6 Marketing Translation Tips to Grow Your Small Business Globally

By Ofer Tirosh

When it comes to the global market, many people tend to think of it as a playground for big businesses. But that doesn’t have to be the case—it’s now easier than ever for small businesses to do business abroad, thanks to the possibilities of digital marketing and international logistics.

But if you want your business to truly reach a global audience, you need to speak to them on their terms; English alone isn’t going to cut it. Research shows that 76% of consumers around the world prefer to buy products with information in their own language.

What this means is that any business looking to break into a foreign market needs to consider marketing translation a part of their expansion strategy. If you look at successful businesses with a solid global reach, you’ll find that they make the effort to reach out to customers in their native language in many areas, including product design, advertising, and customer service.

It might seem like a daunting task, especially for a small business that may not have the same resources as a larger enterprise. But the same advice I would share with a large company looking to develop a marketing translation strategy applies to businesses of any size.

6 marketing translation tips for small businesses

1. Do your homework

First things first—you need to actually have a plan in place for your translation project. You can’t just hand over your materials to a translator and hope for the best; you need to know the market for every language you want to target. This entails doing some research first:

• On which platforms are customers in this market most likely to engage with your business?
• Do you have the logistical means to deliver your business in a cost-efficient manner?
• What are the legal challenges and regulations you need to comply with?
• How much time and resources are you able to give to expand your business to a global market?

Researching the answers to questions like these will not only help with your general expansion strategy, but also help you figure out what parts of your translation strategy to prioritize.

2. Keep your priorities in order

The first consideration is, of course, language. Since cost multiplies with the number of languages you plan to target, be sure that you have the resources to complete a translation project in one language before you commit to another.

After language, you need to think about what needs to be translated. Consider what items are most important for driving customer engagement.

For businesses with an online presence, the company website is often the first item on the agenda for translation. The website is the definitive source for information about a company and, quite likely, the first place a customer will engage with a company.

For marketing materials, think about which platforms will be the most effective for the audience. Some audiences may respond better to print ads, and others to social media.

An effective translation strategy takes into account where translated words will have the most impact, which ties back to our first tip—if you’ve done your homework, then you should have a pretty good idea how to prioritize your translation strategy.

3. Leave no room for errors

We could also say to always aim for quality, but I think this bears stricter emphasis: a bad translation is worse than no translation at all. Poorly translated materials are confusing to potential customers and turns them off from buying. Not only that, they will leave a negative impression of your brand, making them even less likely to buy than if you hadn’t translated in the first place.

A bad marketing translation will at best seem like nonsense, and at worst be offensive. You don’t want to end up with a PR disaster because of poor translation. A good translation, on the other hand, is sensitive to cultural nuances. It will sound more natural to people who speak the language, and show that your business values providing quality to customers.

More articles from AllBusiness.com:

• How to Maintain Your Brand Voice When Globalizing Your Business
• Do Consumers Really Care About Small Business?
• 3 Biggest International E-Commerce Challenges and How to Overcome Them
• The Most Important Rule Your Business Must Follow When Going Global
• 10 Questions to Ask Before Expanding Your Business Internationally

4. Set a reasonable time frame

When speaking of quality, the time it takes to translate should naturally follow (after all, you can’t rush perfection). Many companies make the mistake of leaving translation work for the end of the project. This results in rushed output, and quality can suffer because of this. And if quality isn't a problem, then there's the cost—hiring multiple translators to finish a job with an overly tight deadline is expensive. High cost is easily avoidable, which is why it’s important to have translation be part of your strategy early in the process.

A professional translator can average 2,000 words a day, but this does vary, depending on the nature of the items to be translated. Marketing copy, for example, requires more creative thinking and, therefore, time than general documents.

If you’re not sure how long a translation project will take, most translation services will offer a time frame as part of their quote. You should also schedule time for a review process so that you can look over the output and follow up on revisions, if necessary.

5. Hire a reputable translation service provider

Translating is hard work. Being a translator requires having a strong grasp of a language and the way people speak in real life. In addition to this, it can require having specialized knowledge in order to translate in a way that is best suited for a specific field, such as advertising. Many translation services maintain a broad roster of professional translators to meet the needs of their clients.

Hiring a translation service means that there is less for you to do in terms of workload for the translation project. All the significant work will be done by the translation service provider, so then all you need to worry about is reviewing the content and publishing it on the appropriate platforms.

When it comes to marketing, translation could end up becoming a long-term project, so it helps to develop a good relationship with your translation service provider. This makes it even more important to choose a company that has a reputation for providing quality and good turnaround time.

6. Treat translation as an investment

It's important to have the mindset that marketing translation is an investment. It requires thoughtful planning from start to finish, and should be seen as something with the potential to bring new opportunities and profits to your business.

RELATED: 4 Questions to Ask Before Expanding a Business Internationally in Today’s Borderless Work World