How to Expand Your Brand Globally With Marketing Translations

How Expert Marketing Translation Services Help Brands Expand Globally

In the world of global business, marketing and advertising aren’t just important – they influence how your brand is perceived internationally and whether potential customers choose your brand over your competitors’.

Marketing Translations for Global Brands

Marketing content is often directly linked to your brand, its name, persona, and product quality. Many of these are structured around the tagline of your company. They provide an insight into the business while safeguarding its reputation. At times, they are also used to communicate a brand’s unique selling proposition.

When expanding your company across borders, language is undoubtedly one of the key challenges you will face. This is why many businesses, both SMEs and large corporations, work closely with professional translation agencies to translate their documents and content and to ensure complete linguistic accuracy and cultural relevance in the new target market.

A big part of the translation company’s job is to carefully localise your marketing content, which can ultimately lead towards the brand’s success.

When entering a new country with your products or services, it’s also essential to ensure that your brand name, trademark, brand message, ad copy, product descriptions and all other advertising content resonate with your target audience.

Consequently, specialised marketing translations play a key role in establishing a customer-focused brand identity in the new target markets.

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Marketing Translation Services and Business Success

The key reason to opt for professional marketing translation services is to connect with the target audience. When the target audience understands your brand message, there are higher chances of them becoming your customers.

Today, our experts take a closer look at the direct benefits of working with a specialist marketing translation agency.

Connect with Your Target Audience

Marketing campaigns are created to improve the relationship with the existing customers or your target audience. On the one hand, they target existing customers, and on the other hand, they help bring in new clients to expand your customer base.

According to a survey, 76% of people prefer buying products and services that are sold in their local language. According to another report, 72.1% of consumers spend more time on websites designed in the language they are fluent in.

So, translating and optimising your website content in the language of your target consumers improves your reach and visibility in that market.

Increase in ROI

The Return on Investment, or ROI, is one of the top indicators of business success. There are several examples of how localisation services led to improved ROI, with Ahrefs being a prime example. Ahrefs, a leading SEO software company, saw a 65% increase in traffic after translating its app and website, leading to improved sales and better ROI.

Another success story is that of the brand Burberry in China. Since a large portion of the Chinese population does not speak English, it is often one of the biggest hurdles for new companies entering the country. They must work extra hard to adapt their brand voice to the local language and culture.

Burberry, however, today runs over 57 stores in China. How did they achieve that? Simply by localising their business.

Access to Local Talent

Hiring a local workforce has several advantages for a business. For starters, people view your brand positively as you become the provider of job opportunities for the natives.

That leads to customer and investor trust. So, along with employees, you are more likely to find people willing to invest and support your business.

Additionally, companies save a significant amount of money by hiring local workers. That’s because they won’t have to spend on expat work visas and other related expenses.

Another benefit is that native workers are familiar with the culture inside and out. They can easily communicate with and connect to your target audience. They speak their language, understand the culture, resemble them, and are familiar with all the nuances. All of these work in favour of your company, leading to higher sales and profitability.

Here, translation agencies play a significant role in helping to build a positive brand image for your company, which in turn encourages locals to apply for jobs.

Trademark Translations

One thing to keep in mind is that your company’s registered trademark may not be recognised globally. In fact, there is no existing system to maintain a global trademark.

You need to file applications in all the countries where you are expanding. We do have the Madrid system, which can simplify the application process, but you have to make the adjustments to the trademark for local authority approvals. Trademark translation service providers are the go-to in this case.

They are familiar with the local market, as well as the SEO-specific language and regulations of each country. Hence, they can make your job easy.

Transliteration

Transliteration means changing the alphabet in a word from one language to another. Since some countries do not officially authorise you to register the English name, they must use local characters in their trademark.

Even if there are no such legal obligations, using the local alphabet instead of the standard English alphabet on the packaging has a positive impact on the customers. Many brands have transliterated their trademarks as they expanded their business. For example, Coca-Cola is pronounced as Кока-Кола (Koka-Kola) in Russia.

Translation

While transliteration may be effective in certain countries at times, we are often limited by cultural nuances or literal meanings. Simple one-letter or word translations can come off as offensive or confusing. For instance, when Coca-Cola entered China, they realised that ‘Coca-Cola’ literally translates to “bite the wax tadpole” in Chinese.

So Coca-Cola was given a new name: 可口可乐 (reads ke-kou-ke-le), which literally means ‘tasty fun’.

Incorporation of Cultural Elements

People are generally inclined to buy products or services from brands that understand their language and appreciate their cultural nuances. If you want to appeal to an international audience, you must ensure that you respect the cultural aesthetics in your trademark and marketing campaigns.

This is similar to what Google does, as it regularly uses doodles and themes for its logo to celebrate local festivals around the world.

Adjusting Cultural Nuances

Apart from the language, at times, the visual elements of a logo may also seem offensive or confusing in the country you are entering. So, you need to adjust your logo, brand image, and content as well. This involves adapting to cultural nuances, which is another job that falls under the trademark translation service.

How Marketing Translation Services Protect Your Brand’s Identity

Your trademark is your brand identity. Your company has a legal right to use its specific trademark, and no other brand or company is allowed to use it.

The trademark is also an essential part of your marketing campaign. This is because the target audience associates it with your product, brand image and quality. Hence, it becomes a significant part of customer trust and loyalty.

This is where professional translation services can be of great help. Translation service providers can modify the trademark to ensure it remains in line with local policies, while protecting your product and global brand image.

Finally…

The language industry is expected to reach £73.6 billion by the end of 2025. It’s not surprising, since we’ve just seen that brands which have overcome the language barrier have indeed attained success.

As businesses continue to expand beyond their borders, demand for professional translation services continues to increase, and trademark translation services remain an integral part of this growth.

If you are considering crossing borders, don’t just wing it; ensure accurate translation by hiring a trusted top translation agency.

About TS24

Translation Services 24 (TS24) is a professional translation agency offering expert services in over 200 languages. We work with clients in all corporate and public industries and specialise in sector-specific linguistic solutions. With over a decade of experience in the industry, 15+ million words converted every year and 100,000+ projects completed, TS24 is a leading provider of expert translations and interpretation services and an officially certified member of the ATC. Contact TS24 here. You can also read all of our recent articles here.

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