Relevance Of Local Languages In Today’s World Of Digital Content

Promoting content is a lot more than just advertising. It is about demonstrating one’s identity to their clients, instead of merely telling them. This has clearly changed how organizations connect with their clients as well as their targeted audience. Since the emergence of social media, brands now need to ramp up their online marketing endeavours with more of regionalised content with which audiences can connect so that the brand can gain their loyalty and trust.

Owing to the pan-India penetration of internet, almost every town and village in India has access to it. This internet evolution has made it possible to reach out to those residing in these remote locations and communicate with them in the local dialects. Thus, it becomes crucial to invest time, effort and money in creating multi-lingual content.

Companies that solely focus on promoting their content in English are clearly missing out on millions of visitors. The entertainment industry that comprises media, television, films and OTT platforms, is the biggest example of regional content audience.

Social media has benefitted the most from the internet boom in India as they are giving options to share content in local languages in the form of text, images, audio, and video. Nearly 90% of users consume content in regional language.

Reasons Why Digital Content Localization Is Important

Here are some reasons why regional or local languages should be used by brands for scaling their business:

Cultural Relevance

India is a culturally very diverse country. Every culture has its own language. When potential customers feel that brands can understand them and their needs, it is more likely for them to become long-term patrons of the latter. And there’s nothing better than developing that connect in the languages that users understand. In today’s age, if companies don’t localize their content, users are likely to feel estranged and disconnected even if the content doesn’t offend anyone.

Builds Trust

When brands devote time to localize their content, their customers clearly understand their commitment towards ensuring that the message is unequivocally delivered. It’s human tendency to buy from people and company that one knows, likes and trusts. Hence, localizing content will build that trust which is essential for a successful business.

It’s difficult to create genuine online connections through one’s website and social media networks if they aren’t speaking the same language as their targeted audience. Making time and earmarking the budget to translate and localize the content is necessary.

Helps Gain New Users

In the case of internet user base, the size of the audience matters. For brands targeting users in India, it’s important that they don’t overlook the 500-Mn Hindi user-base. Even other vernacular languages such as Punjabi, Bengali, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu etc. have a significant size of the user base.

If the product or services of a brand have a good audience-size for regional languages, then it’s advisable that this chunk be reached and tapped into in their own local languages. Also, brands need to teach this lot how to use their app in local languages, else they stand to lose these consumers.

Better Response & Higher Engagement Of Users

Using regional languages in online content can help brands get a better rate of user engagements and responses. These parameters can be easily measured with social media responses and advertisements. Reports show that India is home to approximately 210 Mn users who can be monetized as the annual spending power of this segment is over $300 Bn. Till now, vernacular content has been generating 60% better engagement compared to standard English content.

Summing Up

Adding vernacular content to existing digital marketing strategy will usher in an era where there will be increased internet consumption, greater growth, high levels of literacy, better health and an economic boost to the Indian economy. Hence, localization of content will enhance personal businesses, help tap into a larger audience and in turn contribute towards the overall growth of the nation.

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