The fact is that the pace at which businesses are focusing exclusively on digital marketing has accelerated. It is seen as a great way to increase their customer base while creating brand recognition without the overhead of a regular marketing campaign. However, a comparatively less focused on aspect of digital marketing is multilingual digital marketing. A multilingual digital marketing approach helps businesses focus on a smaller segment of the market and helps break into new territories.
The stats show that even though 50% of the content on the internet is in English, just 27% of internet users speak English natively. So, there is theoretically 70% if not more of the market which is untapped.
Multilingual marketing is cost-effective
Multilingual marketing offers a real possibility to enter new territories without being physically there. A multilingual website and SEO is all that’s needed to get started. Businesses will then want to create specific content targeting every territory with all multi-lingual territories easily controlled from one location.
Though multilingual marketing does help save money, it is essential to hire the best professional translators. Ideally, people who are native speakers of that language with English as their second language. That way they can ensure that the content isn’t just translated but conforms with the norms of that country or location.
Many of your competitors may be ignoring non-English speakers
Regardless of your industry, there is a good chance that your competitors are not targeting non-English speakers. As a matter of fact, 50% of the top Fortune 500 Companies don’t have multilingual versions of their website. Also, because fewer businesses are focusing on those markets, there is little to no competition which means that you get a larger chunk of the market.
The growing usage of the internet across the world
The UK and USA were once the long-standing home base for the internet. However now the number of users in countries like China, Hong Kong, Italy and France has more than tripled in just these five years alone. Plus, Japan happens to be one of the most influential players online with e-commerce booming across the board.
Easier SEO Wins for Businesses
If you are struggling to rank for your niche in English, that’s because you’re competing against potentially hundreds of other websites. But you could stand a better chance in Spanish, Chinese or Italian. The reason is that not many businesses except for a few local ones are focused on SEO in those languages. A suitable content structure and choices even if it’s the same blog posts and web content cleverly translated from their English counterparts can yield excellent results.
Yes, you’ll not see results overnight, and it does require the services of a professional translation company but it’s worth the effort. Have a professional translator translate everything from web pages to sub-directories and have a region-specific page with keywords that have been sourced from that region. If anything with the right approach you’ll rank sooner in that language and territory than you will in English.