Is hiring a bilingual writer even worth it?
Perhaps you have never considered the advantages of adapting your marketing content to other languages. But the truth is that the online world doesn’t speak just one language.
For example, did you know that 7 out of 10 users said they’d be more likely to buy from a website written in their own language?
Our team has worked with clients from all over the world, and there is one thing that we see over and over again: companies underrate the importance of adapting content to various languages.
Let me ask you a basic question: if many of your clients live in a country where they are native Spanish speakers, why should they open your company’s website in English?
It just makes no sense!
In this digital era, an increasing proportion of customers use your website and social media channels as the first point of contact with your business. So, here’s what you need to look after:
- Your customer must be able to find you. If your website and blog are in the customer’s native language, they will for sure find you more easily than in a language they don’t speak or understand.
- Your customer needs to feel comfortable reading your content so they stay on your website and social media channels to actually want to learn more about your product or service. You should make the reading process seamless and frictionless by avoiding cultural and language barriers. Moreover, by adopting a multilingual approach, you’re likely to see a decrease in bounce rate, which can positively impact your conversion rate. This improvement often occurs as customers gain confidence from clearly understanding every step of the buying process.
- Your customers will buy more from you if they speak the same language. Hence, you’ll be able to better explain the benefits of why they should choose your company over other competitors and thus achieve higher conversion rates. CSA Research surveyed 8,709 consumers in 29 countries and found that 76% prefer purchasing products with information in their own language.
And let’s not forget about something extremely important: a multi-language content strategy will benefit your business today and in the future.
Some clients wait until they gain a new business in an international country to adapt their content. However, based on our experience, we highly recommend translating your website and social media content BEFORE you engage with your desired audience so you can become client-friendly from the start. In turn, you’ll have an easier time penetrating new markets and will likely get more inbound leads.
Language, check. What about culture?
Bilingual writers understand different cultures well, which makes your content richer and more authentic. Here’s an easy example: We helped a software company that needed to adjust its content for audiences in North and South America.
This company, providing IT outsourcing services from Latin America to the USA and Canada, uses cost-effective strategies to develop software for their clients. They hired us to redesign their entire website in English and Spanish. The goal? To reach two groups at once: IT companies and engineers looking for work.
For the IT companies, they needed a website in English. It had to clearly explain the advantages of outsourcing software development to Latin America, and build trust for companies to outsource their hiring. At the same time, they wanted to attract software engineers from Latin America. So, we translated and adapted the site into Spanish to appeal to these potential employees.
What is more, our client offers many software solutions to clients in North America and other regions of the world. Thus, the site had to maintain the same message across borders, so our client definitely needed multilingual writing services.
What are the benefits of hiring a bilingual content writer?
Working with a writer who is well-versed in multiple languages has many benefits. Here are just five core ones:
- Expanding your client base: While Statista mentions that 58.8% of web content is in English, targeting the remaining 41.2% of non-English speakers can be highly beneficial. Statistics show that 65% of consumers prefer content in their native language and are more likely to purchase, while 40% avoid buying from websites in foreign languages. This highlights the significant potential for business growth by appealing to a wider, global audience.
- Competitive edge and improved SEO: Standing out is crucial during tough recessions and tight budgets. A multilingual website can enhance cross-border e-commerce sales, leveraging content and keywords for effective inbound marketing. This is crucial for SEO, as a company’s online success hinges on ranking high on search engine result pages (SERPs). High SERP rankings lead to increased visibility, influencing sales and profits. To attract foreign customers, it’s essential to translate the website content and optimize it for international SEO. This involves translating 100% of the site, including metadata, and creating language-specific URLs. Proper SEO optimization ensures that search engine bots can easily index your website, improving your ranking.
- Becoming customer-friendly: by offering high-quality content on your website in the native language of your visitors, they will likely feel a sense of gratitude, particularly if this practice is not common among your competitors.
- Cost efficiency: In our digital age, websites are at the core of marketing strategies and can be used as one of the most effective sales tools. As DemandMetric suggests, website content marketing is 62% cheaper than traditional marketing methods and generates three times as many leads. However, a monolingual website can render marketing efforts useless, as prospective clients may choose a competitor that has a bilingual site instead.
- Enhancing brand image: A multilingual website signals a global business presence, suggesting complexity, sophistication, and elaborateness. This perception significantly boosts a brand’s image, associating it with professionalism and quality. Based on our team’s experience, we found a few mid-sized companies in the cybersecurity industry that were getting wonderful sales results because their websites were translated into multiple languages and displayed a widget on their site showing a map with all of their physical office locations and clients. This small detail impressed our team and all their site visitors, who ended up inquiring about their services.
Finally, you may be wondering…
Is hiring a bilingual copywriter or creating a website in three or four languages more expensive?
For the most part, hiring a bilingual writer is significantly more cost-effective than employing separate individuals for writing and translating content. You can easily find great freelancers that speak more than one language. For example, you can go on LinkedIn and create a post to hire a bilingual Spanish-English copywriter. You can also easily hire writers in other languages, such as Arabic, French, Mandarin, and German, at very accessible rates.
Creating a multilingual website might seem daunting, but it’s quite straightforward with the right assistance. Many businesses hesitate, thinking it’s a complex and challenging task, and often, this can be true. However, with our dedicated team of writers, we simplify the process significantly.
Our approach at Copyriders to creating a multi-language site is user-friendly and efficient, allowing you to have your multilingual website operational in just a few minutes! Let our team help you translate and localize your content today, making the journey to a multilingual site easy and exciting.
If you want to work with an experienced team of bilingual writers, contact Copyriders today!
