3 Tips for Catering to an International Clientele
The world as a whole is incredibly connected, which means that businesses are more likely than ever to sell their products to international clients. Many entrepreneurs create their new businesses solely online, allowing customers from all over the world to view and purchase their products. And while having a worldwide clientele is incredibly beneficial, it also comes with its own set of unique challenges.
For example, how do you ensure that your product appeals to clients from various countries? And how should you tailor your marketing plan to speak to your broad client base? We have 3 tips that will help you to make your business more appealing to your worldwide clientele.
Offer Your Site in Multiple Languages
While Google does offer translation services for webpages, these translations aren't always accurate or high-quality. If you truly want to appeal to international customers, you need to—quite literally—speak their language on your site. Professional translators and multilingual copywriters can provide high-quality translations of all your webpages. You can then provide different landing pages for individuals based on their locations, so that they can read about your products and services in their native tongue.
If professional manual translation isn't within your budget, there are other tools for providing a multilingual site, and many of them are free. Though not as accurate as a human translation, they are often more accurate than the Google translate widget.
Communicate Via Social Media
Social media is one of the main platforms for connecting with people around the world, and once again, this is an area where you should be communicating in multiple languages. In fact, it may even be wise to set up multiple social media accounts for your business, with each offering assistance and information in a different language.
Once these accounts are set up, you simply need to assign a social media manager who speaks the desired language to maintain posts and answer questions on your page. This simple service makes you much more attractive to a global audience, as it encourages communication and shows your clients that you are committed to providing them quality service regardless of their native language. To determine which languages you should target first, simply check your social media metrics to see your followers' locations and languages. This will show you the most common languages that your customers speak, so that you can appeal to the largest audiences first.
Check International Trends
Consumer habits can vary by region, and while you obviously can't offer a specialized product for every region's trends, it is important to track your customers' habits by region so that you can recognize impending shifts. For example, you may notice that your American clients commonly complain about one facet of your product, while your European clients have another common complaint.
Noting and tracking these trends can allow you to make adjustments that address these habits and trends, keeping you ahead of the competition, regardless of your locale. Of course, managing this kind of input on a global scale can be difficult to do by hand, so it's important that you leverage innovation management software to organize feedback and monitor trends. This will enable you to more easily recognize patterns so that you can more quickly address the issues at hand.
While you can't alter your product to address every complaint, being able to recognize shifts in consumer behavior can allow you to offer improved products that fit within the consumer trends for all of your major areas of business. By following this tip and the others mentioned above, you'll be more likely to attract that worldwide audience and grow your business.