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(I will never rent, trade, or sell your information) * = required fieldThe very nature of the internet is world-wide, and multi-lingualism is becoming more common in most countries. Does it make sense for your business to become multi-lingual?
There a several factors to consider when looking into operating multi-lingually. The first consideration is whether what you are selling can be delivered mult-lingually. If you are offering individual consulting or coaching, and only know one language, delivering your service in another language would be quite a challenge and would require that you become personally fluent in any languages you plan to deliver your services in. If you are primarily selling information products, such as books or audios, a good translation service would make it easy to offer your products multi-lingually. And if you are selling products for which language is inconsequential, such as artwork or physical products, your products would generally be able to be offered without much alteration (other than multi-lingual packaging, perhaps).
Once you know how difficult it would be to offer your specific products/services to a multi-lingual market, the next question is one of whether the potential language market you are considering makes sense from a business perspective. Do some market research to determine if there is enough of a market of potential customers who would only deal with your business if its products or services were offered in their own language. If there is a large market opportunity, next consider the actual costs of entering that secondary language market. The costs you need to consider include:
If you yourself are multi-lingual and just want to open your services to be delivered in the different languages you speak, some of these issues will be less important than others. The important thing is to be aware of all the time and money that will be required to open and run your secondary-language division and weigh it against the potential revenue from that new market.
Once you do decide to do business multi-lingually, you need to set up a translated version of your website for that market. You can get different domain names for each language, especially if your domain name contains words descriptive of your business. If you are using a company name for your domain, you might just set up subdomains for each language.
Make sure that links to the different language versions of your site are available on all the pages of all your sites, since you don't know where someone will enter your website, or which language they would prefer to read.
At first you will want to set up a similar structure for your secondary-language website as your primary website, with standard information translated (such as your About/Bio page, products & services, etc). Make sure the "Contact" or "Support" page gives email addresses and phone numbers to the correct customer support resource, so that a message sent in one language is not received by someone who cannot understand it or respond appropriately.
Keep in mind that though at first your secondary-language business might be a mirror of your primary language business, over time they will likely evolve in different directions. You should be prepared to follow opportunities specific to each language market as appropriate and update your online marketing materials accordingly.
Doing business in more than one language might seem natural or impossible to you. If there is a good market, you can be successful, provided you plan carefully and make your online marketing accessible via translation and culture-specific messages. If you need help setting up your online marketing for success in any market, please contact me for a complimentary strategy session today.
