Marketing is getting more robust in this digital age and it will only get more competitive as time proceeds. Social media marketing is one the most useful forms of brand endorsement any business, in any vertical, can utilize. But in order to continue to reach consumers in today’s world, cross cultural marketing should be a top priority whether you are a start up or an established company. One of the best ways to market across cultures? Multi-lingual paid social ads.
DEFINE YOUR TARGET MARKET
Often with digital marketing, businesses seem to get tunnel vision when it comes to their target audience. They imagine one type of consumer and may forget about other variations of their “ideal client.” This is where businesses have a huge opportunity for improvement.
Based off data that the Census Bureau released from the American Community Survey (ACS), over 67 million U.S. households speak a language other than English. This means that by not advertising in other languages, your message may be missing potential customers. If you aren’t thinking about members of your English-speaking audience as well as members of your non-English speaking audience—how many potential customers are you missing?
WHAT ADVERTISING ARE YOU USING & HOW ARE YOU UTILIZING IT?
Even though English is the most prominent language in the United States, it’s not as all-encompassing as it was in the past. Today, there are over 300 different languages spoken in America and of those, Spanish is the most popular. In fact, 41 million Americans claim Spanish as their first language.
If you are selling a product online, digging into the demographics and language preferences of your top consumers can be critical. Based on data from the CSA Research Group, out of 3,000 global consumers surveyed, 75 percent prefer to buy products from ads written or spoken in their their native language. The reason is simple, people like brands they can relate to. If you aren’t interacting with your consumers in their preferred language, you may be losing a sale.
HOW TO CREATE A MORE DYNAMIC ONLINE PRESENCE
Social media provides online businesses with an influential tool to interact with customers and increase sales. In order to launch a successful multi-lingual paid marketing campaign, you will have to assess a few things. Once you have narrowed down a specific geographical region and the audience you are trying to target, do your research. Virtually every region in the world has different mindsets, values, and beliefs. In order to boost your sales and appeal to more consumers in a specific area, incorporate the ideals that you uncover in your research into your paid social advertisements (this technique is called localization).
A successful example of this is Khaas Food’s 2017 Facebook ad campaign where they employed a two-phase marketing strategy. Khaas Foods, based in Bangladesh, is an online e-commerce company that offers a variety of organic food options for their consumers. By adopting their own localization methods, they were able to increase their sales by 45 percent, which resulted in a 40 percent increase in new customers as well as a 42 percent increase on return on ad spend.
More and more businesses are realizing the importance of multi-lingual marketing and are seeing great success from their efforts. If you are ready to start a multi-lingual campaign, speak with one of our experts today.
