Expanding your business to Germany is more than just translation work
November 27th, 2019 by Danilo Tesi
Germany is one of the powerhouses of the European economy. No wonder that many businesses want to expand to Germany after booking first national successes. Easy, one might think. ‘Let’s take what we have, translate our website, get some legal stuff out of the way and start selling like we’re used to.’
It seems logical and intuitive. However, it’s an approach that is doomed to fail in most cases. Here’s why.
Expanding to Germany – Lost in translation
Most of us had to do some sort of translation work during our lives, so you know the drill: you get some text in a language that you’re familiar with and translate it to a language that you speak well. Sounds okay but beware of the details.
Most of you might have noticed that it’s really difficult to distance yourself from the original. Most likely, you will end up looking for synonyms in the desired language which most resemble the original to stay true to its tone of voice.
Even the best translator can’t bridge culture gaps if the assignment is to ‘translate a text and make it more German’. Yes, the translation might be a brilliant representation of the original text in German language but does that guarantee you that the content itself will be as relevant for a German audience as it was for the original audience? No!
Germans are different
The sentence ‘Germans are different’ is quite superfluous because everybody is different. Russians are different, too and so are the Dutch, the French, the Argentinians and all other cultures on our planet.
For as obvious as it might seem, this common-sense often doesn’t find its way into how businesses expand internationally.
What I want to say is: know your German audience before trying to sell to them. What moves them? Are they afraid of certain things? Do they need certain things in order to trust you? What do they expect from your type of product or service? How does it fit into their lives?
It will help you with every step of the expansion, and ultimately, it will make you sell better.
What’s so different about Germans?
Why not walk the extra mile when expanding to Germany?
Money is often named as an excuse not to walk the extra mile. ‘Let’s do it rookie-style and collect data along the way. We can just set up some A-B tests and see what works best. Finding out beforehand will just be too expensive!’
Well, here’s the truth about this approach. Being data-driven is great and absolutely essential. However, if you don’t know anything about your target audience, you will have a hard time setting up the right experiments. It’s just like in science, you need initial knowledge to set up your hypothesis and the experiments to test it.
And as far as not wanting to spend too much money and opting for the rookie-approach instead: how expensive do you think it is to bombard your target audience with ads and messages that don’t connect to their cultural framework? My guess: much expensive.
Why you need to check your UX
You put a lot of effort into building your website, developing your apps and creating a bomb content strategy for your audience. Things work out, people love it and your business becomes more and more successful. Absolutely fantastic!
However, people in different cultures need different things from a product or a service. The Dutch love innovation, the Japanese don’t like product brands too much and the Germans are obsessed with information. So should you just translate your assets and show all these people the same homepage, for example? Absolutely not.
Find out which experience German consumers look for while using specific products and platforms of yours instead of offering them chic translations. Chances are that you’ll be more successful in choosing this approach. Need a first guideline? Click here.
Does your customer experience (CX) fulfill the needs of German consumers?
According to Growth Tribe, designing the experience which you want your customers to have while interacting with your brand, is becoming increasingly important to make your business successful. Why? Because markets are more and more saturated and the experience which you provide is what will make the difference. Yet another proof that products and features are only really important if they can facilitate an experience which consumers are actually looking for.
Beware, unlike UX, which focusses on the experience with specific assets of a business, like a specific website, an app-function or an email flow, CX (Customer experience) takes all touchpoints between a brand and its customers into consideration.
Meaning that you must pay close attention to the value that you try to deliver alongside with your actual product or service. Do you know which values are important to Germans? Download our eBook to find out.
Give your German customers the value they are looking for
Speaking about value: did you ever think about the fact that your value proposition might need to be adapted to a new market you want to expand to?
Without changing any aspect of your actual products or services: it might very well be that the Dutch buy your product because of its trendy design whereas the Germans really appreciate how safe or eco-friendly it is.
Would you really want to miss out on a business opportunity that could be created so easily?
Take McDonald’s as an example – one of the archetypes of so-called global brand strategies. Even though their branding is universal (logo & colors) customers around the world go there for very different reasons: in India, it’s a typical family restaurant and the Chinese like to go on dates at Mc Donald’s because they offer more privacy than traditional Chinese restaurants. Besides this, Mc Donald’s localizes its menu for each market as you might have seen when traveling.
Long story short, let go of the fear of needing to adjust things for the new market. It’s worth investing in knowing more about the values your German customers are looking for. You might be surprised about the outcome but knowledge is power!
Danilo Tesi
Danilo is the co-founder of Mango Kollektiv. If you want to know more about him, click here.
If you want to find out how Mango Kollektiv’s culture-specific approach to consulting businesses can help you, click here.