As anyone working in the field knows, branding has many aspects to it. There may be visible and instantly recognisable visual aspects like a logo, but there is also a reputation, a promise and an image, among other aspects.
All of these are intended to at first make a brand recognisable, then something well known. But to be successful, a brand needs a strong and positive reputation for quality, trust and integrity.
It is the achievement of this that can engender brand loyalty. People will not become loyal to a brand because it produces interesting and funny adverts on TV, or has a nice looking logo. They will be loyal because they get good products and services, a sense that people care and consistent high standards.
Brand loyalty is particularly important because the majority of custom comes from people who are existing purchasers who come back again and again after a positive initial interaction. Indeed, the way to success for most firms lies in keeping happy customers on board rather than trying to bring in new ones.
A company trading in the UK alone can, of course, market and communicate entirely in English, but once your firm is working across international borders beyond the Anglosphere, the importance of accurate translations in maintaining customer loyalty will come to the fore.
We have all seen those amusing cases of poor translations between languages leading to something unintended. China is the butt of much of this humour, with erroneous translations into English providing endless material for books and websites.
Such catastrophic errors may give some people a laugh and the examples that get publicised are at the extreme end of the scale, but nobody will be amused if your customers are on the receiving end of poor translations themselves.
Quite simply, such errors will make you look unprofessional and lacking in competence, may deprive the reader of the accurate information they are seeking and will damage their faith in you. Nothing could do more to undermine brand loyalty.
The key with brand loyalty is always to remember that in the marketplace, what you offer may not be particularly dissimilar to your rivals. Differences in price will be limited and in many spheres firms will seek to price-match anyway. Even unique selling points (USPs) may not actually be all that unique after all, once someone else decides to copy them.
If your USP is offering services to people in different countries and speaking different languages, with good translations in each case, that would mean your competitors are falling behind badly in not seeking to do the same. Conversely, however, failures in this area by your firm will hand a big advantage to rivals who do offer good, accurate translations.
By providing excellent translations so that customers who are non-English speakers, or who simply prefer to read things in their mother tongue, you can provide a standard of service that sets you apart from your rivals and leaves no room for brand-loyal customers to feel alienated and start looking for alternatives.
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