If you have global aspirations for your business, but you’re only promoting it in English, you’re severely limiting your reach. Translating your marketing materials, like your website, into other languages can be a key growth lever. 

Here’s an overview of the elements of multilingual marketing and how to create your own multilingual content strategy. 

What is multilingual marketing?

Multilingual marketing is the process of promoting your business in more than one language. The practice can help you reach both international audiences and multilingual audiences in your home country. Multilingual marketing can involve creating any amount of marketing content in different languages. A business might translate one advertising campaign into three target languages or only translate call-to-action (CTA) buttons and product descriptions into one additional language, for example.

Multilingual content marketing is typically more involved. Content marketing is a marketing strategy that involves creating and publishing content that provides value to target audiences to increase brand awareness and authority with a business’s ideal customers. It involves translating enough content to provide real value in another language, and it can involve tweaking your domestic content marketing strategy to meet the needs of audiences in different markets. An effective multilingual content strategy might adjust content subjects, channels, and publication cadence by country.

5 elements of successful multilingual marketing

1. Translation
2. Localization
3. Search engine optimization (SEO)
4. Brand consistency
5. The right technology

Multilingual marketing can help you reach a wider audience and boost customer engagement. Here are the core elements of successful multilingual marketing efforts, whether you’re planning a single foreign language campaign or a full-scale multilingual content marketing strategy:

1. Translation

Accurate translations preserve message and tone and account for the linguistic nuances of the target language (or languages). Businesses can choose from human translation partners, AI technologies, and other translation service providers to translate content. Machine translation services typically have limited content localization abilities, but you may be able to use them for basic tasks like translating CTA buttons and other high-value site elements.

Best practices include double-checking translations by using software tools to run content back into English and maintaining a glossary of key brand terms and phrases and their foreign-language counterparts.

2. Localization

Multilingual marketing is the process of adapting content based on region-specific language and cultural norms. Content localization can involve changing units of measure, substituting regional examples, accounting for idioms, and adjusting messaging based on cultural expectations. 

Website localization best practices build upon foundational translation work, including tactics like updating imagery to resonate with local sensibilities, integrating payment methods favored by local audiences, and even establishing a regional top-level domain like .mx or .ca. 

Localizing content marketing materials might involve partnering with a native speaker who can advise on custom content creation for your blog, social media, or email that speaks to the interests and unique needs of the local audience. 

3. Search engine optimization (SEO)

International SEO is the process of optimizing translated, localized content to capture keywords in other languages or regional dialects and increase the quality and quantity of traffic to your business’s site. It involves repeating the keyword research process for international markets in creating optimized content in each market’s primary language. SEO is particularly important for multilingual content marketing campaigns because search is a key content marketing discovery channel.

4. Brand consistency

Maintaining consistent branding and messaging across multiple languages is a key principle of international brand management. It’s just as important for businesses that serve audiences who speak different languages domestically. Developing an international or multilingual branding strategy can help you outline your localization strategy, establish key messages for each market, and specify elements to standardize across languages and markets.

5. The right technology

Deploying a multilingual marketing strategy is complex, so look for software systems designed to match local audiences with the correct marketing materials. Prioritize systems with flexible language preferences and market-based segmentation. 

Ecommerce platforms like Shopify Markets can simplify the process of converting multilingual customers with local currency payments, streamlined international fulfillment, and the ability to manage look and feel, products, and pricing by market. 

How to create a multilingual marketing strategy 

1. Know your audiences
2. Prioritize languages
3. Translate key brand messages
4. Create your roadmap
5. Keep it functional

Multilingual marketing can help you open new markets and reach more potential customers in their local language. Here’s how to get started:

1. Know your audiences

If you’re considering developing a multilingual marketing strategy, you probably have some data about the language barriers your customers face. You might be expanding into international audiences or want to better serve domestic customers who speak a primary language other than English.

Use market research to determine which native languages your audiences speak, their proficiency levels in any common secondary languages (like English or Spanish), and the languages in which they prefer to interact with businesses. 

2. Prioritize languages

Use your market research findings to prioritize the languages and target markets most appropriate to your business goals. 

If your goal is to grow your reach, you might rank international markets by size and eliminate those with high levels of English proficiency. You could then identify the languages spoken in the remaining markets and estimate the number of potential customers you could reach by translating your marketing materials into each language. Remember that national and linguistic borders don’t always overlap. Although India is the world’s third-largest market, only 46% of the country’s residents speak Hindi. Brazil and Mexico are smaller markets, but the majority of residents speak Spanish, and the combined total of both markets exceeds India’s numbers.

If your goal is to improve conversion rate, you might instead evaluate the languages in which your current customers prefer to shop. Although France has a high level of English proficiency, you might choose to translate content into French if you learn that French-speaking customers prefer to communicate with brands in their native language.

3. Translate key brand messages

Work with translators and localization experts to translate and localize key brand messages, including your mission, vision, values, and unique value propositions. Workshopping these in each target language can help you uncover cultural differences that will affect how you describe your business, and the choices you make can guide future translation and localization efforts. 

Consider a US-based travel equipment company with brand messages around adventure and self-discovery. It might adapt that message for Japanese markets to focus on resilience and leadership ability, an alternate value proposition that will shape how the business discusses itself in Japanese markets. 

4. Create your roadmap 

Next, assess your budget and goals to determine which marketing materials to translate, localize, or create from scratch, working in different languages, such as: 

• Core website copy and/or imagery

• SEO-optimized blog posts

• Social media content

• Ad campaigns, such as search engine ads targeting foreign language keywords

• Email campaigns, such as your automated welcome series for new subscribers

5. Keep it functional

When creating content in foreign languages, endeavor to preserve your unique brand voice, but minimize the use of idioms, allusions, and examples that require cultural knowledge. Sonic elements typically disappear in translation, too, so be wary of product names or slogans that rely on alliteration or rhyme. A wind chime, bell, and outdoor mobile store might find that its slogan “It’s chime time” translates to the strangely prophetic “Now is the wind chime moment.” You don’t need to ignore sonic elements entirely, but avoid statements that rely on sound for marketing value.