to working on a per-project basis, the larger, more established translation agencies can work on a retainer basis so that they are able to provide solicited advice on everything from your slogan to product packaging as long as your contract permits it.
Effectively utilizing your translation agency to implement your campaign
Any decent translation agency will tell you that translating marketing communication from adverts to brochures requires a little bit more thought than simply translating them word for word. And when your translation agency implements things a certain way, it’s usually for good reason. This means that when consulting your agency, you also have to keep an open mind. This is not to say that your agency is always right, but when it comes to translating to a foreign language, they probably have a deeper working knowledge of its ins and outs. After all, you wouldn’t want to pull a “Pepsi goes to China” with your campaign slogan.
Finally, as a marketer or entrepreneur, you must be hands-on when it comes to overseeing every aspect of your global marketing campaign including the translation process. This way, not only do you ensure that standards are kept but also you are continuously learning about your international audience. And when it comes to marketing, insight is precious.
