February 24, 2015
In
Content marketing has become an important part of the marketing mix. It’s evolved so much in the past 5 years to the point where over 70% of marketers have implemented it in their marketing strategy. Creating quality content that people love is what makes this side of marketing so important. Attracting a target audience is the first step, with an ultimate goal of converting them into paying customers. Also, content marketing does work well for B2B and for B2C because it affects people and any company of any industry can engage their target audience in various ways. Marketing internationally can be very different to marketing in your home country. Reaching non-English speaking audiences is a challenge. Be sure to read our tips on developing multilingual content marketing strategy that works! 
Knowing your target audience
Understanding what your audience’s interests are, what motivates them and what engages them is very crucial to the success of your multilingual content marketing strategy. When developing the strategy you need to understand their goals, challenges and how your content can help them with these. This can easily be different from country to country depending on your industry. A survey by Common Sense Advisory found that over 55% of the respondents from non-Anglophone countries are more likely to purchase products or services in their own language.
The Multilingual Customer Journey
Moving into a new market will often begin with a translated and localised website. This will often be the very first opportunity to connect with your audience. Having your website in the target language is a must. The content on the website should be localised according to the target country, images, copy, and corporate videos should all feel “normal” to your foreign audience. As soon your potential clients feel like the translation isn’t right, or the visual content is offensive, your company will leave them with a negative impression. A good example of a successfully localised visual content marketing campaign is one by Coca-Cola.
When researching what’s the best content to invest in, take under consideration your existing audience. It’s likely that the foreign audience may have the same interests and motivations. Measure and analyse success by looking at social media reports, what’s been shared the most and what’s engaged the most people. Also, tap into your website analytics. That’s something which can give you invaluable data about what works best for your industry. Integrating multiple channels with your multilingual content marketing strategy is the next step of the multilingual customer journey. Social media, email marketing and organic search goes hand in hand with content marketing. The dedicated in-country team who will manage your online presence is best done by local experts. They will not only know the terminology but also the culture. Multilingual social media is what will probably drive the most engagement depending on your content. 
Facebook is of course the largest social network in the world with over a 2 billion monthly active users. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the biggest in every country. For example, Russia’s VK.com is more popular than Facebook and in China QZONE dominates the market. It is essential to know where your audience spends time online and how you can interact with them, especially when there might be cultural differences. All your multilingual content has to be distributed across all relevant channels, your localised website (e.g. blogs, eBooks, infographics, and video), in-country social media platforms (e.g. sharing and promoting), and e-mail marketing. Content marketing in multiple languages can create a lot of different challenges. Staying true to your brand, industry and audience is what will ensure international success.
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