5 marketing translation tips to help your business excel

Marketing translation is a key tool for any business that wants to get ahead when it comes to selling its goods and services abroad. However, before you rush to translate your existing marketing materials, it’s worth considering these top tips to ensure that you don’t waste time and money on fruitless marketing activities. 

1. Learn your audience

Just because consumers in one country loved your product doesn’t mean that you’ll get the same reception elsewhere in the world. In order to ensure that your goods get the reception they deserve, it’s important to undertake localized market research. This is easier than you think, with market research translation services available to help you connect with local consumers to find out how they feel about your brand. 

2. Know your numbers

A key starting point before you market your services abroad is to understand the correlation between the number of words in your original language and the number that it takes to say the same thing in the target language. You can use the free Tomedes Word Count Ratio Tool to help with this. 

Knowing your approximate word count is essential when selling your products overseas. What if your translated brand and product information no longer fits on the flier you’ve designed? Will your adverts end up with text that’s too tiny to read as you have to cram more words in when using the target language? Consider, for example, that 150 words of English equates to around 247 words of Chinese (simplified). If you design your Chinese marketing materials to fit the same amount of copy as your English ones, you’ll very quickly run into problems. 

3. Buy in expertise

You can buy in expertise to assist with this issue. Decent translation companies should be able to assist you not only with the conversion of copy from one language to another, but also with the way that copy is presented. Desktop publishing services can be an invaluable resource in this respect, so be sure to seek out a translation agency that offers this service. 

4. Think local

Above all else, make sure that you think like a local when producing your marketing materials. You need to understand the local mind-set in order to effectively market your product. What motivates your audience? What are their values? Why would they be drawn to your product rather than that of a competitor? 

This is where localization services come into their own. Working with individuals who have detailed knowledge of the country you plan to sell goods in can help to shape your marketing materials to be more effective. Localization can also help you to avoid the embarrassment of making culturally insensitive blunders – and can thus be an essential marketing tool for this reason too! 

5. Listen to feedback

Also key to successful international marketing is listening to the feedback that your marketing campaign generates. Hopefully this will all be positive, with glowing reviews of your goods or services popping up online. However, you won’t know this for certain unless you check – so use professional translation services to your advantage and understand not just what you’re saying to your customers, but also what they’re saying back. 

For further hints and tips on how marketing translation can help your business, contact the Tomedes team today.