A Guide to Multilingual Content Marketing in 2021

We use the Internet for almost everything these days. Thanks to technology, we’ve moved away from a purely offline world to a new reality. One where our offline and online experiences merge into one.

Nowadays, you don’t need to go to the store to grab your essentials. All you have to do is pick up your phone and order them. Since doing things online is so accessible and convenient, most businesses offer their products or services directly from their websites, and there’s data to support this. In 2016, 209.6 million people in the US browsed products, compared prices, or bought merchandise online at least once. By 2021, these numbers are projected to increase to as high as 230.5 million people. 

On top of more businesses joining the online world, there’s also the reality that people are spending more time online than ever before. Over the last ten years, the average daily Internet usage on a mobile phone has gone up from 32 minutes back in 2011 to 143 minutes in 2020. And that number is expected to increase to 155 minutes of daily Internet usage in 2021.

What does this mean for content marketing in 2021?

With most businesses now online (meaning more competition) and your audience spending more time on their phones (meaning more things competing for their attention), the content you put out has to be fresh and exciting; otherwise, people will glance right over it.  

As a consumer, this is great. It means more businesses are putting out content for us to enjoy. As a marketer or business owner, this could be a huge opportunity for you to generate new business if you implement this one technique we’re going to talk about today. 

This technique works best for businesses with a global audience or businesses that sell products or services to a worldwide customer base. But if you know your audience speaks another language besides English, then it makes sense to include a multilingual approach to your content marketing strategy in 2021. 

In fact, while most businesses are doubling down on the amount of English content they’re publishing, you can take advantage of something your competition isn’t. Creating content in a new language for a new market. 

That market will vary from business to business, but for the sake of this article, we’re going to focus on the Hispanic market because that’s the one we know best. 

Why should you create multilingual content?

The main reasons for creating  content in more than one language are to:

a) Increase brand awareness. This means more people are aware of your brand. 

b) Make the experience better for customers. For example, say a primarily Spanish speaker visits your English website. They might understand 50% of what it says. But if your website has content specifically designed with this person in mind, they’ll feel like you’re speaking directly to them. Making the experience they have with your brand better. 

c) Make more sales. If more people are aware of your brand, and when they click on your website, they find content specifically in their language, your chances of acquiring a new sale increase significantly.

With the landscape of 2020 being so uncertain, it makes sense to prepare yourself for the upcoming year by having a solid strategy in place. In this article, we’re going to cover why you should be creating content for the Hispanic market, how to begin your multilingual content marketing strategy, the different types of content you can create, and we’ll also give you 6 additional tips for content marketing in 2021. 

Why should you create content for Hispanic markets?

For those of you who know that creating content for the Hispanic market will be worth the time and effort, check out these statistics from Claritas’ 2020 Hispanic Market Report:

• There are over 204 million Spanish speakers online today, with a combined spending power of 3.5 trillion dollars. 
• Spanish is the second most popular language in the US. 
• Hispanics make up 19% of the total US population. 
• 76% of the Hispanic population has access to a mobile device in the US. 
• By 2025, there will be more than 69.5 million Hispanic Americans in the US. 
• In general, Hispanics are less loyal to brands than other ethnic groups. 

Some other interesting things mentioned in the report include that Hispanics make up 23.4% of the US millennial population. And by the year 2025, 27% of the Gen Z population will be Hispanic. 

One thing is clear: the opportunities in this market are worth millions for the right businesses with the right strategy. 

How do I begin my multilingual content marketing strategy?

First things first, you need a strategy. And that strategy begins with developing your buyer’s journey. 

Whenever you’re creating content, it’s important to keep in mind the 3 stages of the buyer’s journey. In your content strategy, you’ll want to create content specifically to help prospects move along those 3 stages: the Awareness stage, the Consideration stage, and the Decision stage. 

Content marketing isn’t just creating content for the sake of it. The content you create and distribute has to be linked to an overarching strategy with clearly defined goals and objectives. And identifying those goals and objectives can be challenging.

But once you know the exact objectives you’re trying to accomplish, to get started with your content strategy, you’ll want to: 

1. Research your audience 

Before you can move on to creating content in the new language, the most important thing is to make sure you fully understand your new target market. Get to know as much as you can about their preferences, values, and culture. 

To figure out what language will work best for you, you should start by resorting to your website’s analytics. If you have Google Analytics set up, you’ll be able to see where your audience lives, what languages they speak, etc. If not, most CMS platforms offer some type of analytical data.

On top of going through all your website’s data and analytics, you’ll want to dig below the surface to learn more about your audience. That involves fully developing your buyer’s persona. Not only figuring out where this person lives and what language they speak, but also:

– How they feel 

– How they think

– How they view the world 

– What words they use when they search online 

– What search engines they use

2. Consider social trends

Younger demographics are big on supporting brands with similar values. The Millennial and Gen Z populations actively search for and choose brands that are vocal and take a stance on social issues. 

