The global potential of video marketing
Before you assess the return on investment or ROI of your video marketing efforts in money, imagine how much video content helps improve brand awareness and your consumer’s understanding of your product and services.
According to a study, 96 percent of video marketers said that video marketing has increased their consumer’s understanding of their products, and 95 percent agreed on how much this type of marketing effort has helped increase brand awareness.
Michael Maximoff, Co-Founder & Managing Partner at Belkins, emphasizes the impact of tapping into global markets. “Modern marketing strategies now allow businesses to think outside the box—literally. Global audiences are now easier to reach through social media and the internet, and the ball is in the court of these organizations on how they can connect with a global audience even with a language barrier.”
Today, language is no longer a big barrier when connecting with a larger audience. Translation platforms, AI, hiring translators—you can localize your video marketing content to tap into a different market in many ways.
Strategies for successful multilingual video marketing
So, what’s the secret to making your video content accessible and understandable to a broader audience? Here are some expert tips to get you started:
Identify your target consumers
Hardy Desai, Founder of Supple, explains why identifying your target consumer is essential for any marketing effort.
“Doing marketing without a specific audience is like playing darts without a board—hoping you’ll hit a bullseye when there is no target.”
Like Hardy said, a marketing effort needs a specific consumer target. There’s no ‘one-size-fits-all’ marketing strategy, especially in digital media and the internet, because of how scattered your targets are—from their interest, platforms of choice, age, and demographics.
The key to an effective video marketing effort is identifying your target consumers. You will want to consider the following factors:
- Who is going to use my products and services?
- What is the age range of consumers most likely to purchase my products and services?
- Where do these interested persons usually lurk?
- What language do they speak?
When you know the who, what, why, where, and how of your marketing efforts, you’ll start creating content tailored to your target audience in humor, engagement, and language.
Identify your platform
An example of a marketing failure: Creating and posting video content on elderly milk on Tiktok.
Why? The answer is simple. Your target audience is NOT on TikTok—or at least a majority of them.
Linda Shaffer, Chief People Operations Officer at Checkr, says,
“What most people don’t realize about marketing is that you have to be where your audience is. Algorithms won’t help when your fish is not in the sea, and you end up wasting bait where it’s not supposed to go.”
As of October 2023, a combined total of 68.3 percent (women and men) aged 18 to 34 comprise the primary users of TikTok worldwide, while only 6.4 percent comprise those 55 years old and above. This brings us back to the point—if your audience isn’t there, save the money and effort elsewhere.
Identifying the right platform means that your marketing content should match your target platform's age range and interests. These two should synchronize for you to see a significant ROI on your video marketing efforts.
Translate your video content
The idea behind multilingual video marketing is simple: make your content accessible and understandable to a broader audience through translated content.
Will Ward, Co-Founder at Industry Arabic, tells us why we should never take translation lightly in all cases.
“Some people think translating is just a means of converting a word or a phrase from one language to another. It is, in fact, so much more than that.” He adds, “Translation is an art of conveying a message while understanding the nuances of both languages and relaying its meaning in another language.”
If you are an expert or are knowledgeable in the original and your target language, you can do the translation yourself or look for online video subtitle translators. This saves you the costs of hiring a translation agency and the time rechecking translated content by a third party.
If none of the above are your options, some social media platforms, like TikTok, have features where video content has an auto caption and is translated into another language in real-time. However, these translations can be subpar, so using a tool such as BIGVU can be worthwwhile in generating accurate translations.
Stephan Baldwin, Founder of Assisted Living, says,
“Auto captions are handy features for those who like to watch their videos silently or for the elderly who have a hard time hearing..”
Create a localized version of your content
Jesse Galanis, Content Marketer at Furm, emphasizes why localized content is essential.
“Your audience should not just consume your content but resonate with it, and this is where localization, including trademark considerations, comes into play—tailoring your ideas to your target market’s needs based on their local language, customs, and practices.”
Localization, by definition, is making something ‘local’ to a specific place. For example, localizing your product ads means:
- Take your translated content, dubbing, and subbing the same to each local version.
- Posting your video at a time specific to the time zone where your target market is most active on a particular platform.
- Tweaking or adding specific ideas and subtle details that would help your video content resonate more with the local audience.
Jesse Hanson, Content Manager at Online Solitaire & World of Card Games, gives tips on how localization can work better for businesses.
“Game developers localize in-game content for more people to play the game globally—the same goes for marketing efforts. He adds, “The most effective tip for effective localization is asking for help from a local because, more likely than not, you cannot find language nuances on the internet. These are things only a local knows.”
Be careful about cultural, religious, and societal issues
Tapping into a global audience means that you are marketing and selling to them, and the last thing you would want to do is get on the bad side of your target market, right?
Words and nuances are not enough when localizing or translating content for multilingual video marketing efforts. Many countries have varying cultural, religious, and societal stands, and every marketer must consider this when planning to localize video marketing content.
For example, when localizing content for a country like Thailand, which places great importance on its sacred Buddhas and temples, you should avoid content appropriating their religious practices and beliefs. Or, for a country like the Philippines, where weed is illegal, any content on weed or marijuana should be avoided.
Max Wesman, Founder & COO of GoodHire, says, “Above all, it is important for marketers to be inclusive, sensitive and careful when creating advertisement content, especially when trying to break into specific local markets as this could make or break all their marketing efforts.”
Take advantage of AI.
AI has undeniably taken over the world, especially Generative AI. From art to content, to videos to audio—generative AI can ‘generate’ almost anything you can think of, and marketers have upped their game and efficiency with the help of AI.
As a marketer, AI can help you with your multilingual video marketing efforts by:
- Generating video scripts
- Generating content ideas
- Translating content into another language
- Putting your voice into a script
While these are just a few ways in which artificial intelligence is revolutionizing video marketing, the lack of human intervention improves efficiency but also poses some risks that marketers must be careful about.
David Gaglione, Founding Partner at PS212, says, “After all, AI is still just a collection of data fed to it through the internet. When it comes to localization and translation, marketers still need to be careful in checking whether AI-generated content conforms with your target audience’s customs and culture to avoid potential trouble.”
Conclusion
All businesses want to expand their reach into the global market, which requires an understanding and knowledge of one or both languages and in-depth research of a country’s specific customs and culture.
Multilingual video marketing is a long-standing effort to understand your audience, tools, content, and target market to create a successful and effective video marketing effort that increases your business’ brand awareness worldwide—eventually generating more profit.