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Jan 8, 2025
When you launch a content marketing strategy, it makes sense to start in the primary language of your target audience. Multilingual content marketing has the same scope, but it serves diverse audiences across new markets.
As your business grows, so should your brand visibility. One way to achieve this is by creating marketing materials that serve new target markets. Larger brands with an international presence do this all the time. Just think of your favorite SaaS or eCommerce businesses – they always use country-specific marketing materials, right?
When you create content in multiple languages, there are many aspects to consider. The right content collaboration tools or accounting for your audience’s cultural nuances are all at play. So, let’s explore all of that and more as we go through how multilingual content marketing works.
A multilingual content marketing strategy serves various purposes. It helps you increase brand visibility and allows you to connect with your target audiences on a deeper level in their own language. It’s also a core marketing move. Here’s why.
Let’s say you’re trying to sell a pen (this is not a Wolf of Wall Street joke) to ten people, but not all of them speak your language. You can try to explain how great that pen is in the most beautiful words, but if they don’t understand what you’re saying, it’s all in vain.
Once you start speaking in someone’s native language, your POV becomes clearer and more relatable to them. By creating multilingual content across numerous target languages and markets, you can grow your brand organically and form a genuine connection with each culture.
Consumers respond much more positively to a multilingual marketing strategy. In fact, in a CSA survey, 76% of customers stated that they opt for a product with information in their own language. But it’s not just about your marketing messages.
We all appreciate personalized user experiences these days. There’s room for this to happen across the entire buyer journey, including the research phase, on the website or on social media, and when reaching out for customer support services.
Using a target market’s native language will always resonate better with the audience you’re trying to reach.
There’s something special about a brand meeting you in your lane and reducing the friction in communication. Doing so helps users connect to a brand’s marketing content and messages, thus building credibility.
All large eCommerce providers and online-first businesses (think of your favorite brands, like shops, apps, restaurants, etc.) tailor their marketing efforts to meet potential customers’ language and cultural preferences.
However, that can only happen if branding and messaging remain consistent across all channels. For example, you don’t want to see one type of content in the social media posts of their main channel and then something completely off on the country-level profiles.
I spoke with Veruska Anconitano, an International Expansion Specialist at I Am Veru, about how she ensures brand consistency within a multilingual content strategy:
To ensure the brand’s tone of voice stays consistent in a multilingual approach to content marketing, I recommend establishing comprehensive brand guidelines that must be followed in every language. These guidelines include, for example, an approved glossary to maintain consistent terminology with the appropriate localized versions for each language/country. It also includes consistent core messages that reflect the brand’s values and vision across all languages and clear descriptions and examples to illustrate the brand’s tone and style.
Adapting to a multilingual strategy doesn’t mean going rogue. It’s about optimizing content to match the main brand across different regions and languages.
A strong multilingual content marketing strategy can boost your search engine optimization efforts by growing visibility in multiple regions. When you create content in different languages, you grow your ranking for relevant keywords that local audiences actively search for in their native language.
Instead of competing only in the highly saturated English-language searches, your brand can stand out in international markets by tapping into niche queries that often go unnoticed.
To boost SEO with your content marketing efforts, optimize content with localized keywords, meta tags, and descriptions tailored to the target market. That’s how you’ll drive organic traffic from international users and also improve your authority in global markets.
When you engage potential customers in their native language, you build trust and reduce friction in their buyer’s journey. People are more likely to convert when the information is in their primary language and addresses their specific needs and cultural context. So, here’s how to remove language barriers from the user experience:
Creating a solid content marketing strategy in your native tongue is one thing, but going after a global audience with country-specific and culturally sensitive content requires planning an in-depth multilingual strategy.
Let’s get into what it takes to create a successful multilingual content strategy.
Wanting to achieve global-scale business growth is great, but for that, you need to map out some clear objectives and milestones along the way. You can’t just start posting content in a new target language and collaborating with local influencers, hoping you’ll replicate that across multiple countries successfully.
It would be best if you approached this strategically. Start with a clear market need and your audience’s pain points.
As Veruska affirms:
It depends on market penetration and opportunities. If my website is frequently visited by people from a specific country who lack content in their language, it indicates a need to focus in that direction as long as I can provide the necessary resources.
Then, think of what you want to achieve. Is it brand awareness? Building a genuine community in a new country? Ranking better in search engines in a local language? Or maybe tapping into a new market to see if it has potential?
Defining these objectives is crucial because they serve as a guide for what you want to measure.
For example:
Before you create multilingual website content, you need a thorough understanding of who you’re targeting in each market. Start by conducting market research to determine key factors like:
You can use tools like Google Analytics, social media insights, and local market reports to gather data on how these audiences engage with content and which platforms they use most.
Competitive analysis is equally important. Take a close look at what your competitors are doing in those markets, especially those already operating in multiple languages.
Use tools like Semrush or Ahrefs to analyze competitor keywords and their SEO strategies in different languages. Pay attention to gaps in their approach, such as cultural nuances they might be overlooking or content types that don’t perform well locally.
Localization goes beyond direct translation. When it’s time to create localized content, you need to think of the best way to adapt messaging, images, tone, and even humor to resonate with a local audience.
This level of detail comes with mapping your content workflow, where you decide on resource allocation for content creation, strategizing, disseminating, editing, proofreading, etc.