One major thing to keep in mind here is that social causes vary from region to region. This especially applies to those who sell to a global market; the same issues that are big in one country can be nonexistent in another. 

The social causes that the younger generations are fighting for today in the US are different from the social causes that are big in Mexico, Argentina, Perú or Chile.

You want to be mindful of these trends when planning out your content marketing strategy for 2021, because in today’s online world, e-commerce and social issues go hand in hand. 

3. Develop your core message 

At this point, you’ve researched your buyer persona and you’ve taken into account the social climate of the upcoming year. Now you want to make sure that your business’s core values and messaging are crystal clear. 

You want to make sure your business is aligned with a set of values. And you’ll want to audit your marketing and sales efforts to make sure everything is in order before you execute your content marketing strategy. 

Once you’ve completed these three steps, you can start planning out your content strategy. 

What types of content should I create for this new market? 

We’ll save you some time and give you 6 tips for creating content in the upcoming year.

• Evergreen content. This is content that doesn’t change. It stays the same regardless of location, language or time. An example of evergreen content would be content that educates your audience about an integral part of your industry. For example, if you’re in the pet industry, it could be something like different dog or cat breeds, since these don’t change often.
• Repurpose content. Remember that piece of content you published a few months ago that was a big hit when you posted it? Recreate that same piece in your new language. You can do this same thing with all of your successful content. This could be turning your most successful blog posts into podcast episodes; turning your written content into video form; or even pulling quotes from your top articles and converting them into social media posts. The possibilities are truly endless with this one.  
• Culturally relevant content. This would be content that’s created with the new market in mind. This kind of content speaks directly to people in a way they can understand and connect with. An example of this would be implementing Spanglish when creating content targeted at the younger Latinx community. 
• Branded content. This content focuses more on storytelling and less on selling. Branded content is meant to share your brand’s values and to tell stories that build connections with your audience. The aim of branded content is brand building, not sales. 
• User generated content(UGC). UGC is content that’s created by the users of the product or service. It’s a good idea to consider UGC as part of your strategy to leverage your social media. Things like hosting contests or giveaways on Facebook communities or Instagram hashtags are a great way of generating this kind of content. One thing to keep in mind is that this often requires you to have a large volume of followers, and if done incorrectly, it can be harmful to your business. 
• Influencer marketing. This type of content is created by individuals with a large following of people who trust their opinion. As opposed to branded or user generated content, this form of content often requires you to pay the influencer. This amount will vary depending on the influencer you choose. But working with the right influencers can impact your brand significantly given the relationship these people have with their audience. 

With those 6 content types in mind, you’ll have plenty of ideas to start with. 

Now, we’d like to give you six additional tips to help you navigate your content marketing strategy in 2021.

6 Tips for Content Marketing in 2021

1. Avoid digital disinformation. In 2020, we saw social media platforms like Twitter make an effort to identify and label inaccurate or misleading information. With platforms now taking extra precautions to protect users from misinformation, it’s important that you take extra steps to avoid false claims in your messaging. 
2. Invest in conversational marketing. This means forget the old school mentality of “always be selling.” Instead, engage with your audience and look to build relationships with customers through personalized content. This could mean leveraging chatbots, social channels, and text message marketing if it means putting your customers first. 
3. Optimize with keywords and SEO. Keywords and SEO are critical components to a multilingual content marketing strategy. It’s important to remember that search terms vary from region to region. The same search term that works for you in English may not perform as well if it’s translated directly into Spanish. So you want to make sure you choose the right keywords when reaching a new market. 
4. Be strategic with social media. Keep in mind that the same platforms that are popular in  the US may not be as popular in the location of your new market. It’s important to understand how your new market uses these platforms before you create content for them. 
5. Localize your content and campaigns. You want to tailor your content to the needs, preferences, and culture of your new market. That means localizing everything from your website to your app and chatbots. Localization is a complex task and you want to make sure you follow through with all the changes like correcting dates and time formats and changing currencies, on top of all the changes you have to make to the copy. 
6. Transcreate your content and marketing materials when possible. Transcreation is more than word to word translation. It’s when you take a piece of content from one language and completely rewrite it specifically with the new target language in mind. Learn more about transcreation here. 

If you are not already selling to a global market, but you plan to do it in the upcoming year, then those last two tips are extremely important. Localization and transcreation services are essential if you want to reach a new market. 

That’s it. With this in mind, how do you plan on tackling the upcoming year? Do you have any great ideas for your content marketing strategy in 2021? Let us know!