What is Language Marketing and why it could be advantageous for businesses?

January 29, 2021

Language marketing is a term used by businesses to provide an option to translate their content online to one or more regional languages, in order for audiences who are not comfortable with English to understand the content easily.

Today, several chat applications, online government services, digital payment services, classified ad platforms etc are witnessing a steadily growing Indian languages user base. It has been reported that over 60% of internet users in India feel that Indian language content is more reliable than English – and that is a remarkably high percentage, for this option to be overlooked!

This is because a large number of potential clients of a business or brand in India could be a part of this percentage of people who prefer consuming content in their regional language, and will be more drawn to the content, owing to the language. You will be surprised to know that the capacity that language has to attract audiences and create a deeper connection with them is much higher than one might speculate.

It has also been projected that around 90% of new internet users over the next five years are going to be Indian language users.

Reports also say that the Indian government is planning to propagate digital literacy among many rural households in the next couple of years. Hence, it can be easily expected that most of this new population will be from villages that do not have many internet users as yet, because of the lack of internet in most remote areas. And many of these users may not have been well versed in English language, and would recognize and understand content if it is available in regional languages.

And that is where language marketing will come in. The rise in the (regional) language consumption trends within the internet today has already pushed several e-commerce firms, digital entertainment platforms, online payment platforms and other internet-based players to continually invest in making content regional available to the audiences from regions where their content is expected to be “most-consumed”.

Most businesses today in the world, including India are providing the option to translate their content to another language if required so that a person who cannot understand English can benefit from it. This is because in the case of businesses and brands, regional text helps deliver a message about its products or services, reviews etc more clearly in these cases, as compared to universal (English) text, and convince people belonging to this category better.

Businesses targeting different regional and cultural groups of people includes transmitting a message that fits a particular target market. In other words, investing in translation of your website’s content in order to globalize your product is essential to the proliferation of their customer base and eventually the success of your business.

If businesses in India provide vernacular-based content, it will also lead to internet inclusion of more number of people from remote regions, especially among the rural population in India, adding to India's digital development. So besides being highly advantageous for businesses, language marketing will hasten our journey towards further becoming a digital country. For these reasons, online language marketing should be considered an important feature for businesses in India to focus on.