Global Reach: Marketing in countries where the native language is used more than English

International advertising frequently uses foreign languages to attract native customers. Language has always played an important role in business administration and customer satisfaction in every kind of business. A business aims to achieve customer satisfaction from interactions with an organisation in both verbal and non-verbal communication.

As globalisation has taken over rapidly, businesses are now expanding into foreign landscapes. They are incorporating and integrating international markets into their business.

Foreign expansion, creates a requirement for multilingualism to ensure that there is accurate and flawless communication between the client and the business.

Though English is quite a popular language in non-English-speaking countries, other languages are also frequently used, mostly in advertisements. By this, the product advertised is congruent with the language or the country in which the language is spoken.

Example:

Let us take an advertisement for perfume that uses French as a foreign language as an example. This is an advertisement with a congruent relationship between the product and the people using a foreign language. But, if the same advertisement is used Russian as a foreign language, the relationship between the foreign language and the product becomes incongruent because Russia is not typically associated with perfume.

Other than product congruency, using your native language to promote your business yields other benefits too. If you presume that your customers speak your language well enough and you go ahead and skip the translation step, you’re wrong. In fact, there is an indubitably strong link between in-language content and a consumer’s willingness to make a purchase.

Survey results:

According to the Common Sense Advisory survey, conducted on over 2,430 web consumers around eight countries to find more about how language might affect their purchasing behaviours. It was found that:

72.1% of consumers spend most or all of their time on websites in their own language.
72.4% of consumers said they would be more likely to buy a product if it had information in their own language.
56.2% of consumers said that the ability to gather information about a product in their own language is more important than its price.

This means that more than half the consumers are willing to pay more if you are willing to provide information to them in their own languages.

Do you think you can get by with English in Europe?

How to do marketing in Europe?

Well, if you are simply visiting Europe, you can get by with English. However, things might get a bit complicated in a few countries around Europe if you are seeking to create brand awareness and find potential customers.

A study from the European Commission in the year 2011 verified the Common Sense Advisory’s findings. The study was based on Gallup’s language survey preferences among internet users in 23 countries in the European Union and revealed some significantly similar findings:

Nine out of 10 Internet users admitted that, whenever given a choice of languages, they always preferred to visit a website in their own language.
Nearly one in every five Europeans (19%) said they would never browse in a language other than their own.
42% admitted that they never purchased products and services in other languages.

According to a study many Europeans are multilingual, they still have a strong preference towards buying products or services in their native languages.

Though translation isn’t the only thing that companies must do to reach a global customer base, it certainly is one of the fastest, easiest, and most frequently overlooked factors.

How is it in France?

In countries like France, a number of factors determine a specific approach towards a linguistic and cultural phenomenon while adapting a global advertising campaign for local audiences. Along with the seamless blending of translated content and the multimodal language mixing that appears in advertising for these markets, one might notice that the degree of French-English mixing, types of bilingual creativity, and glossing techniques differ noticeably across markets, media and product categories. Newer technologies and the social media craze have also had a profound impact on the assimilation of English borrowings.

Senator Paul Simon wrote in his 1987 book, ‘The Tongue-Tied American: Confronting the Foreign Language Crisis. ” About how monolingualism, or knowing and understanding one language, which in this instance is English, has taken away 2,00,000 job opportunities from Americans. The book talks elaborately about the time before the fall of communism, the rise of China as an economic power and the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Are you believeing English is being used every corner?

Better not, US itself using multilingual support. That what it is making the USA a global leader in most of the domains.

Believing that people from all corners of the world speak and understand English is a myth nowadays.

English could be the global language used for basic communication. But we cannot ignore the rise of China, Japan, Brazil, and other non-native English-speaking countries. Especially Russia, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Iceland, Singapore and many more. Thus, foreign language skills become a necessity while conveying complex business ideas to clients.

If business deals involve complex discussions, it is possible important details to leak through cracks. To avoid such situations all organisations follow documentation. Translating or localising them is next step in reaching countries where native language is more predominant. While communicating it is first and foremost priority is to not to lose any details. It is only possible with well versed translation vendor.

The services of experienced interpreters can be quite costly. If any international project continues for long time, the task of language conversion could take up a huge stake. Yet all the companies who value their brand are not taking any step back in localising their content.

Multilingual business personnel are much in demand at present as the world shifts to being a global economic power. Though the US is still holding onto its prime position, Japan and China are also rising rapidly in the current economic scenario. Japan’s automobile industry is almost taking over the big three in the US market.

China has become the largest electronic manufacturing country; and the rise of regional economic blocks, MERCOSUR, has become predominant with the union of Spanish and Portuguese speaking countries in Latin America. Here, business communications are preferred in their native languages rather than English.

Marketing Strategies for Language-Based Countries

Knowing your audience is a key component to any kind of effective communication. While running a global business, whether you’re crafting targeted emails or direct mail letters, web banners or blog posts, webcast scripts, or tweets, you need to know who’s on the receiving end. If you cannot connect to your audience, then there are minimal chances of engaging in business with them. As we have learned earlier, more people prefer to avail goods and services in their native languages.

Here are a few things to remember when you are trying to strategize for marketing in language-based countries:

Who do you want to reach?

First step in creating a strategy to create brand awareness in a foreign market, is to define your marketing audience. And in order to properly figure out your consumers, reading about demographic data is a good first stop. Gathering some data on who’s visiting your website and purchasing your products is a good start.

Taking surveys about the new market can help you a lot while trying to connect to markets.

Creating content for the targeted audience in its native language

After surveys, implementing data found while creating content is another crucial step. People like to read & interact in their language, they like to engage with your post or content if it is in their language. It makes them feel more connected to the brand and thus attracts more customers.

Native Language Campaigning

Localizing marketing campaigns, posts, tweets to audience native language will benefit you to connect with a broader mass and make them aware of your business.

Providing all information in simple language in the native language

Connecting to your audience is not the final step. Before customers interested in purchasing your product or hire your services you need to connect with them. Transparency is essential in business. So all information provided to the customer should be in his language. To make them feel comfortable enough to take the time and engage in your business.

As the world’s economy has become more close-knit, the need for connecting to people has become a necessity. To create brand awareness and gather a loyal customer base, you cannot rely just on English as a mode of communication. To do business in foreign markets, you have to figure out a way to connect with your audience. By using their native language as a mode to communicate with audience will help you to enhance your sales.

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