How to test international market demand using automatic translation

Suppose a client approaches your business about extending their license to one of their international offices. You must decide whether to provide your content in English or invest in localising your website for that market.

In another scenario, you identify untapped international market potential. With the competition hot on your heels, you want a first-mover advantage in this new location.

Expanding into an international market could take a year or more. It’ll also take significant resources to understand the cultural nuances, navigate local tax structures, establish marketing and sales, and tackle operational challenges. Additionally, there’s the language barrier.

In both examples, you could provide your services to the new markets in English, saving time and money. After all, English serves as a second or third language for approximately two billion people globally.

However, 66% of business users will pay up to 30% more for a localised product. Interestingly, business users from countries with high levels of English proficiency – such as Sweden and Germany – show greater preference for having content in their own language.

There’s strong evidence that consumers of business insights will prefer reading detailed reports in their native languages. So, how do you move quickly with existing clients or test demand in new markets without committing to a full-scale localisation project?

Deploy an automatic translation service integrated into a publishing platform like Content Catalyst to test your content and gauge demand in new markets.

We call this translation-first testing.

About translation-first market testing

Translation-first market testing involves translating key content into other languages and then using that content to test and validate market demand. It could be an isolated market test or part of a broader market entry analysis project.

The specifics of such a test will vary depending on the analyst firm, target market, and objectives of the test. As discussed, you could be extending a license to the offices of an existing client or testing an entirely new market.

A market test will broadly follow these stages:

• Identify target market/client.
• Select relevant content or categories for translation or deploy automatic translation across your content portfolio.
• Onboard users, which could be international employees from an existing account or new business for a targeted push.
• Measure engagement using platform analytics. If you observe traction, consider investing in localised marketing for higher-impact content incrementally.
• Refine your strategy by making data-driven decisions about which markets justify deeper investment.

With advances in AI-powered translation tools, translation-first testing is now a fast and cost-effective way of assessing international receptivity.

AI-powered translation is highly accurate

While early translation tools were typically unreliable, AI-powered tools are highly accurate and easy to integrate into publishing systems.

For example, the Content Catalyst translation tool is powered by Amazon Translate – a neural machine translation service that delivers fast, high-quality, and customisable language translation.

When enabled, users can translate reports into one of nine languages using the translate link. The translation is displayed alongside the original content so users can compare and cross-reference for meanings of particular words or phrases.

We deployed translation for Oxford Economics, a leading economic forecast provider. Their aim was to improve content engagement and scale global reach. Oxford Economics’ analysts are stationed worldwide and provide hyper-specific economic coverage in over 8,000 cities and regions.

Commenting on the deployment, Oxford Economics’ Chief Information Officer, Ben Nicaudie said, “For the first time, at the click of a button, clients can see a report in their chosen language – that was a big step forward.”

Remote global workforces are more common today due, in part, to more advanced technologies. While one enterprise account may be headquartered in an English-speaking city, teams will likely be distributed in other non-English-speaking locations worldwide.

This global workforce presents new opportunities for analyst firms to grow revenue from client accounts outside their home country.

Automatic translation is easy to deploy for existing client accounts, enabling analyst firms to translate research into local languages, strengthening customer relationships and extending the reach of their research.

Translation-first market testing can also speed up the time to market and provide real-world evidence indicating whether to invest in a full-scale localisation project.

Book a demo to see automatic translation in action.