Globalize Your Video Marketing with Smart Translation
Video has become an integral part of marketing. As one of the more time intensive and expensive line items in a marketing strategy, why not make that spend stretch to reach as many people as possible? Ensure your marketing videos are equipped with some smart translation techniques. Here’s why:
- 4x as many people prefer to watch videos about products than to read about them
- 40% say they are more likely to make a purchase on their phones if they watch a video first
- Internet videos already reach more people than any individual U.S. cable network
- 75% of business executives watch work-related videos at least once a week
YouTube, where many videos are hosted, accounts for more than a billion viewers and millions of viewing hours each day. Part of their effort to reach global viewers is comprehensive localization and translation of their user interface. By offering local service in 88 countries and in 76 languages, YouTube is the most language friendly video hosting service available today.
From these statistics, videos are clearly one of the most effective means of reaching global and multilingual audiences. The question is no longer whether or not to use videos – but how to make them cost efficient and lingually attractive to maximize your return on investment.
Why Videos Are Vital
Videos can resonate with your target audience more effectively than any other medium. For example:
- Studies show that including video on a landing page can increase conversions by 80%. Bump those conversions even more by translating the content to appeal to local multilingual audiences or enhance global reach.
- Adding video to your translated website increases viewers’ time-on-site which is a positive when trying to rank higher in search engines like Google. (Search engines track the amount of time a visitor spends on a site before returning to the search results page. The more time someone spends on your site, the more relevant the link becomes to the search engine.)
- According to popular video service, Animoto, sending an email with the word video in the subject line increases opens by 19% and click-throughs by 65%. It can also reduce unsubscribes by as much as 26%.
When to Plan for Multilingual Videos
We’ve established that videos are valuable, but they are also expensive. A great way to maximize ROI on a corporate video is to localize the content and distribute the video internationally, via social media to global audiences or directly to your employees or potential partners overseas. Some examples of videos that would be great candidates for translation:
- About the company – external to the marketplace
- New product or service – external to the marketplace
- HR initiatives or corporate onboarding – internal to employees
Working with a language service provider (LSP) from the very beginning can help you determine how your message might be received in different locations or languages, particularly those with distinct cultural differences. Ideally, this research should be conducted during the planning phases, before the video is produced so that the content is appropriate for all intended audiences.
Video Translation Options
Targeting different audiences with a single video is not as effective as creating different versions for different audiences. But if that isn’t in the budget, there are some tactics you can use to enhance one video for many languages/cultures.
- Animation – Using animation instead of live actors has the advantage of narration. The narrator can speak in any language without needing to adjust the on-screen content to match so deploying a video in several languages isn’t as costly.
- Voiceover – If real people are integral to your video concept, the next option to consider is voiceover. Voiceover talent records dialogue in the target language that replaces the original spoken language.
- Subtitles – A third option is to use subtitles. This works for videos with or without actors. Subtitling is less expensive than voiceover and relatively easy to add to an existing video. The drawback, however, is that subtitles can distract from the visual message you are trying to convey.
Whether you choose to animate, voiceover, or subtitle, your videos are more likely to be clicked and shared if they resonate with your target audience. If you are going to the effort and expense to produce a video, make sure to budget for professional help on translation and/or localization. A translation partner will help you tackle issues of interest to local audiences and use cultural references that will appeal to your viewers. The more people feel represented in the videos, the more likely they are to share them.
Interested in exploring your options with video content translation? Let’s get in touch!