Multilingual Content Marketing Mistakes

Common Mistakes to Avoid in Your Multilingual Content Marketing Strategy

Translating marketing content should be an essential part of any company’s marketing strategy, particularly if you want to expand your reach and increase revenue in new global markets. Despite the importance of utilizing professional translation, companies continue to make common mistakes, which can result in disappointing campaign results and a damaged brand reputation. In this blog, we share the most common mistakes to avoid in your multilingual content marketing strategy.

Neglecting Cultural Nuances and Language Differences

Cultural nuances and language differences should always be considered when translating and localizing marketing content. This involves a good understanding of your target market’s social and cultural differences, such as specific words, beliefs, etiquette, and phrases that are unique to that country. Unfortunately, many companies overlook this and implement word-for-word translations instead. This does not work across multiple markets because it can risk sounding culturally inappropriate or offensive to readers. It is not just the text to consider either – the wrong visuals can easily offend people from different cultures, so it is essential to ensure all videos, graphics, and images are appropriate for your target audience.

Taking cultural nuances and language differences into account helps your target audience feel genuinely connected to your brand, which results in higher engagement with your content. First impressions count, so never miss this step when planning your multilingual marketing strategy.

Relying on Machine Translation

The concept of using machine translation tools such as Google Translate is widely frowned upon in the linguistic world. Although implementing machine translation may seem like a quick and cost-effective solution for certain businesses, its consequences can prove to be catastrophic for a company’s brand image. Many of these translation aids produce incorrect word choices, grammatical errors, and a lack of context. Consider this scenario – in Chinese, one word can have multiple variants based on its meaning, origin, and spelling. The odds of tools such as Google Translate accurately selecting the right version of the word are extremely slim.

When it comes to fluency and accuracy, machine translations are no match for humans. Using these tools could end up costing you more money in the end because you may have to edit the machine-translated content before it is suitable to go out into the market. So always use the services of a professional translation agency who are experts in language and localization. Investing in an experienced agency can guarantee long-term rewards, saving you both time and money.

Not Adapting Your Content to Local Holidays and Celebrations

If you are running a campaign in a specific market, be mindful of local holidays and celebrations. For example, Mother’s Day is celebrated on different dates of the year in different countries, and Halloween is only celebrated in certain countries. So be aware of this when working on your content strategy to ensure it impacts the right market in the right language and at the right time. By not adapting the content of your campaigns to local holidays and celebrations, you may lose valuable customers, which in turn, can negatively impact your business.

Ignoring Local SEO Optimization

Your multilingual marketing content deserves to be appreciated by the right audience in your target country, and this can be accomplished through local search engine optimization (SEO). This integral strategy component helps your content be seen by the right audiences in your target country. This is because people usually look at search engines in their native language first. When targeting a specific country with your marketing content, you need to ensure your brand can be found easily on the right search engine (which varies by country) and in the correct language.

A professional translation agency can help you with keyword research and will source international keywords that can help your brand appear more visible online in your target market. If you ignore implementing local SEO, your strategy could fail because you will miss a huge opportunity to drive more traffic to your website and gain organic reach in your key markets.

Skipping Proofreading and Editing

Proofreading and editing are imperative for translated content because writing can be subjective, and even the best translators can phrase a word differently or make mistakes. So, if you miss this part in your strategy, you open up all sorts of problems because you risk your content being misunderstood by your audience, and it will look very unprofessional if it is filled with errors. If you employ a professional translation agency, these are already integral parts of their quality control process.

Remember, your content is only as good as the final edit, so ensure all your translations are thoroughly checked by a professional translation agency with strict quality control measures in place. By adopting this approach, your marketing content will have the right tone, style, spelling, and localization that will resonate with your audience and earn their trust.

Working with the Cheapest Translations Agency

Selecting a translation agency because they are the cheapest is never a smart move, especially if your marketing objective is to increase brand reach and sales in global markets. Translation agencies with the lowest quote could be missing essential services such as local SEO support, localization, and transcreation, which are vital for reaching and engaging visitors from global markets. Furthermore, a lower agency rate may also result in fewer resources or less expertise to complete the task, which could lead to low-quality translations across your marketing content.

Cheap things are rarely of good quality, and this is especially applicable to language translations. A professional translation agency with a good reputation will always ensure your content is translated with the highest quality and integrity for your brand. This is not just a way to boost your content performance and return on investment (ROI), but it also serves as protection against any translation discrepancies down the line.

Conclusion

Companies allocate big budgets toward creating beautiful and engaging content as part of their global marketing strategies; however, the multilingual element is often an afterthought or even overlooked. As a result, additional costs may be incurred to prepare content for the global market.

Keep in mind that your multilingual marketing strategy’s success is heavily dependent upon the quality of your translated content. This is why allocating marketing funds to a professional and experienced translation agency will help elevate your global strategy and brand in the markets you want to target. This approach will also avoid mistakes that can be made when translating the content, which can damage the outcome of a marketing campaign as well as the company’s brand image. These efforts will lead to heightened customer engagement, increased conversion rates, and a higher (return on investment) ROI.