As a startup founder, you know your business needs every advantage to grow. You put in hours of work, implement an aggressive marketing strategy, and woo investors. All of this is done in an effort to ensure success, but have you considered translation services? You should! In fact, you can truly gain some competitive advantage by considering your translation options right now. Keep reading to find out why.
It Boosts Your Global Presence
If you plan to expand into global markets, the best time to think about translation is now. It is much easier to plan for translation and localization as you launch your business and develop content than to retroactively translate web content, product descriptions, blog posts, etc.
It’s The Socially Responsible Thing to Do
Savvy startup founders know that social responsibility should be part of their business plan. Whether it’s implementing these 10 green business ideas for young entrepreneurs or ensuring your c-suite is truly diverse, you want your company to be forward-thinking, ethical, and culturally sensitive.
To that end, it’s also socially responsible to communicate with people in their own language. It’s the right thing to do to publish culturally sensitive content and offer customer support that is helpful to all.
Reduce Support Costs
Keep in mind that translation isn’t just about your web content and product descriptions. Translation service providers will assist you with instruction manuals, online help, product demonstration videos, and online chatbot text. All of these things are references and sources of self-help that customers can access. You can read about the best translation service online to learn more about these offerings.
When you don’t have these materials translated, customers who don’t speak your language are unable to use any sort of self-help option. Instead, they’ll rely on your customer support team to help them.
Improve SEO
Higher search engine rankings, more traffic, and more engagement. Publishing translated versions of your web pages can help with that.
First, search engines can better understand your site and target audience when you offer translated web pages. In addition to this, you receive credit for traffic to both your original and your translated pages. Finally, by translating your pages you are better able to target specific geographic regions. That can lead to improved local search results.
Increase Conversions
It’s been proven that people are more likely to do business if they can interact in their native language. This is true, even when they speak and read English fluently. That undeniable connection between engaging in their language, and increased sales should be motivation enough to translate your website and other content.
Connect With Global Customers
For most startups, it takes more than sales to secure future success. It’s all about building long-term relationships. That’s not something that will happen with customers when you aren’t engaging with them in their native language.
Think of it from the perspective of a non-native speaker. Yes, they may buy your product if they aren’t able to find a company that communicates in their language, and you offer a good deal. However, the moment a competitor does engage with them using translated content, you’ll probably lose their business. It’s just a matter of time. Here are some other things that these customers won’t do:
- Follow your brand on social media
- Read your blog posts
- Share or comment on your social media content
- Leave reviews for your products
- Recommend your company to others
At first, these things may not seem as important as landing a sale. However, customers who engage in these activities are more likely to develop a sense of brand loyalty and seek your company out in the future.
Final Thoughts
If you haven’t considered translation services for your startup, you should. This is an investment that truly can pay off in terms of increasing sales, building customer relationships, and preparing your business to compete on a global scale.
