You want to scale by promoting your offers in a country that speaks a different language.
This is a smart way to scale your company. After all, if you can successfully run a business in the competitive English-speaking market, how hard can it be to run it in a country with less competition? And that’s where the problems arrive.
Most entrepreneurs who try this fail and waste a lot of money.
The biggest mistake is to simply hire translators.
Scaling abroad is not a game of translations.
Just because your marketing messages are effective in your country doesn’t mean that they work everywhere else. In fact, a common mistake I see often here in Italy is to take sales messages from great copywriters like Dan Kennedy, translate them and use them here.
They never deliver results.
Different cultures need different claims.
Let’s say you sell a product that teaches people how to live from 9 to 5 and work from home.
That kind of claim works very well in the U.S.A. . But if you try it in Italy, it will not work. That’s because Italians, even if they hate their job, want to keep it to feel safe. Or try it in Japan, where people aim for a big career with lots of responsibilities in a solid company.
It’s a simple example, but it should give you a solid idea of how culture impacts your marketing.
You need a local marketing expert.
Before scaling to another country, you need to consult a local marketing expert.
Someone who lives there and has a deep knowledge of the culture. He will tell you how to adapt your claims and marketing messages. Additionally, he will identify translators who are genuinely proficient in the language. Because, from experience, a lot of freelance translators are nothing more than Google Translate users with no real experience in the language. But how can you tell if you don’t speak their language and can double-check what they write?
A local marketing expert would also solve that issue for you.