How to make your field marketing teams love your translations

By Acclaro

Field marketing, by its very nature, is a highly targeted endeavor that relies heavily upon connecting with its audience. Your global field marketing team needs effective communications—particularly local marketing campaign content—to generate interest and produce results.

That’s where you, the marketing gatekeeper, come into play. You must provide your team with high-quality marketing translations to create awareness, drive engagement and maximize return on investment through your global communications. Without them, your field teams could literally be stranded on an island.

Your brand’s success depends on high-quality marketing translations

Multilingual marketing campaigns contain many moving parts. From creative content that needs to speak in pitch-perfect brand voice to social media posts that require contextual knowledge of your audience, a consistent brand voice across all marketing channels is paramount.

Marketing content is rife with figures of speech, idioms and cultural references that may not fare well with direct translation. And perhaps nobody knows that better than your field marketing teams. Because they’re located in-market, they know when a translation misses the mark. Whether it’s botched nuances or non-conforming brand style, if you’re getting angry phone calls from them about subpar translations, the onus is on you.

Many companies consider their field marketing reps to be the frontline defense against low-quality translations. But once this content reaches that far down the marketing pipeline, it’s too late (and often too expensive) to start over. Even worse, it can do long-term damage to your brand.

Put a proven process in place

You need a team of translation experts to help create multilingual marketing campaigns that resonate—this goes without saying, of course. Once you’ve found the right team, with the knowledge, expertise and proven processes, you’ll need to tackle your current content.

Evaluating your existing marketing content starts with a cultural assessment. Can it translate effectively into other languages? Will your current headlines, taglines and trademarks resonate with your target audience? And if not, what changes can be made to maintain your brand’s personality and heritage while also connecting with your new audience?

Transcreation is a powerful tool for success when adapting a brand’s message to multiple cultures. (After all, marketing content can be very nuanced.) Ideally, your translation partner can work with your internal marketing team to create a transcreation brief that contains fundamental information about your business needs and target audience. This will help keep all parties on the same page.

Next, set your brand voice and style in stone. Create a “brand bible,” per se, containing a global creative brief, brand style guide and glossary. With them, quality assurance can be maintained. Without them, chaos and inconsistency run rampant.

Lastly, if you’ve been getting feedback about poor translations from your field marketers, you’ve likely already implemented the final step: an in-country review. This step assures your translated content adheres to the market’s conventions, as well as your company’s brand, voice and terminology. We’ve found that field marketers make fantastic reviewers, since they know your brand and are extremely motivated for continued success. Be sure to formally include them in the process.

Get more ROI from your marketing translations

Expansion into a new country or culture brings the promise of exponential success. It also requires meticulous management and proven processes.

With the right team on your side and the right processes in place, your field marketing teams will receive translations that connect. After all, that’s the promise of smart, effective marketing.

The results: increased conversion rate, improved ROI, and growth for your company.

Be the hero your field marketing teams deserve. Give them expert translations that consistently build awareness, tell your brand’s story and connect with your audience.

Acclaro has been trusted by the world’s leading brands to help grow their global business. We know the pitfalls and secrets to translation success.