How to Expand to New Global Markets with Subtitles

Countless companies aspire to expand into international markets. If successful, this could translate to massive revenue growth and a wider audience. However, businesses can’t expect to gain global consumers if their video marketing only exists in English.

English might be the most spoken language in the world, but only about half of its 1.13 billion speakers are native communicators. This means millions of foreign English speakers still struggle with accents and have a limited vocabulary that makes complex messages hard to understand.

Generating subtitles for global markets can overcome this issue. However, this process must be handled with great care. The controversy surrounding Squid Game – the latest blockbuster Netflix show from Korea – highlights how poorly translated speech can create a message that lacks substance and nuance.

Rather than leaving your international audience guessing about your brand’s video content, produce subtitles for international markets that clearly communicate in a language they understand.

How Subtitles Help Your Company Reach International Markets

As uptake of high-speed internet and smartphones has improved globally, video has quickly become the preferred marketing medium. In fact, almost 90% of people want to see more videos from brands in 2021. Subtitles for global markets instantly improve your content’s visibility and accessibility by leveling up your brand’s international advertising potential.

Increase Your International Audience

For businesses looking to expand into international markets, the equation is pretty simple. By making your video content intelligible to more people around the globe, you ensure a greater number of consumers receive the message. 

This process means your business can attract more web traffic and sales. However, accurate subtitles for global markets also help spread brand awareness across distant regions. This can quickly improve your company’s reputation, ensuring more consumers become mindful of your products.

Customers are demanding more video content than ever before. Make sure you cater to modern consumer behavior and increase revenue growth by adding high-quality subtitles for international markets.

Enhance Your Content’s Accessibility

Updating your video content with subtitles for global markets is a great way to drive more customer interaction. But adding subtitles also means your brand increases its accessibility standards.

Did you know that an estimated 48 million people have some degree of hearing loss in the United States alone? If you want to expand into global markets, your marketing campaign will miss millions of potential customers if you fail to improve accessibility. 

Making content more available to hearing-impaired consumers is also smart for business. According to a 2018 study, the purchasing power of working-age adults with disabilities in the U.S. was approximately $490 billion. Boost accessibility and help your business thrive.

Better Serve Mobile Consumers

As the second-most visited website on the internet, YouTube is the ideal place to upload your video content. But with Google’s own data revealing that 70% of YouTube watch time happens on mobile devices, optimizing your content for this audience is essential. 

Most people who watch videos on their smartphones and tablets in public don’t want to disturb others. This means they turn off the sound and switch on captions. By creating translated subtitling for your videos in multiple languages, you can ensure your content is appreciated by a much wider audience. 

Consumer habits are constantly changing. But producing accurate subtitles for international markets ensures your business stays up to date with how customers use their devices to engage with brands.

Optimize for Search

Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the best ways for businesses to attract their customers. By making your content more visible to search engine algorithms, you can rank higher on Google and attract consumers looking for products and services you offer.

So how does adding subtitles help? Google’s search algorithm can’t actually watch your video and understand the context. Instead, it crawls your subtitles in search of keywords that help your content reach like-minded customers.

Creating subtitles for global audiences also generates indirect SEO advantages. For example, increasing engagement on your video marketing will boost YouTube subscribers and enhance how much time people spend on your website.

Improve Watch Time

It doesn’t matter where the viewers of your video marketing live. Keeping their attention for more than a few seconds is always a challenge. However, studies have found that adding subtitles to your videos dramatically improves the average watch time. 

Video content that featured overlaid subtitles saw audiences complete 91% of the runtime compared to just 66% for content that didn’t include subtitles. By producing compelling subtitles for international audiences, more customers receive your brand’s entire message.

How to Create the Best Subtitles for Global Markets

There’s an art to creating high-quality subtitles that capture every nuance – simply ask the critics of Squid Game’s captions. Consider these tips for producing subtitles for global consumers to ensure your audience never misses a beat.

Choose the Best Font

Your subtitles aren’t effective if the audience has trouble simply reading the words. This means you have to choose a straightforward font that doesn’t get in the way. Luckily, Google has come up with a clever solution known as the Noto typeface family.

This international collection of fonts provides attractive and typographically accurate communication across more than 1,000 languages and 150 writing systems. This way, your subtitles for global markets can display virtually every language with exceptional clarity.

Formatting is Critical

To successfully expand internationally with videos in English, you must also have precisely formatted subtitles for global markets. These shouldn’t distract from the visuals, plus they must not fade into the background. 

The ideal subtitles will depend on your video, but following a few guidelines will ensure you engage more international viewers. For example, 22pt font is excellent for readability. Meanwhile, align text left and always check that subtitles are legible in light and dark scenes.

Know Your Audience

Finding the right words is crucial when translating videos in English for international markets. However, your audience’s demographics will also determine how you use the limited time and space to display information.

As a simple example, subtitles for children have different priorities than captions aimed at adults. This is because children read slower and complex grammar is often distracting. Always keep your audience in mind when creating subtitles for international audiences.

Choose Rev Translator

Producing foreign subtitles for videos in English is not always a simple task. Considering a successful international expansion will deliver a much wider audience and outstanding revenue growth, ensuring the job is done correctly is imperative to your future.

Rev Translator makes generating subtitles for global audiences a painless process. Featuring support for more than 15 languages – including Arabic, Traditional Chinese, Russian, and Spanish – our native-speaking translators maintain our strict 99% accuracy standards.

Plus, most files under 20 minutes are delivered in less than 24 hours. Send your video content to our professional translators and benefit from a stress-free experience.