Digital Marketing Across Borders: How to Reach a Multilingual Audience

Former Chancellor of West Germany Willy Brandt once said, “If I am selling to you, I speak your language. If I am buying, dann müssen Sie Deutsch sprechen.” Most businesses understand the importance of speaking their clients’ language, including the role of language services to the success of their cross-border digital marketing efforts. To maximize the impact and efficiency of multilingual marketing campaigns, businesses should incorporate the needs of international audiences from the start, remember that human interpretation can trump technology, and keep multicultural digital marketing consistent using brand and style guides.

Common mistakes to avoid include copying campaigns from one region to another, marketing to regions without proper support capacity, and forgetting about multilingual SEO. Technology can be used to maximize efficiency and reduce the chances of human error. When localization is done right, the payoff is tremendous.

Additional resources on multilingual and multinational marketing include “Four Steps for a Successful Multilingual Marketing Campaign,” “Most Global Marketers Lack Multilingual Content Strategy,” and “International Marketing: Three Steps to Muy Bueno.”