Marketing activities are all about external communication and positioning your brand in a way that brings you closer to your target customers. This is how you can build strong relationships with them and ultimately increase sales. If you’re planning to expand internationally, not only will you face the challenge of bridging the language gap – you’ll also have to navigate complex cultural differences. Let’s take a closer look at why marketing translation should be taken seriously. Conveying the Right Message Through Marketing Let’s first talk about linguistic and cultural barriers. Foreign customers may come from various cultural backgrounds and speak various languages. To avoid misunderstandings or offense, it’s crucial to communicate in a clear and culturally appropriate manner. Additionally, you have to think about whether or not your marketing content is relevant and relatable. Consumers are more receptive to marketing materials that speak to their needs, preferences, and values. It’s crucial to deliver a message that the target audience can relate to. With prospects, a carefully-produced marketing message can help establish credibility and trust. Customers from other countries who might not be familiar with your business or its products usually pay particular attention to this. They might be skeptical about new brands on their market and you’ll need to do some additional convincing to trigger a shift from them preferring local brands over yours. On a worldwide scale, your company will face up to other international companies. You can stand out from the crowd and attract more clients by communicating the proper message. And how do you do that? With accurate translations. The trick here is to have an internal consensus about what it is that you want to say so that you can work with experts who specialize in marketing translation to ensure your message gets through (regardless of the market). More often than not, this requires transcreation services, especially when it comes to taglines or content that include wordplay and idioms. Attracting New Customers In the 21st century, we have reached the peak of consumerism, where we buy things not because we need them, but because we want them. A huge part of why we want them is because brands have managed to get closer to us and create a narrative about their products that seems inviting and even irresistible. Just think about Nike’s success. When people buy their athletic wear, they’re not just buying workout clothes. They’re metaphorically buying a ticket to the world of people who are passionate about being physically active. Nike’s global success wouldn’t have been possible if they weren’t heavily invested in adjusting their advertisements and marketing content to their global audience. Tackling this task is hard even for your own market, but the complexity of it multiplies when you have to do it for a foreign one. Misunderstandings, complicated phrases, and even offense can result from a poorly translated marketing message. This can cause audience and brand trust to decline. By effectively and appropriately communicating with your target audience, accurate translation contributes to the development of trust. Maintaining Your Brand Image and Staying Consistent Across Different Markets Although it might be difficult, maintaining a consistent brand image across several markets is essential for fostering client loyalty and brand recognition. You must decide what your brand stands for before you can achieve consistency. This encompasses the tone of voice, brand values, and visual and verbal identity. This is why we at Ciklopea start by looking at the internal documentation that you already have. It’s a crucial piece of the puzzle that helps us accurately translate your marketing content. You need to have brand rules that specify how your brand should be portrayed across various channels and marketplaces after you’ve established your brand identity. The rules for your logo, typography, colors, artwork, messaging, and tone of voice are all included in this. Some of our clients use a centralized brand management system while smaller organizations stick to Google Drive folders. In any case, having a system will make it simpler to maintain consistency across markets. All stakeholders, including external vendors, should have access to the most recent brand standards and assets. However, you also have to adapt your message to each individual market. Using language that appeals to local audiences and highlighting regional cultural allusions are two examples of how to do this. You should also regularly assess how your brand is regarded on various markets and make any adjustments to your strategy that might be required. This may include reviewing social media stats, performing market research, and obtaining feedback from your customers. How Technology Supports Accurate Marketing Translations At Ciklopea, we’re big on incorporating technology into our translation processes to make everything more efficient and increase the return on investment for our clients. Here are a few examples: Natural language processing (NLP) has made machine translation a precious tool for precise marketing translations. It analyzes and translates text from one language to another using algorithms. Then we have translation memories (TMs), which preserve previously translated text so that translators can reuse it later. By ensuring that frequently used terminology and expressions are translated regularly, translation memories can improve consistency and accuracy. Translators can maintain consistency by using terminology management tools when translating particular terms and phrases into multiple marketing materials. This helps to avoid consistency issues and guarantees that important marketing messages are adequately conveyed. In addition, technology-based methods for quality control, such as translation software, can help find flaws before marketing materials are sent in their final form. Need Help With Marketing Translations? If you’re looking for a reliable partner to help you with marketing translations, your search is over. Ciklopea is an award-winning language solutions provider with more than a decade of experience in corporate and marketing translations. From websites, sales brochures, online content, and catalogs to white papers, case studies, newsletters, and more – we cover all of it. Schedule a call with us today to discuss your project!