Article from our guest writer Fatima Salahuddin.
Fatima Salahuddin is a preschool teacher with 8 years of experience teaching 3-5-year-olds. She has devoted her professional life to giving her pupils the best she can, teaching them how to love themselves first, and improve the students’ learning and behavioral skills. She is also interested in the sociology of culture. She wants to have a deep understanding of the ethnocentrism and cultural relativity.
If you want to reach a new target market, you might want to rethink your marketing strategies, repackage your products, conduct market research to understand them, or even adjust prices in a bid to appeal to them. All that sounds like an easy thing to do, but when you add the fact that the new audiences speak different languages, it becomes a different story altogether.
Besides the language, the cultures are also different, which makes it challenging to appeal to them. However, that is not to say that it cannot be done. Here are 5 tips that you can use to reach new target markets in new languages.
- Translate your content
To appeal to people who speak a different language, you will need to translate your content into the language they understand. You, however, must be careful not to use machine translators.
Have you ever translated content using online translation tools? How did it sound in your preferred language? If my sentiments are right, it probably didn’t flow well, some terminologies were off the mark and the meaning got lost in between. That is what your target audiences experience if your content is machine translated.
Work with a professional translation company to translate your content into different languages. Such companies have knowledge in specific industries, so they can customize your content according to your niche. In addition, they understand different cultures, so they know the terminologies and slang to use that will sit well with people.
- Hire people from these demographics
People feel good when they can connect with you online in their own language. They, however, connect with you much better if you have a representative speaking their language. They get to ask questions and find clarity from a person they can relate with.
Consider having a representative who speaks the language of the people, preferably a native, represent your business in every language you are targeting. It might sound daunting especially if the new audiences are spread across the globe. However, with the help of a professional employer organization, such as Global PEO, you can easily hire representatives without the need of establishing a legal entity. You leave the HR needs of the workers to them, which ensures that the workers are compensated according to the local tax and labor laws.
- Know the social media platforms they frequent
It is easy to think your target audiences are present in social media sites that are popular in your locality. However, no single online platform is universally accepted. When it comes to reaching your target audiences, you do not want to address an empty room. That is why it is important to know on which social platforms to find your new audiences.
For instance, Chinese-speaking audiences prefer WeChat (with 1.2 billion active monthly users in the second quarter of 2020), Renren, Youku, and Sina Weibo social platforms, while Latin America prefers Sonico. On the other hand, American audiences are mostly on YouTube, Facebook, Snapchat, and Twitter.
- Localize everything
Reaching audiences in new languages goes beyond just translating to the local language. You must also take into account the culture and local details such as holidays, date formats, currencies, local keyword trends, local addresses, and local phone numbers among other details. Even as you optimize your website in different languages, be sure to localize every detail . Additionally, the visual content that you use on your website should be culturally acceptable in every audience you are targeting. If you are running adverts, be sure to localize those too and pay attention to the local culture.
- Have multiple accounts
To target certain cultures on social media, it is a good idea to have different accounts for each language. However, you need to customize each post if you do not want the accounts to look like copies of each other. Alternatively, if you have followers in different languages on your pages, consider posting in different languages. You also must be careful not to sound repetitive to multilingual followers.
Conclusion
Having target audiences in different languages is a clear indication your business is set for international success. You do not want to blow it by getting it all wrong with the language and culture. Put in all the efforts required to understand the people and their culture, then customize your website, marketing strategies, packaging, pricing, and every other detail according to these two.
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