As a business owner, it is important to understand the transformative power of communication. When you communicate effectively with your clients, regardless of the languages they speak, you open up opportunities for growth and success. Do you sell your products or services across the world? Have you customized your marketing material to cater your messaging to each local market? To deliver an effective communication strategy, you may need to use a different language, change your advertising strategy, or reposition your product or service to meet the needs of the culture where you’re operating. Transformative communication can help you do that and more!

Writing marketing materials that are easy to understand makes it easier for your clients to do business with you. Using transformative communication, you can reposition your product or service to address the unique cultural and linguistic needs of a given culture or population. We help our clients with this through transcreation, a means of strategically positioning your product or service within the cultural context of your target consumers.

What are the Various Types of Communication?

There are three types of communication:

• transactional
• informational
• transformative

Each type of communication is suited for different purposes. Transactional communication is best for completing tasks and exchanging information, such as ordering a product from a company. Informational communication is also used to exchange facts and data, but it also provides context, aids in decision making, and serves as the foundation for relationships. If you want to establish deep, long-lasting relationships that support business strategies and growth, transformative communication is most effective. It helps people understand the value and creates an emotional connection that influences behavior.

What is Transformative Communication?

Transformative communication is the ability to change or adapt your communication style to fit the needs of your audience. It’s not only about using their preferred language – though that is key to delivering equitable communications – but transformative communication considers the cultural context and nuances that resonate with your target audience. It helps your customers connect with your product or service, identify with your mission, and understand how they can benefit from your business in meaningful ways. When you do this effectively, you create space for dialogue and a greater emotional connection.

How Can Transformative Communication Help My Business?

You open up new opportunities to reach global audiences when you leverage transformative communication. It helps you build trust with clients and customers by communicating with empathy and respect. When your message creates an emotional connection, you will transform your client relationships.

Achieve Transformational Communication

There are three key steps to transform the way you communicate with your stakeholders:

• Understand your audience – Who are they? Where do they live? What languages do they speak? Why do they care about your message?
• Adapt your communication approach – How do they prefer to receive information? Are there cultural nuances that you need to consider that differ from your native language?
• Create space for dialogue – How can they connect with your business? How can you make it easier for them to engage, ask questions, or purchase your product? What gaps exist today and how you can bridge them to create a positive customer experience?

Each of these considerations will help you refine your transformative communication strategy and better connect with those you’re trying to reach in meaningful and culturally relevant ways. Let’s take a closer look at each step.

1. Understand Your Audience

Understanding your audience is about more than knowing what language they speak, you also need to account for their lifestyles, socioeconomic factors, access to information, technological proficiency, and more. Before you put pen to paper, evaluate your target audience, make note of their demographic details, and ensure your messaging and approach aligns with their needs and preferences.

2. Adapt Your Communication Approach

To adapt your communication approach, use language that resonates with people of other cultures. Be sensitive to words that may have a different meaning in their language. As you build your plan, select communication channels your audience can easily access and engage in ways that make sense for them personally. By adapting your communication approach, you demonstrate that you care about who they are and how they engage with your company. You give them access to information about your products and services that resonate with them, which potentially increases the likelihood that they will purchase your products or recommend you to someone in their network.

3. Create Space for Dialogue

You can create a space for dialogue by giving your audience the opportunity to share their thoughts and feelings. Make it easy for them to ask questions, get answers, and share feedback. When they, be sure to listen and respond in respectful, positive ways. If you have the opportunity to talk with customers, offer support, find commonalities, and seek personal connection. Not only will you build trust, but you’ll gather useful feedback to improve your business and you’ll help your customers feel heard, leading to a better experience with your company.

Create a Transformative Communication Strategy

To truly transform your communications, you need to:

• Clearly define your mission statement
• Create a comprehensive plan
• Develop measurable goals for each step of your plan

Mission statements provide a guiding light for your business. It helps keep you focused on your goals, informs your business decisions, and helps others connect with your work.

Before you start developing transformative communications, you need a clear plan that lays out the steps needed to achieve your mission. A comprehensive plan incorporates details about your audience, strategic channels and timing, and a thoughtful approach to implementation that supports your goals and meets the needs of your audiences.

Measurable goals help keep your plan on track. Use your goals to measure progress along the way and pivot when necessary. As you monitor your plan’s performance, you can make adjustments to ensure alignment with your mission. Transformative communication will help others understand where you’re going, how you’ll get there, and how they can support you along the way.

With these three keys in mind, you can successfully create meaningful connections with your audience. It can help you to build lasting relationships with customers by understanding their needs and creating connections on an emotional level that will help accelerate your business growth by helping others better connect with what you have to offer

At INGCO International, we have communication experts that can help you transform how you speak to the world in 200+ languages. We understand cultural nuance and the importance of connecting with people wherever in the world they are. If you’d like help to develop a transformative communication strategy, please visit our website or contact us today!

