Digital Marketing Tactics For A Multilingual Audience

Digital marketing is essential for any business looking to do well at a time when competitors not only exist locally, but worldwide. Competitors are only ever one click away.

Whilst there are multiple expensive and time-consuming ways to harness a global audience, what you may not realise is that many of the methods you are already using to market your brand are applicable to a multilingual audience. In other words, you can apply the digital marketing methods you already know to your digital expansion overseas.

To help you get started, here are some digital marketing tactics that work for a multilingual audience:

SEO

64% of marketers put time into SEO, which drives around 1000% more traffic than organic social media. Of course, SEO is a process which can be followed in any language if it is done right. It does take in-depth research to discover relevant search terms for an international audience, the behaviour of the potential customers when it comes to different languages and the best approach to use of languages and translation options for a website aiming to capitalise on international SEO. However, doing this is much better than direct translation and tends to be more effective overall.

Content Marketing

Content marketing is incredibly important and can easily be applied to multilingual audience needs. One of the easiest ways to make your content marketing suitable for a multilingual audience is with professional voiceover or foreign language subtitles. This will work for any videos you have although do give some thought to the best type of voice, whether that's a female voice or a male voice, as well and the tone and accent. Professional translation can also work for your website, blogs and other content you put out there. Just make sure it is accurate, otherwise your content will fall flat.

Email Marketing

Email marketing is a great way to retain a loyal customer base and create new leads. Just make sure you are offering subtitling and translation in the most important email content so that multilingual users can make the most of it. Don’t forget to also ensure there are language specific CTA’s elsewhere so that you actually get multilingual users signing up for those newsletters.

Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is how you let multilingual audiences know you see them and you care about them. Most companies will have a country specific social media account that is dedicated to posting in that language and posting content already translated in that language. You can also let customers on your English channels know that there are alternative language channels available in case they find you there first.

Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is hugely popular these days with an industry worth $13.8 billion dollars and rising as of 2021.

This marketing method can work for your brand if you identify the best influencers in your industry in other countries (or who are popular with other countries) and then develop a relationship with them to sell your products or services.

It is important that this is paired with website translation, video subtitling and the appropriate sales channels and customer service so that the audience can access your products if the influencer marketing is successful.

Without ensuring that there is more in the way of multilingual services and options beyond marketing for your target audience, you run the risk of giving your brand a bad reputation in that country. You may even find that the influencer refuses to work with you again, and other influencers within that country may then not want to work with you.

“Marketing’s job is never done. It’s about perpetual motion. We must continue to innovate every day.” - Beth Comstock, Former CMO & Vice Chair, GE

Digital marketing is easily applied to multilingual marketing goals, with the above methods and more being useful in global outreach. The most important thing to do is always ensure you are investing in good translation, subtitling and research so that you don’t alienate potential new customers. Instead, with careful consideration and application your digital marketing can attract, retain and convert multilingual customers to boost your business exponentially.