Trading internationally: Translating your marketing content
Five Star Languages
What does it take?
With our world getting smaller 58% of small businesses already have international customers and according to a 2014 British Chambers of Commerce survey, 43% of small businesses have ambitions to grow internationally.
No doubt four years on more businesses will be planning to take their products and services abroad to tap into a new market place.
With over 35 years of working with businesses we have a good idea of what it takes to get your message out to international markets.
We know global knowledge is power and as Damon Richards, an expert in customer care, clearly shared, “…Your customer doesn’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”
Accurate, localised translation takes care of this.
The 1st Steps Before your company can embark on gaining access into the international market place you will of course have completed your market research.
1) Is there a target market in the country you are looking to go into,
2) What statistics do you have to understand an ROI,
3) Competitor market – what differentiator will your company be adding;
4) Understanding of the local licensing laws As a company you need to be prepared with a full understanding of your UK product aboard.
Once armed with all of the above answers, you are ready to move on to the next stage of globalising your company! Maintaining your Reputation
We all understand the importance of protecting a good reputation in business.
Back in the 1980’s Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) learned the hard way when they attempted to enter the Chinese market with their stateside popular ‘Finger Lickin’ Good’ slogan.
It had an entirely different connotation in Mandarin and actually translated as ‘Eat your fingers off’.
Maybe back in the 1980’s we were more lenient towards messages getting lost in translation. But today, we’re living in very different times – consumers expect companies to be more conversant, knowledgeable and generally more, well, globally minded.
This could have been catastrophic for KFC - ruined reputation and branding before they had even started, their offensive tag line could have caused a huge loss on their global investment.
As it happened, they managed to get away with it.
Want to take that risk? A translation company worth their salt will work together, working with marketing experts to globalise and localise business marketing content, taking away any cultural barriers or issues there may be.
They will ensure your company will be able to deliver in the desired market, presenting a professional and locally accurate website that speaks your customers’ local language.
At Five Star we love to innovate and are always looking at new ways to help the businesses we work with go global.
We have developed a short survey (2 minutes) that will help you get clearer on your business globalisation plans here. Thanks for completing, we appreciate your feedback.