If you are looking to increase sales of your software or engineered products, exporting beyond the UK can be a compelling strategy.

As an English-speaker, you have a substantial head-start, being able to converse effectively with businesspeople in many markets around the world. It’s not just countries like the USA, Australia and India, but closer to home in the Nordics and much of Europe and Asia where sales negotiations and partnership agreements are regularly discussed in English.

Reasons to invest in multilingual marketing

However, while you are likely to find many people who will do business with you in English, there are some compelling reasons why your marketing might need to be in other languages:

• Being found. Search engines and social media algorithms will return more content in people’s first language. To build awareness and be there when people are looking for solutions, you need to speak their language.
• Removing obstacles to sale. A large part of marketing is smoothing the path on the customer’s journey from awareness to purchase. Removing language barriers can be a key part of this.
• Cultural expectations. In countries like Japan and France it is considered discourteous to start a conversation in your language rather than theirs. That doesn’t mean everything has to be translated, but you must be seen to make the effort.
• Outmanoeuvring your competitors. Multilingual websites and marketing send a signal of confidence and commitment to your target markets. Consciously or unconsciously, this sets you apart from competitors who are unwilling or unable to invest in translations.

Practical considerations for translating your marketing

If you are selling into international markets the question is generally not whether you should translate your marketing, but how much of your content to translate and into which languages.

• Which languages? This decision may be based on building strategic advantage in a major market; or you may evaluate specific prospects in each different region; alternatively, your priority may be supporting a particularly capable distributor.
• How much to translate? This requires careful review of your website, landing pages, keystone content and cross-linking. You don’t necessarily need to be consistent across all languages; a few key pages may be enough for some, while others get all the in-depth product information and articles.
• What about social media? It’s easy to translate your LinkedIn company page, for example, but you need to decide whether you will also post regularly in each language. You probably won’t translate every post – but make sure your choices are based on a clear plan.
• Expecting change? If you are planning a major product launch that will shift your priorities, or if you are in a state of marketing change, then it may be best to wait before embarking on a lot of new translations. However, it’s worth remembering that your translators will build-up a ‘translation memory’ that helps automate future translations of repeated phrases.
• Can AI do it all for us?  My recent experience has shown that machine translation, assisted by AI, can now do a lot of the legwork and help keep costs down. However, for marketing content, which needs to convey not just technical details but also reflect your professionalism and attention to detail, you still need a human to provide some of the context and fix the occasional howler.

Next steps

At Achaleon we have helped small software, engineering and technology firms to sell more effectively into international markets and create a presence which greatly increased their value. We can recommend translators but would always start with a wider conversation about sales and marketing strategy. If this is of interest, please get in touch.