The modern marketer s guide to global content creation

The modern marketer s guide to global content creation

The Modern Marketer s Guide to Global Content Creation As a modern marketer, you re already taking advantage of customer relationship management (CRM) software, a content management system (CMS), and tools for inbound marketing, outbound marketing, and analytics. These components are essential for finding new customers and delivering on your marketing goals. They also give you much-needed scalability and agility. What if you could reach international markets with the same degree of simplicity, efficiency and measurability? Sounds great, right? But to get there requires building marketing content for people who speak other languages. And that requires translation. For a long time, the process of managing and optimizing translation projects has been full of headaches for global marketers. Lots of manual, tedious steps in creating and managing translated content, challenges around reviewing it and ensuring its accuracy, and plenty of delays in getting it to market. Fortunately, a type of automation system has emerged to help today s global marketer a cloud-based translation management platform. A translation management platform takes the complexity, cost and time out of the content translation process and ensures you are delivering high-quality, professionally-built multilingual messaging for your international customers. The cloud-based translation management platform is quickly becoming a trusted and powerful part of today s marketing technology stack. Here are 11 important reasons why.

1 Improves your international SEO Having content in other languages can provide your company with a major SEO boost. Of course, having more content is beneficial in general, but not if it isn t quality content. Because most translations are produced by professional, human translators, search engines see these translations as unique content. Human translations are far more valuable than computer-generated translations, such as those provided by free online services, which are penalized by search engines. A translation management platform, with its visual in-context translation assistance, makes it easy for human translators to transform your content accurately, ensuring its high quality. Human translations are far more valuable than computergenerated translations.

2 Helps you convert more of your existing global traffic If you re online, you re already global. The question is, how well are you capturing and converting your global traffic? Companies today are finding ways to harness their international traffic and reach more customers directly in their languages. Translation management platforms are used by globally-minded, technology-driven marketers who realize that if they are already receiving a significant percentage of traffic from international locations and multilingual visitors, they might as well optimize their efforts to convert this traffic. Translation management platforms are used by globally-minded, technologydriven marketers.

3 Saves you time Translating your content without a translation management platform is time-consuming, manual, and inefficient. The time drain created by translation projects causes many marketers to simply say no way to the notion of translating in the first place. Without automation, translation diverts your team s energy from other work and can derail other projects. Using a translation management platform drastically reduces the amount of time you and your staff have to spend working on translation projects. Instead of managing your translations in spreadsheets and emails, and instead of sending files back and forth for translation, the platform automates these steps and more just like other parts of your marketing tech stack prevent you from having to repeat the same steps over and over when you manage a nurture campaign or create a new registration form for each landing page on your website. Using a translation management platform drastically reduces the amount of time you and your staff have to spend working on translation projects.

4 Reduces your risk of missing a deadline DEC Are you dealing with translation providers who always deliver your projects too late? Struggling to figure out if a translation project will be delivered on time? A translation management platform gives you the ability to see exactly what the completion status is for each file, each language, and each project. This enables you to make adjustments, focus on areas of concern, and set expectations ahead of your deadlines. See exactly what the completion status is for each file, each language, and each project.

5 Boosts customer satisfaction Chances are, you already have customers in other countries. What are you doing for them today? Is your website, product information, and support content available in the languages your customers speak? What if you could immediately increase customer retention and overall lifetime value by providing information to them in the languages they prefer? Accelerate your translation efforts while keeping your costs from skyrocketing. If you re not using a translation management platform, it s likely you are only translating the bare minimum of your content. Just imagine if you had scalability and efficiency working on your side what else would you translate to make your customers happy? A translation management platform can help you accelerate your translation efforts while keeping costs from skyrocketing. Your international customers stand to benefit.

6 Gives you control over your global content Obviously, you don t want to spend more time than you have to managing translation projects. But you also don t want to rely too heavily on third parties to manage your company s translated content to the point where you can t easily control and repurpose assets that a vendor has translated for you. Your multilingual content assets are extremely valuable you ve paid to produce them, and you can repurpose the translations again in the future, but only if you have full control over your content in other languages. You can t obtain that at least not easily and at scale without a translation management platform. Your multilingual content assets are extremely valuable you ve paid to produce them.

7 Eliminates your global content silos If you re already in multiple languages, you likely have translated content in various repositories all around your company or scattered across multiple translation providers you ve worked with over the years. Having your global content centralized all in one place improves overall efficiency. Instead of translating the same product name or keyword different ways across multiple vendors, you ll benefit from greater consistency and quality. A translation management platform puts all of your translated content into a single location, so you can access it easily and share it with all parties who may need to use it. Put all of your translated content into a single location, so you can access it easily and share it with all parties who may need to use it.

8 Gives you a full content audit trail If you want to keep tabs on who has made changes to your content, you can t easily do that without a translation management platform. Using technology enables you to track each and every change made to every single translation. This way, if you need to revert to an earlier translation, you can do so easily, without having to hunt for the files. In any industry where protecting and monitoring content is important, a translation management platform gives you the security you require. Use technology to track each and every change made to every single translation.

9 Gives you visibility into your data One of the greatest things about using marketing technology in general is the ability to spot trends in your data and make swift decisions to change things. You can decide whether or not to put a stop to a campaign that isn t working, replicate a landing page that is converting traffic well, or apply a subject line for an email that outperformed others in testing. Similarly, a translation management platform gives you visibility and insight into what is working and what isn t working with your global content, so you can continually improve results. Get visibility and insight into what is working and what isn t working with your global content.

10 Your competitors are doing it Envious of a competitor s global and multilingual website? They didn t necessarily spend an incredible amount of money or invest a lot of time to make it happen. Chances are they are already using a translation management platform to streamline their multilingual content and make it more manageable. And if your competitors aren t already using a translation management platform, having one before they do gives you a competitive edge, enabling you to beat them in the race for new customers. If your competitors aren t already using a translation management platform, having one before they do gives you a competitive edge.

11 It s empowering Translation is notoriously difficult for many marketing departments, but using a translation management platform actually makes it a joy to watch your content leap past barriers of language and culture. Seeing your conversion metrics rise for visitors from other countries? Watching your customer satisfaction levels go up? Witnessing your revenue grow from your multilingual customer base? Game-changing. Watch your content leap past barriers of language and culture. A translation management platform takes the headaches out of creating global content, turning your inefficient and frustrating translation projects into a powerful, streamlined part of your marketing technology stack. You really can t afford to be marketing globally without it.

About Smartling Smartling takes the complexity, cost and time out of the translation process by providing companies with an automated, cloud-based translation management platform that lets them focus on their growth strategy, knowing their content is being accurately localized for the customers they wish to serve. Our software improves the accuracy of translation while decreasing costs and offering complete visibility into projects for greater transparency and control. Smartling consolidates the many moving parts of translation into a single platform for ultimate efficiency and accuracy. Translation just got easy. Let Smartling show you how. To learn more, contact us. +1 866.70.SMART hi@smartling.com www.smartling.com