Multi-Language Web Marketing Success
Web Marketing Today, Issue 48, September 1, 1998
Stockholm is a bit out of the way, so it takes more effort than usual to attract attention from European businesspeople. To let them know that The Adlon Hotel (http://www.adlon.se) has computers and Internet connections in the rooms, they decided to translate the main page of their site and sent out press releases in German, French and Spanish. While the cost was equivalent to one month's run of a quarter-page color ad in a magazine, it had a much bigger effect. Print advertisements need monthly transfusions of money to stay visible, whereas the Internet ad (that is, the website) continues on.
For their online marketing plan, the hotel focused on their target audiences: Germans are Sweden's leading trading partner, but the hotel also expected travelers who speak French, Spanish, Portuguese (even from Latin America), and Italian. Hence, Adlon Hotel's director had the gateway page (home page) into the site translated into German, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian.
One year later, here's the hotel's assessment of this multilingual approach:
"We now have over 3000 visits per week -- from all over the world! Adlon Hotel is a small hotel in a small city in northern Europe. It is not a tourist hotel; we have mainly business people (although we keep getting a lot of tourists as well)."From our simple e-mail booking system we are getting more than 10% of our reservations, without having to pay any commissions or offer any discounts. The only reason for this result is the way you have linked our site on Internet.
"The hotels that understand the importance of being seen on the Web are the winners. The cost is low. Knowing how to market a site on the Internet is the key to success."
Bengt G Lidforss
Director of Adlon Hotel, Stockholm, Sweden
When you decide to internationalize a website, remember that it takes time to build traffic. The Adlon Hotel's site was not receiving too much international traffic six months after these translations and promotions, but a year later it was clearly a success, partly because the indexes and search engines specific to each country attract more and more attention, as more people come online.
The Adlon Hotel translated a gateway page into ten languages in all (several of them Scandinavian languages), and actively promoted these gateways into their site. Here's a breakdown of people using these language gateways for August, 1998:
- German: 10%
- French: 9.6%
- Italian: 9.3%
- Spanish: 9.2%
- Portuguese: 8.9%
- Scandinavian languages and English: 53%
The hotel itself handled Scandinavian languages and English, and contracted out the other European languages. Note that other European languages are now pulling in 47% of the traffic to these gateway pages.
Instead of going through one of the large American Website registration services, Adlon Hotel specifically targeted U.K. search engines and press. American Web promotion services are excellent when broadcasting a message worldwide to those conversant in English, but it does not make sense when you're targeting only one or two Anglophone countries, as in this case. Many more English businesspeople come to Stockholm than American, hence, the need to focus on the U.K. The next step would be to translate their banner ad into these languages and run it in travel sites related to Stockholm, tracking responses to each separate language banner.
The conclusion is obvious: for very little outlay of advertising budget, you can receive considerable yield from other countries, just by translating a single gateway page of your site, and then promoting them in specific countries.
Bill Dunlap (ema@euromktg.com) is Managing Director of Euro-Marketing Associates (http://www.euromktg.com). You may reach him by phone or fax in the US 1/415/680-2423 or in Europe +331/5301-0741.
Read additional articles from Web Marketing Today, Issue 48, September 1, 1998
