Website — the first step in implementing a global digital marketing strategy

Through digital technologies, we aim to communicate with potential clients, reach out with relevant messaging, and convert these “leads” into customers that we can retain.  It sounds straightforward enough but in today’s environment, effectively connecting with your customers also depends on being able to build and promote a brand and engage with these customers via a multitude of media and in a multitude of locales.

Today’s customer journey is far more complex than it was in the past. It generally begins on the internet, and may remain there in its entirety, but it may also move from the virtual world into the bricks-and-mortar world, be that an office, a store, a café, a hotel, or a movie theater.

An organization’s online presence usually starts with its website, where the company may hope to inform, connect and sell. Of course, one of the key elements of the internet is that it allows you to connect on a global scale, and while this opens up many possibilities, it also creates additional challenges, especially in pursuit of providing a consistent customer journey and experience regardless of where your customers are located.

A company’s website is key in establishing and managing its global presence and opens up new markets for its product or service, but an immediate challenge of communication is language. While you may not need to communicate in the world’s seven thousand plus languages, you will undoubtedly have to expand beyond your site’s initial single language.

As referenced above, success in today’s competitive global marketplace requires ensuring an effective customer experience and it is therefore important to acknowledge that communication is more than just the words and the language you are using, though they alone will provide enough challenges.

It is vital to be aware that merely translating content from the original language into another language will not create the right message and environment for the potential customer. It is, however, a starting point: according to IDC and Forrester, respectively, a web user will spend twice as long on a website in their own language and is four times more likely to buy from such a website than from one offered in English.

From a commercial point of view, when you decide to create and maintain a multilingual website, you have to consider much more than just an accurate translation of the content.

A commercial website has a variety of functions, from providing information about the company, perhaps some legal communication, through to messages promoting the goods or services and actually conducting business via the site.

The creativity of content on a company’s website will probably be different depending on the intention. Areas of the site containing strictly information and legal communication, for example, will have a different approach to an area offering descriptions of the product or service. For information purposes, the objective of the translation will be to provide a direct, accurate translation, whereas for the descriptive elements, the translation will need to be adapted—or localized—to offer readers the same experience. It may be that due to the market conditions and country concerned, elements of the content will need to be completely rewritten in the local language to fully convey the optimum messaging.

Expanding beyond the actual words, there are considerations around how the content looks on the website to be taken into account, and this may call into question some of the design elements. Some languages are by nature “longer” than others: content translated into or created in, say, German will usually take up more room than similar messaging in English, and this will impact either the creativity or the space on the page. Arabic languages display right to left, again providing some challenges in recreating the aesthetics of the original site. Colors, for example, will have different connotations in different countries and should therefore be considered when constructing the site.

It is clear, then, that embarking on even just the first element of a company’s digital marketing transformation journey requires some thought and expertise. This becomes even more apparent when considering the other digital elements. The next step after localizing the website would be to think about how people will find your site in different countries. This will require a change in how you approach the question of search engine optimization (SEO). Again, merely translating popular terms that work for English search engines will be unlikely to produce similar results, as the way that people search varies in different areas of the world and certainly the phrases and terms will contain colloquialisms.

We then progress from initially having a website, to enabling it to be found by your potential market, to then ensuring that it is updated and that your global audience experience is equally meaningful in all locations. Managing and updating a single language site can be challenging; expansion to multiple language sites adds additional challenges in the form of ensuring that the content is created, translated, stored and retrieved in unison. This can necessitate a significant amount of effort and therefore cost, as well as a good deal of process control and organization to ensure that not only is all content identified, but that it is then managed through the translation and transcreation process.

An article on the challenges of global marketing would not be complete without at least one or two examples of how even the seemingly most straightforward elements of translating content can cost a company’s brand and reputation dearly, so here are a couple of popular examples that demonstrate the need for more than just accurate translation.

When Clairol launched a curling iron called “Mist Stick” in Germany, one presumes they were unaware that the word “mist” is a German slang term for manure.

Pampers, when introducing their diapers to Japan, used their theme and design elements based around the stork bringing a baby, but this did not resonate at all with buyers in Japan because though this may be a well-known, ancient tale in some countries, it is not recognized in Japan, making the branding pretty meaningless.

With any luck, this short piece, which addresses merely the starting point for creating a digital presence, illustrates the requirement for expertise and a knowledgeable approach to creating a meaningful experience for users. The world’s markets are more open to organizations through digital channels but ensuring the best return on time and money invested requires the input of specialists and a variety of skillsets, provided by companies that offer digital marketing localization solutions.