David Friedland
I’m a big advocate of human translation, and it applies to startups too. Human translation is just that–when a human translator translates, rather than machines. It has greater accuracy and dependability, just like you’d rather trust a math teacher to solve a complex math problem than your calculator.
Language is everywhere. But how does it apply to startups? At Tomedes Translation Agency, we want startup business founders to know that translation can impact startups.
And I’ll do it through the five tips on how human translation builds brand awareness, broader customer acquisition, bigger conversion rates, boosts SEO, and allows beneficial startup growth.
There are mistakes that startups often make–and language is one of them.
If you’ve ever wondered the many ways language can impact your startup, right from the eyes of a professional translation agency, read on to find out.
The Benefits of Translation According to A Translation Agency
Translation, and transcreation for the most part, can bring better brand awareness to a startup just starting out. As a startup company, you really have no borders yet when it comes to expanding internationally. The sky’s the limit, and translation will help cross those borders.
By translating your marketing messages, your blog, and the rest of your content, you can reach a broader audience, and thus build a better brand awareness for your company. Your success will depend much on how your products or services succeed in international markets, thus starting early with translation might be a good idea. Working with a professional translation agency will most probably make the transition to international expansion a lot easier and quicker than doing everything on your own.
But if you’re not ready for international expansion, consider your audience in your home country. Almost each and every startup company starts in their home country, but think about it, are your audiences all speaking English?
The Washington Post reports that in the US alone, 66 million US residents or 26.1% of the population speak a language other than English at home. If your startup wants to start building brand awareness, sometimes you have to branch out to other languages. And the way startup businesses can do that is through translation.
Cultivating Brand Awareness And Multiplying Your Reach
Along with a better brand awareness comes broader customer acquisition. For many startups, customer acquisition may prove a struggle. On one hand, you’ve got tough competition to handle. On the other hand, it’s harder to acquire customers through conventional channels, since the buyer’s journey has also changed through the years.
If you’re an online startup business, you have access to millions of customers–especially as the Internet is becoming indispensable for everyone these days. The more customers you reach by reaching them in your language, the more they’ll tell their friends and colleagues about your startup, using word of mouth marketing.
Startup businesses have started this way in the past–think Apple, for instance, and look at their success now. The more people you reach by reaching them in their native languages, the more communities you’ll reach too–according to Tomedes Translation Agency.
Achieving Better Personalization In Translating Globally
There’s a huge number of internet users who convert due to localized websites. 70% of users prefer to buy products from websites in their native language, according to a CSA Research Survey. According to the same source, 60% almost never buy from English-only sites.
According to experts at Tomedes, a leading professional translation agency globally, one of the biggest trends of 2020 was globalization through localization. Companies with very small budgets in 2020 still provided a customer experience for foreign audiences and markets, refining their product and marketing strategies.
According to this translation agency, “Localizing is all about speaking to the target demographic in their own language not just in a linguistic sense but also culturally and socially.”
Tie all this together and you have a recipe for success in translation for startups: a higher conversion rate for personalized, localized targeting, all done with a small budget through translation.
Integrating International SEO into Your Translated Content
If you don’t know, now you know–Google looks at language. That’s because internationalization and languages are needed to succeed in rankings. That filters into your SEO.
If your startup business is an online business, international websites with multilingual features can boost your SEO. This is beneficial for the internet user, because you’re targeting them in the languages that they themselves speak.
With localized content, internet users will feel you’re speaking right to them, in their countries and regions, and in their languages. An international SEO-optimized domain structure, as well as international SEO meta tags will help you here as well. There are even tools that can help your startup.
The right professional translation agency can help startups to drive traffic and generate leads–if you aren’t using translation in your international websites, how will you create multilingual websites? English-only sites, as said previously, aren’t as successful at conversion. A professional translation agency can boost your SEO, not just translate your documents.
SEO is also a budget-friendly way to optimize your international startup business’ website. As a startup, investing in SEO doesn’t require much except talent and skills at SEO. You would already be doing this for your English website–why not give SEO a boost by making it international SEO? You have nothing to lose.
Building A Customer Base With Translation for Startups
With bigger brand awareness, a broader customer base, a higher conversion rate, startup growth will inevitably occur, if your startup is thinking about translation.
According to another CSA survey of Fortune 500 companies, their initial investment in translation paid off in the long run, gaining increased revenue, new entry into new markets, and gaining an edge in their competition. So externally, your business will grow into a larger one with a higher revenue.
Internally, your business has the potential to grow as well with multilingual employees. To grow your customer base and reach greater revenue, you need to target a broad and multilingual customer base and not just focus on your home market.
One way to do this is to hire multilingual employees to reach out in their home markets. Hiring multilingual employees will give exposure to talent in different countries, and also grow your company. Your brand may even spread through word of mouth marketing, and you can build leads from that.
With an accompanying professional translation agency, you can build your company at home and abroad.
A Professional Translation Agency’s Key Takeaways
Startup businesses reaching global success shouldn’t be difficult–and it doesn’t have to be, with translation behind you. Reaching the 5 advantages can be easy, especially if you have your customer bases’ needs in the forefront. If you communicate with them in their own language, you may eliminate many misunderstandings along the way. As you’ve seen from the insights of translation agency Tomedes, startups can benefit largely from using language and translation.
Bio
Angela Fabunan is in the content department of Tomedes, a translation agency that has had much experience in human translation for startups.
