70 Percent of U.S. Content Marketers Engage Global Consumers in English Only

Smartling released new survey results which conducted polls on 160 U.S.-based, senior-level content marketers whom work for emerging brands to find out how they market to multilingual audiences worldwide. With indications that translation budgets have yet to exist, marketers may have to find engagement to multilingual audiences using the only English-language for content.  

The new report, “Translate or Pay the Price: Overlooked Marketing Opportunities for Global Businesses,” found that close to 63 percent of respondents had between six and 50 percent of their customer base located outside the U.S. The survey results also revealed that  65 percent of respondents admit that less than five percent of their budget is dedicated to reaching non-English-speaking customers in and outside the U.S.

Companies are also marketing with only English-language content. Nearly 70 percent of respondents reveal that their companies market to other countries using only English-language content. 

There was also results of 49 percent of respondents admitting that they never translate English-language marketing content into Spanish with just 10 percent frequently translating marketing content into Spanish. The remainder only translated some of the time.

Additionally, 65 percent of the marketing professionals surveyed do not know the number of native Spanish-language speakers in the U.S., incorrectly guessing 21 or 37 million. Only 35 percent selected the correct answer, 53 million.

 

Nataly Kelly, VP of marketing at Smartling indicated that local competitors in those same countries are putting out messages directly in the preferred languages of the customer. Kelly believes marketers who do not prioritize the translation of their valuable content are at a great disadvantage when trying to do business globally. 

Multilingual content deliveries potential revenue opportunities for marketers. Competing brands have been developing translation and localization as key strategic elements to their global marketing campaigns.