Expanding to and operating in multilingual markets has become the norm as technological advances keep breaking geographical boundaries. But it takes more than a solid marketing strategy to break into and capture audiences’ attention in foreign markets and across different languages.

In most cases, brands must do thorough research to understand the market and their new target audience, develop a strategic multilingual marketing approach, and localize their multilingual websites to establish their presence and credibility in the new market successfully.

This post explores the best practices for safely and intuitively expanding your brand into a new market. By unpacking considerations such as customer profiling, sales in a new market, and customization for the international market, we’ll guide you through the fundamentals of global brand expansion.

Comparing Local Markets to International Markets

Many brands assume that tactics and sales strategies used in their original target markets will effortlessly work in foreign markets. But regional preferences, local regulations, and cultural expectations vary from one market to another, often tremendously.

However, with a thorough investigation, you can empower your brand’s position in the new market, maintain brand identity, and launch a successful multilingual website and digital marketing campaign. 

Brand expansion doesn’t happen overnight and certainly doesn’t happen with simple translations of marketing campaigns and slogans. But it also doesn’t happen by chance.

Establishing a solid brand presence requires building rapport with consumers and authentically connecting with them. Brands must bridge the connection between their products and services and how consumers feel about their offerings.

It is, therefore, essential to base your multilingual marketing strategy on verified, accurate, and current market research data.

Aligning Sales and Marketing with Your Website Translation Efforts

The ROI on brand expansion will naturally be higher when all teams coordinate. For instance, when a marketing department builds a solid foundation that empowers the sales team to convert potential leads into customers. To ensure they’re building effective strategies, marketing teams must study the market to determine the following aspects:

Customer Profiles

Brands must identify Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs) for every market. This places the focus on local customer behavior and specific needs.

Marketing Collateral

Market research data should be used to strategize ads, tall tracks, and other elements surrounding your multilingual website that the sales team can use to drive conversions.

Competitive Studies

Are there ways in which your brand can stand out from the crowd? If you have similar competitors in the new market than you have in your local market, you’ll need to adapt your strategies to counter the opposition in the new market as well.

Product Analysis

How do your current offerings relate to the new market? Are there ways to improve on perceived weaknesses and create new hooks to capture the attention of the target audience?

Expansion Feasibility

What kind of investment is required to establish your brand in the potential market? How much time will you spend complying with local laws and regulations? What will investment costs be regarding tax compliance, payroll functions, and banking?

Researching Customer Behavior and Localizing Your Brand

Whether they’re B2B or B2C, modern customers prefer supporting brands that understand their unique needs and preferences. This means that organizations that expand abroad and grow their customer base must localize their brand messaging and offerings to cater to local nuances.

Know Your Customer. This three-word mantra sounds simple but is key to engaging multilingual markets. According to The Ultimate Localization Guide, getting it right requires an intuitive strategy built around accurate data.

Every local market has preferences brands should leverage to develop effective campaigns and messaging. To help you understand these nuances, you’ll need to research key areas, some of which include:

Local Practices and Customs Across Multiple Languages

How does your new audience prefer to communicate? Do they speak multiple languages in the new market? What values and beliefs do they hold? Are there any topics in the target language and culture that they consider offensive or particularly appealing?

Regional Differences

The traits and nuances in markets can vary by regionality as well, not just by country. Although it is considered that the African continent’s consumers prefer a more mobile-first marketing approach, it’s not true across the board as some regions aren’t as exposed to this marketing method.

Local Laws and Requirements

You’ll need to be GDPR compliant if you do business in Europe. But if you’re targeting a Canadian market, on the other hand, you must be compliant with French-language marketing regulations.

The Customer Journey in the Target Market

You might notice that some regions connect with your brand similarly across various markets, but in others, it might be entirely unique. To fine-tune the customer journey for every market, you need to determine if your product or service solves the same need across all your target markets. Or do you aim to solve unique problems for every market you target? What unique problems do your potential customers need, and what technologies do they use to search for solutions online? Do they use social media channels to solve their problems, and if so, which platforms do they prefer?

Search Engine Optimization for Your Multilingual Website

SEO is an incredibly complicated process, and adding a bunch of languages to the mix makes it even trickier. Your search engine optimization efforts should be adapted for every new market as it is the key to successful multilingual marketing efforts. To get it right from the start, you’ll need to do in-depth keyword research to determine the right target keywords for the market. 

Final Thoughts

When you gain an understanding of the market differentiators, you can make effective decisions surrounding a multilingual content marketing strategy. Growing your brand through international expansion is no small feat, but the potential ROI means that it can be a valuable investment in your brand’s future.

To help you avoid mistakes and perfect your multilingual content marketing strategy right from the start, it’s essential to start small and target single locations at a time. Due diligence goes a long way, but so does trying out new trends to stay on top of your game and position your organization as an authoritative brand in the new market.

When operating in multilingual markets, it’s advisable to expect the unexpected. Expanding into foreign territories is thrilling, but it can be one of your brand’s best moves!