How to Market Your Business in A Second Language
If you are looking to expand your business, marketing into a second or additional language can be very beneficial to your company. Knowing who your target audience is and the language they speak is your first step.
Here are some steps you might want to take:
- Market research
You can get started by searching what language(s) can be beneficial to your business. – Knowing who your target audience is, one or multiple languages – Statistics reports showing results from marketing in a second language/multiple languages.
Here is a list of the top languages you may want to consider exploring:
– Chinese: there is over 955 million native speakers and over 1 billion speakers worldwide – 14.4% of the world’s population. The Chinese economy experiences substantial rapid economy growth over the last years. With this growth, it is expected to become the world’s largest economy.
– Spanish: the second most commonly used language on the internet – having your marketing materials and site available in Spanish can be very important. Statistics shows the Hispanic consumers in the U.S. spent an estimated 1.6 trillion dollars in the year 2017. There are over 480 million native speakers and roughly 57 million Hispanics in the U.S. The products targeting the Hispanic population has as a great opportunity for marketing companies.
– Arabic: it is the official language in 28 different countries, spoken by over 295 million speakers worldwide. Some of these countries are on the UK’s top 50 export market in goods.
– German: is basically the world’s third largest contributor to research and development. With 95 million native speakers and a total of 210 million speakers worldwide, Germany is considered to be the largest economy in the European Union. If you are looking to do business with Germany, you need to use their language.
– Portuguese: spoken by approximately 215 million people in Portugal, Brazil and Africa. Brazilian Portuguese is the most requested and commonly used in the US. It is the largest economy in Latin America where business opportunities are expected to grow.
– Russian: one of the official languages in the United Nations, very important for international relation and trade. There are over 143 million native Russian speakers.
- Localize your website contents:
As a website owner, you may think finding an easy, less expensive way might be your best bid. Having your website translated by a machine can be disadvantageous as it can result in low quality translation. Find a professional translation company who can localize your website contents. There are some sites that offer website translation plug-ins which can be installed on your website and automatically translate into a different language.
- Create “Catchy” Keywords
To increase traffic to your site, you must create and keep up with the trending keywords in the language(s). Search trends are constantly changing – have someone monitor the performance keeping these main keywords up-to-date.
- Advertising
If you choose to pay for your advertising, it is actually considered the best way to get to the top in search results.
Social media – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram: online businesses may consider creating profiles on these popular social networks based on who your target audience is. These profiles must be kept updated at least at the end of the every week.
Benefits from marketing into a second language or other languages:
This will increase your potential business cooperation
- Enhance your site visibility: with your business being in another language, it is now exposed to foreign speakers which may bring more traffic to your site as well as more sales.
- Compared to others in the same market, a foreign language can be at your advantage.
- The use of affiliate networks to find new business partners worldwide.
- You will also have to consider the language, geography, and demography of the people you are targeting.
If you decide to market your business into one or more languages, it is proven to be successful. If your target audience understands what you are saying and the content is available in their language, this gives you a great advantage over your competitors.
