Get Past Language Barriers With International Clients

Different businesses go about developing their international business at different speeds. Several early reasons come in to play. The main reasons are:

• Your own visibility and understanding of your international potential
• Deciding what product to market abroad
• Finding your international markets

Your budget and manpower resources also have a direct influence on how you go about the process of developing your international markets.

Getting Stuck In Language Barriers

Language barriers often come up immediately and stop or delay most small businesses from developing internationally.

When a small business owner is confronted with different languages, he has two choices:

• Stop all international business development
• Learn to work with the different languages

Usually, the small business owner has already heard of:

• The horror stories of cultural blunders
• The high cost of translations

The natural reaction for a small business owner is then to wonder exactly how he can get international clients:

• Without translations?
• With an English website?
• Keeping control in his own office?

An international English website can be a short-term international development solution. This can work well if your business is mainly export based for example.

Avoiding foreign language communication is not an effective long-term solution for most international businesses.

You will develop your international business to its fullest if you write specifically to each culture you sell to. Different cultures have different sales triggers. They also have different consumer habits.

Large global businesses have already done the groundwork and learned their individual cultural markets. You need to find out what makes your international markets tick. You need to fully understand what makes your international clients buy from you.

International Market Research

You need to conduct international field research for best results. This brings up the language barriers again. Outsourcing this research increases risk. It is best to do as much international market research as you can in-house.

Free translation tools can get small businesses started with their international market research. Even if the translations are not error-free, the translations will give you enough information to use to follow up with more in-depth phone research.

A free translation widget on your website will also incite your foreign visitors to interact with you, which is another great source of international market research. A free translation widget on your website is good because:

• It tells your visitors you want international business
• It gives your readers the chance to get to know something about you

International Visibility

Your visibility in foreign markets will increase. If your web marketing brings visitors to your website, you want to make it easy for all of your visitors to understand it.

What can you do if your business cannot afford translations yet, or if you do not know where your international potential is?

A free translation widget on your website will grab the attention of those non-native English speakers whose language skills are not good enough to want to read your website. A quick translation, even if it is not perfect will help them to understand your website. They will probably return to your original English text.

Professional translators often point out that free translations do not provide good sales copy. And they are right. International sales copy written by humans will give you the best sales results in your international markets.

Should a company that wants international sales sit around and wait until it has enough money to pay for human translations?

No. There is a place for international sales copy, human translations and free translations.

International Marketing

Now let us hear from the professional marketers that track and test results. Will a free translation widget attract more international leads?

I can only answer for my business. The translation widget on my websites has stimulated interaction with international visitors who would not have contacted me otherwise.

Some respond to me in their own language. Many respond in broken English. And it is a pleasure to see the response.

My experience is that most international online visitors know they cannot expect accurate translations with free translation tools.

Most people use them to try to understand text they were stuck on without the translation tool. This is great because these visitors would otherwise immediately leave your website when they do not understand something.

If you are a businessperson or a marketer, you know you have to adapt your communication to your market. You will need to adjust your international communication by:

• The language
• Its message - cultural differences will affect your USP and sales pitch

This last point in itself answers the question about using free translation tools or not. It also highlights the need for extensive international market research – to find the key message you should use in your international sales communication.

When A Free Translation Tool Helps You

A free translation widget is a great tool to start your international business development. Use it for:

• Extensive international market research –cross-reference this with international phone research
• Your domestic market website or an international website – especially if you are only in the Export Marketing phase of your international business development.

As soon as you have learned enough about one specific international market, and done a viability market analysis:

• Plan to reinvest the profit from your first international sales to buy international sales copy and create culture specific websites and marketing plans.

Language barriers, and cultural barriers, will always exist in an international business. You will have to learn how to deal with different languages and different markets, until the barriers fade away. Different languages and different cultures will simply become part of your international business.

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