There have been catchphrases and unique words that can define a generation. Like Joey from Blossom and his famous word “Whoa!” or “Whassup?” from the Budweiser commercial. A lot can be controlled in the market place by these catch phrases. However, before we can talk about SEO or international search engine optimization, it is important to know what SEO is all about.

Having a web page is the first step, but the next big step is to get an audience for your website. Word of mouth advertisement of your website is a good method but it can be a long and tedious process. So a new method was discovered in which your website can come up in a search engine with the help of some key words. The idea is that when a keyword is typed by a user into a search engine and that key word is in your website, your website appears in the search result, thus giving your website a larger audience. Essentially this is SEO, or search engine optimization.

What is international SEO?

International SEO is no different from SEO except for one aspect: language. International SEO may or may not require professional translation of a web page. A major factor in this decision will depend upon the target audience and their location. If the target audience is Russia, for example, the content will need to be localized into Russian and additional technical changes will need to be made, such as local registration of domain name, etc. Plus, optimizing for Google won’t get you very far since the major search engine in Russia is Yadex. Yadex has a whole set of different rules and requirements than Google; working with an international SEO expert is going to set you up for global success and make sure you are in front of the audience you are targeting.

In simple English terms, international SEO is a method of increasing the visibility of your website in the search results — but for an international target market.

What are the benefits of International SEO?

The benefits of International Search Engine Optimization (SEO) are huge. Your potential coverage area increases dramatically and your ability to reach your target market is increased. More people visit your website and not only do you get more exposure for your business, your chances of success increase. How fast will you see results? This can depend upon many factors, but the opportunity of success is there for sure.

International Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an essential marketing tool for companies large and small that are looking to increase sales and awareness in an increasingly global marketplace.

Interested in learning more about INGCO International’s international search engine optimization, translation or interpretation services? Get in touch now!

“What’s in a name?” We have heard this saying many times. One can pretend about not being serious about a name but we do get frustrated when our name is not pronounced correctly (maybe unintentionally) and immediately try to correct it.

So, if a mere pronunciation can irritate us then how problematic can a different meaning of a name be? One assumes that it would be a major problem and more so if it were a celebrity child because the whole world knows about it. The fact is that human beings are inquisitive by nature. If we come across a person who has a different name then the first thing we ask him or her is “What is the meaning of your name”? This question alone proves that it does matter “what is in a name”.

Suri Cruise is a celebrity daughter and whether she likes it or not and wants it or not everything about her will be a headline. In the era of 24/7 entertainment and news channels, the paparazzi need something new to keep their viewers interested. And if they are able to find something as sensational as a different meanings of a celebrity daughter’s name then nothing better than that. They will try to extract as much as they can from this point and try to increase their ratings.

Yes, the same word can have different meanings in different languages. Some might be funny and some might even be derogatory. A good example is the English word “Madam”. In British English Madam is used as a sign of respect for women. But the same word can have a different meaning all together in American English. Does that mean the word is wrong? The word is neither wrong nor right. Just the context in which it is used is right or wrong. In the same way Suri means “princess” in Hebrew and “pickpocket” in Japanese.

When translating or interpreting it is important to recognize the context in which a word is being used and who the audience is.  Here at INGCO International we pride ourselves on understanding the message that our clients are trying to convey.   We care about your success and we know what you mean.

A peek at the history of the “Land of Ten Thousand Lakes,” presents us with a rich insight of how early migration from Scandinavian nations and Germany helped shape it. The later migrations from around the world made it truly international. This has all helped shape Minnesota and the international business in Minnesota.

Minneapolis – Saint Paul metropolitan area and surrounding areas are home to many international business headquarters. Such as companies like Cargill, Carlson and Andersen Corporation, US Bancorp, SuperValu, General Mills, etc.

What about the much acclaimed Information Technology environment of the Twin Cities?  Looks like they are doing fine and the report released by CIOs of Twin City area noting positively about the prospects for growth, raises confidence. You can check the report here.

http://minnesotabusiness.com/blog/twin-cities-cios-optimistic-about-second-quarter

The policies of the State of Minnesota have always been friendly to businesses to set shop here. The “Shovel-Ready Site Certification” program puts communities of Minnesota ahead of competition from fellow communities. Financial Assistance from the state in keeping the communities stay vital and contribute to the overall economy has made Minnesota a very attractive destination for investments.

The state routinely conducts trade missions to target countries to increase its exports. The planned trade visit to Berlin, Dusseldorf, Cologne, Oslo and Stockholm somewhere in June, 2013 and to South American countries of Brazil, Colombia and Chile in the month of September, 2013, speaks volume on the seriousness of the state to promote international business and trade.

Mission Minnesota is designed to help small and medium businesses go places and aid these companies that are looking to export their products and services to such promising markets.

Interested in document translation, on-site interpreting or global marketing services for the international businesses in Minnesota? Get in touch now!