Brief for a Successful Marketing Translation Project

For a professional translator, the essence of a marketing translation project is to understand your company, the product or service you want to market, and the target audience, so that they can deliver the content that will meet your needs, seduce your target groups, and provide or exceeds the ROI, that you expect.

To get the big picture, detailed information about the following points are needed:

1. Project goal

What do you want to achieve with the project – is it a market entry, are you going to launch a website, app, a new product line, or service? Is it a marketing campaign in social networks or are you planning to do content marketing with newsletters, blog articles, white papers, or even e-books, to gain new clients and improve customer loyalty? Explain what you want to do, how you want to do it, and why. When the project does not include the whole website or app, always indicate where the marketing content will appear, to get the right message across.

2. Brand identity

Describe your brand identity. How do you define your company? What makes you different? How do you want to present yourself and your product or service to your German target audience? Bear in mind, that the brand defines your company’s identity and it is essential for creating the framework for the communication approach and content strategy. The brand identity shapes the story that the company is telling its customers about its product or service, it is a recurring theme, that will eventually create brand awareness in the new market.

3. Brand voice

Think about your company’s tonality and decide whether you want to come across as serious, secure, business-like, or you prefer to be playful, easygoing, inventive, creative, strong, glamorous, attractive, etc.

Another important thing is creating a voice for the brand. Will you address the German audience with the formal Sie or the informal du? This is a tricky question – in German marketing, they are in a plain transition from Sie to du, so there is no one-size-fits-all answer to that and the decision highly depends on the company’s tonality and the target groups.

4. Target audience

It is very important to get a clear picture of the audience you want to reach. The right language needs to be used to grab the attention of your audience and keep it, otherwise, they will lose interest in a matter of seconds and go to a competitor that addresses them in a more appealing language. The profile you provide should include detailed information about age range, gender, socio-economic status, and interests. A target audience description such as “German users on our website” won’t help translate your marketing content efficiently.

5. Target market

Why did you choose the German market, and what are your expectations? Are you already selling your products or services to German clients? Include any market-specific information that might have an impact on the content translation. Are there any legal and compliance aspects that should be taken into account? Is it forbidden to use certain wording? Is the company obliged to include specific information about its products in the German market? Don’t forget that the source content, more often than not, does not cover all the requirements for all the markets in which the company is operating. And last but not least, who is your strongest competition in Germany? If possible, name at least three companies.

6. Product / Service

Please provide product descriptions with high-level features, user workflows and exceptions, and screenshots of the product if they are not already available online. The same goes for a service.

Extra tip

If you have a list with the keywords in German, that would be of great help.