When I asked Veruska about her approach, she explained:
Sometimes, the best approach is to create new content tailored to a market’s needs. In other cases, translating and localizing existing content is the right solution, especially for the same language in different countries.
That’s because not all types of content require the same level of adaptation. For example:
AI-powered translation tools can be useful for quick drafts to make the translation and localization process more efficient. However, you must double-check and proofread the output, as these tools can sometimes miss context or produce unnatural phrasing.
Collaborating closely with native speakers to translate or create your content in new languages is key. The creative input and feedback you receive from them as you propose ideas, write drafts, and build campaigns can make or break the success of your multilingual content strategy.
Collaboration on a blog post in Planable
When creating multilingual content, having a solid review and approval process in place is crucial. With multiple languages at play, it’s tough to stay consistent with your brand’s voice and tone while still delivering value. More than just translating words, getting the message right is key.
An effective process should involve multiple steps:
To do all this, it’s important to involve the right people. Ideally, you’ll have native or fluent target language speakers writing and reviewing your communications.
Veruska highlighted the importance of getting this part of the process right:
My process involves having an editor create the content, and a reviewer check it. Both must be native speakers or deeply proficient in the language.
Multi-level approval workflow in Planable
You need a properly planned SEO workflow to avoid issues like duplicate content or Google getting your content hierarchy wrong. Naturally, it all starts with conducting keyword research specifically targeted at other languages with the help of SEO specialists.
Simply translating keywords from one language to another won’t cut it, as search terms vary based on local nuances and cultural preferences.
When structuring your URLs, they’ll use subdirectories or subdomains for different languages to keep things organized and make it easy for search engines to crawl. For example, a URL like “yourwebsite.com/en/” for English content and “yourwebsite.com/fr/” for French content helps Google and other search engines index your multilingual pages properly.
One more thing to remember is to implement hreflang tags in your HTML code to signal to search engines which language version of the content is intended for each audience. This avoids duplicate content issues and improves visibility in search engine results.
Once you’ve laid out your multilingual content marketing strategy, it’s time to share it on the relevant channels for each target market. These can include social media channels, your website, ad campaigns, etc.
As the saying goes, “You can’t improve what you don’t measure.” So, track metrics like:
Additionally, keep a close eye on SEO performance in different regions. Look at how your content ranks for relevant keywords in each target language and what you can do to improve it.
If one market isn’t responding as expected, tweak your strategy, revisit your keyword research, or adjust your content to better fit the cultural context.
Not all multilingual content marketing strategies work right away. There’s no one-size-fits-all formula, so tweaking, optimizing, and going back on initial directions isn’t a sign of poor strategizing but of great adjusting skills.
A multilingual content marketing strategy is only as successful as the accuracy of your research, the feedback of your stakeholders, and the smoothness of your workflow.
But for that to come together, you need to execute well. This begins with picking the right content managing system, translation tool, collaboration tool, disseminating channels, and more. So, let’s explore the must-have tools for any successful multilingual content marketing strategy.
Your CMS should handle multiple languages without a hitch while keeping a global website structure intact. Look for systems like WordPress, which offer language support, flexible API integrations, and easy localized content management.
Choose a CMS that allows easy switching between languages so that you can upload, manage, edit, and distribute your multilingual content marketing assets with ease.
For translations, ditch the idea of relying solely on Google Translate. Instead, opt for a Translation Management System (TMS) like Smartling or Memsource. A TMS gives you more control over quality, allows collaboration between translators, and helps your brand message remain consistent. It’s particularly valuable for scaling, as it helps manage large volumes of content across multiple languages efficiently.
Planable’s features like scheduling, approval and collaboration
When it comes to social media scheduling, tools like Planable stand out thanks to features that can easily make a multilingual content strategy successful. More than social media scheduling on all major socials, it lets you collaborate with your stakeholders to approve, edit, and plan content from one unified platform.
Content calendar view in Planable
You can also tag team members, collect feedback directly next to the post, and get approvals in one click, keeping everyone on the same page and preventing miscommunication. No content goes live in new markets without everyone’s approval.
With Google Analytics, you can see how much traffic comes from each country, how long visitors stay on your pages, and whether they engage with your content.
On the SEO side, Semrush helps you uncover which keywords work in various local languages. This way, you can optimize content with relevant keywords for each target market. Plus, tools like Semrush help manage your hreflang tags (which prompt search engines to use the right language version of your pages).
My tip is to regularly check your SEO workflow to make sure your content is hitting the right notes, from search rankings to engagement, in each market.
Multilingual content marketing opens the door to reaching new audiences and building a global presence. But the key to making it happen is getting the content right for your global audiences. As Seth Godin says, “People do not buy goods and services. They buy relations, stories, and magic.”
To create that magic, your content must speak to your diverse audience in their own language. The most important part is never losing sight of cultural relevance and a clear strategy.
For that, you need the right tools. Content management systems, collaboration tools, and technologies that simplify the translation process – they all help you communicate the way any brand should: clearly, contextually, and in a relevant manner.
Maria is a content marketer, SEO copywriter, and social media specialist with experience working for a wide range of B2B businesses. She loves to keep up with the evolution of digital marketing, particularly in areas such as social media management, content, SEO, and PR. She is passionate about her work and loves to add a unique spin to any topic.
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