Think English is the ultimate language of the internet? Think again.

Sometimes it’s obvious when we’ll need to translate something – legal translation, for example, is the kind of thing that you can’t afford to mess about with. But businesses that regularly export are often reluctant to market themselves in a foreign language. These companies could be missing out on a world’s worth of business.

We’ve gathered together some reasons to show you why any exporter should be marketing themselves in languages other than English.

The basic stats

First things first, at the end of 2013, English-speaking internet users accounted for just over a quarter (28.6%) of the world’s web users. In a close second place were Chinese-speakers, which make up 23.2% of the web’s population. Looking further down the list, Spanish, Arabic and Portuguese speakers are the three next most used languages on the net, with Arabic use having increased by a whopping 5000% between 2000 and 2013. More interestingly, in the Common Sense Advisory’s report entitled ‘Can’t Read, Won’t Buy’, it found that over half of respondents said they only bought from e-commerce sites that were presented in their own language. Furthermore, 60% ‘rarely’ or ‘never’ buy from English language sites. That’s a lot of people who won’t see your website!

Why market in a foreign language?

While roughly half of all web content is in English, this opens up lucrative opportunities for getting to the top of the search engines in other countries. We all know how important it is to rank highly on the search engines. The latest research by Chitika suggests the top hit on Google gets 33% of the traffic. When you market yourself in a foreign language, there’s simply less competition, which is fantastic news for the small or medium enterprise, who have to battle with huge corporations for the top slots. Put simply, your return on investment (ROI) will be far higher, and you can speak directly to your customers in their language. What’s not to love?

How to market in a foreign language?

First up, you’ll need to choose which countries and languages you want to target. If you’re already exporting, it makes sense to build on the countries where you’re most popular. Start small, translate your website and keywords, and take it from there. Over half of all Google searches are made in a foreign language. But these days it’s not just about getting to the top of Google – almighty as it is, it’s not the leading search engine in each country across the world. In China, people are using Baidu, and Russian customers are more likely to search using Yandex. Do your homework first. There’s no point in marketing in a foreign language if your intended audience isn’t going to see it. By not targeting your customers in their own language, you could be missing out on vital sales across the world. Thankfully not speaking a foreign language doesn’t have to stop you – in our bank of experienced marketing translators, we have experts in your sector – from legal translation to technical. If you need your marketing material translated, contact us today.