2017 is getting closer and closer.

It’s time to analyse the performance of our businesses and plan the strategies for the next year.

 

2017 is still a blank canvas, and it’s up to us to design what’s going to happen over the next 12 months.

 

It may seem scary, so much plan to do, so many actions to take… I see it like a fresh start. This new year let us remove all the bad decisions that we’ve taken in 2016, to focus on what actually worked, and implement innovative strategies that bring results.

[Tweet “Languages should play an important role in your business development actions this year.”]

 

The most influential marketers are already using languages to expand their businesses. People are valuing more and more the crucial role of communication in business.

 

Because using languages in business will help you:

• open your business to new markets and offer your products and services in different countries,
• increase the visibility and reputation of your business,
• do business with international clients and expand your client portfolio,
• implement a global marketing strategy to maximise your efforts online, and
• reach more potential client who are willing to do business with you.

 

And you don’t need to be a big multinational to achieve all this.

This year, I’ve done business with clients in the USA, the UK, Spain, Venezuela, France, Belgium, Sweden, Ireland and Italy, (I may be missing a few other countries).

 

Working online is the perfect method to offer your services in different countries. But you need to make it happen.

 

People from all over the world aren’t going to come to your business or website just because you’re sitting in front of your computer all day. You need start using words and languages in a strategic way.

The good thing is that people are starting to wake up and realise that languages are an important asset (I’ll give you real examples in a minute). And you shouldn’t be turning a blind eye on this opportunity.

 

 

5 innovative ways to grow your business with Spanish

One of the marketers who is doing a great job with languages online is Neil Patel.

A few months ago, I started noticing on my Facebook feed that he was publishing content in Spanish (my mother tongue). He was not just using languages, be he was also targeting the right people with this content.

Let’s dive in!

 

1// Translate your website into the most important languages for your business

I know, this is obvious and I have already talked about it a few times. But it’s a basic starting point.

 

If your website isn’t translated into the language that you want to target, your international clients will leave your website, either because they don’t understand what you’re saying, or because they’re too lazy to make an effort to understand it. Why would they stay if they can get the same content in their language elsewhere?

 

I know what you are thinking right now: “but translating my website is a complex process and it’s very expensive”.

 

The translated version of Neil Patel’s website has no more than 200 words. Believe me, my little brother could afford translating 200 words, and you know the benefits that that call-to-action on his website is bringing?

 

The key when translating your website is to focus on the main sections of your website and leave out any irrelevant information that your international audience doesn’t need (for now). You’ll have time (and money) to get everything translated later on.

 

You want to translate all the sections that are going to convince your international client to buy from you. That’s, at least, the home page, your about me page, your service or work with me page and any form that your clients need to fill to work for you (or the payment process if you have an e-commerce site).

 

Remember, at this stage you need to focus on what’s important and leave out that rusty blog post that no body read four years ago.

 

2// Translate your sales funnel so your international clients can buy from you

This is when things get interesting. If you haven’t designed your sales funnel yet, you have some homework to do in Christmas.

A sales funnel is designed by all the actions that a visitor in your website must take to become an actual client.

 

Normally you’ll have a landing page where you want your potential clients to visit to buy from you. Or maybe you’re using email marketing to sell your services and products.

 

It’s up to you to design the best funnel suitable for your business.

 

The key here is to make sure that you translate all the information that you want your potential clients read in each step of your funnel.

 

 

What information needs your clients to perform an action?

 Translating a contact form so clients can communicate with you is a great starting point. And, as you can see, a form doesn’t really have many words to be translated, right?

Make sure that you can manage the communication with your international clients in the language that you’re translating your texts into.

 

When translating your sales funnel into a different language, you want to pay special attention to the translation of:

• the landing page when you want your clients to land to perform and action.
• the follow-up once your potential client has performed that action (this can be an automated email sequence, or a manual reply to your clients email.)
• the offer that you’re going to present to your client.

 

Make a list of all the content that you had to create when you designed your sales funnel. That content will be worth getting it translated.

 

3// Translate your social media ads and target them to the right audience

Something that I really like about social media is how accurately you can target your ads and posts.

For example, if you decide to translate one of your best performing posts into Spanish, and you want to promote it on your social media platforms, it doesn’t make sense that that post is shown to all your audience. You just want people who can speak Spanish to read that post.

 

And that’s also what Neil Patel is doing on Facebook:

Facebook has this feature called geo-targeting. It allows you to segment your audience for a specific publication. That means that you can hide a publication in Spanish from all your follower who don’t speak Spanish.

It’s very simple:

Can you that targeting symbol? After writing your post, you just need to click it and…

 

In the tab “audience restrictions” you can include or exclude the countries where you want (or not) you post to be shown.

 

And the same applies when you want to promote your posts and create an ad. You can target your ads specifically at a segment of the Facebook population who speaks certain language.

What are the benefits of doing this?

 

• You can target a specific segment of your population and don’t look spammy. Imagine that your favourite brand on Facebook starts publishing content in Russian or Chinese and all you can see is characters that you can’t recognise on your feed. You may think: “What’s going on? I can’t understand anything, I’m going to stop following them.”
• Make the correct audience to click on the correct link and guide them to the landing page that you want them to visit. Remember that this landing page must be adapted to your international audience. That is why it’s so important to build on the content that you have previously created.

 

4// Translate your content marketing strategy to make your potential clients come to you again and again

And once you’ve got everything translated and optimised to target your new audience… what?

You can’t just sit and wait for your audience to come to you.

 

You need to provide useful content to this audience to make them come back to your website.

 

That’s why it’s essential to have a content marketing strategy in Spanish or any other language that you want your content to be translated into.

The good news here is that you don’t need to create content from scratch. You have probably created content in your mother tongue that you can recycle and translate into different languages.

 

A few ideas:

• If you create video, consider adding subtitles in different languages so you get more viewers.
• If you have your own podcast show, you can have your audios transcripted and translated into different languages. This way you’ll be able to create blog posts from your podcast and your content will be better positioned SEO-wise.
• And if you write blog posts, I’d recommend you to choose the posts that are performing better. That will be the posts that will drive more visits and international clients to your website.

 

As you can see, I’ve worked with quite a few clients all over the world, but I don’t have enough time to create content for them all (obviously).

 

That’s why I decided to translate the most popular posts on my blog into Spanish. My content marketing in Spanish isn’t the same as my content marketing in English. My blog posts in Spanish keeps driving Spanish-speaking clients to my website, and I’m certain that my Spanish posts will work because they have previously worked when I published them in English.

 

 

5// Implement a multilingual SEO strategy

This strategy is linked to the previous one.

When you start creating or translating your content into a different language, you should also pay attention on how your content rank in Google searches.

 

You can also attract clients through organic traffic by solving the questions of your potential clients through your content.

 

People looking for information online are hot leads who may need your services. So make sure that you hire someone with SEO knowledge so your content can rank higher on Google searches.

 

You can read an article that I published about this topic by clicking this link.

 

One last thought…

What if you can duplicate or triplicate your results adding more languages to your linguistic strategy over time?

 

Time to discuss!

 Have you ever considered implementing a linguistic strategy in your business? Are you already using different languages in your business to attract and do business with international clients?

I’d love to hear about the results that languages bring to your business. Leave a comment below! 🙂