Shopify blog
If you’ve seen a brand like Fenty Beauty post social media content in Spanish to mark Hispanic Heritage Month, you’ve seen multilingual marketing in action. Businesses use multilingual marketing to market their products in more than one language.
In this article, you’ll learn the elements of multilingual marketing and how to create your own multilingual content strategy.
What is multilingual marketing?
Multilingual marketing is the process of promoting your business in more than one language. The practice can help you reach both international and multilingual audiences in your home country.
Multilingual marketing ranges in scope from creating one-off marketing materials in different languages to consistently speaking to audiences in multiple languages across your marketing channels.
4 elements of multilingual marketing
Multilingual marketing benefits your business by helping you reach a wider audience. Here are the core elements of successful multilingual marketing efforts:
Translation
Translating your marketing materials into different languages is the foundation of a multilingual strategy. What was once an expensive and laborious task is now accessible to more businesses thanks to AI. But make sure to keep a human in the loop to ensure accuracy.
“You can get a first draft [with AI], but you definitely need the human review of a professional who understands the nuances of the language and how it should be edited to flow with the language of the market,” says Antonio Santarsiero, a senior SEO specialist at Shopify.
Localization
Website localization goes beyond translating words. It’s the process of holistically adapting content and images based on region-specific language and cultural norms.
“Localizing is not only translation to different languages but also semantics like spelling, idioms, date formatting, currency symbols—plus design that considers the cultural context,” says Derek Gleason, a senior lead of SEO and content at Shopify. “These may sound like little details, but this is what makes someone feel the experience was made for them. When those little details are wrong, the shopper notices.”
Canada-based furniture brand Transformer Table localizes their homepage to convey the same message about savings in different ways. For example, while promoting a timely Fourth of July sale on its US website in June 2026, its English-language Canadian site promoted a Canada Day sale for the country’s July 1 holiday, offering a 38% discount on bundles. Meanwhile, its France site promoted a generic summer sale with the translated headline “Host more, spend less.”
The hero images all feature a group of people sitting around a table, but in different interiors that reflect what a home might look like in each country.
Search engine optimization (SEO)
Multilingual SEO is the process of optimizing your website for discovery via search in other languages.
“It requires accounting for linguistic, cultural, and technical differences to ensure that the website performs well globally and that the message resonates with users, wherever they are located,” Antonio says.
Before you begin conducting keyword research for different languages, Antonio suggests setting up your technical SEO, so customers and search engines can find the right version of your website.
“[Consider] technical aspects such as URL structure, deciding between subdirectories (example.com/fr/) or subdomains (fr.example.com), as well as implementing hreflang tags and creating a market-specific sitemap,” he says.
For every international domain or subfolder you set up on your Shopify website, hreflang tags will be automatically created and your sitemaps will include published languages. You can set up subdomains and subdirectories (or subfolders) for free in the Markets section of your Shopify admin.
Antonio advises reviewing keyword research tools like Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, and Semrush to find high-volume, low-competition keywords specific to each market. Filter by language and region to spot missed opportunities and keyword gaps.
If your budget allows, consult native speakers to validate your text for local nuance.
“A native speaker can tell you which term fits your brand best,” Antonio says. For example, in French, both “POS” and “PDV” mean “point of sale,” but one may sound more natural than the other, depending on the audience or industry.
Brand consistency
No matter the language or market, it’s important to maintain consistent global branding and messaging so your brand feels cohesive even when you’re adhering to different cultural norms.
For period care brand Riley, maintaining brand consistency is about anchoring on their core differentiators, while also tailoring messaging according to local attitudes and cultural sensitivities.
“Our biggest learning is that you can’t just copy-paste the same message everywhere and expect it to resonate,” cofounder Fiona Parfrey says. “The key is to really listen and adapt how you communicate, without also losing sight of what makes your brand unique.”
How to create a multilingual marketing strategy
- Know your audiences
- Choose languages to target
- Localize and translate content
- Monitor your performance
Multilingual marketing can help you open new markets and reach more potential customers in their local language. Here’s how to get started:
1. Know your audiences
As with any marketing strategy, your first step is to learn about the audience you want to target. If your multilingual strategy is part of an international expansion effort, your foreign language audience may have notably different behaviors and preferences.
“We live in a borderless world with social [media], but that’s not always the case. There will be times when you have to really understand … the language, translation, but also what things may not work,” Katie Welch, former chief marketing officer of Rare Beauty, says on Shopify Masters.
“Perhaps TikTok is not as popular. Perhaps Instagram is not as popular, but what are the things that are popular?” she says. “The more you can understand the community, the better off your brand will be.”
2. Choose languages to target
Use your market research findings to prioritize the languages and markets that are the best fit for your brand and most appropriate to your business goals.
There are different ways to decide which languages to expand into. Here is how two Shopify store owners did it:
Focus on shared values
Verve Coffee Roasters is a Santa Cruz, California, brand that prioritizes direct trade partnerships and high-quality coffee. They decided to expand to Japan to tap into the country’s affinity for craftsmanship and the Californian aesthetic.
“Japan is an amazing place and amazing culture, and they love West Coast brands [from] the United States,” cofounder Colby Barr says on Shopify Masters. “They have impeccable taste and really care about craft.”
On top of starting a Japanese website, they continue to appeal to this audience through a localized Instagram account (@vervecoffeeroastersjapan), which highlights the process behind making their coffee.
Follow the demand
Transformer Table has launched several Kickstarter campaigns to raise funds. One of them revealed they had a following in Germany.
“We saw, ‘OK, we got a pocket in Germany.’ That’s a big pocket of customers,” says cofounder Artem Kuzmichev on Shopify Masters. “We started to focus on Germany later on.”
They market to this audience through a German version of their website.
3. Localize and translate content
Form a detailed localization strategy outlining what content you want to localize and translate and how you’ll do it. Here are a few options:
Enable Shopify Markets
With Shopify Markets you can sell to an international audience by creating localized shopping experiences for each market. Shopify Markets supports multiple languages, international pricing, and unique domains.
Wearable technology brand Pulsetto used Shopify Markets to enter eight global markets, including Germany, the Netherlands, and Spain.
“We launched eight markets and it took us only a few months,” said Ingrida Astikaitė, CRO and UX/UI designer at Pulsetto. “It’s very easy.”
After one year, sales were up by 261%.
Use translation apps
Accessories brand Ridge uses Weglot, a translation app they found on the Shopify App Store. It offers both AI-powered and professional translations.
“They pair you up with people who are localized in that market. And they just do the entire site,” Ridge CEO Sean Frank says on Shopify Masters. “We use them for our ads, too, to make sure our ads are being translated correctly.”
Another option is Shopify Translate & Adapt, which lets you translate your entire store and is compatible with Shopify Markets. You can see a side-by-side comparison of two languages so you can manually edit and review translations within your Shopify admin.
Look at brands in your desired market
If you don’t have the budget to work with someone who can help you localize and translate content, start small. Derek, senior lead of SEO and content at Shopify, suggests studying websites in your desired market to learn how to write calls to action (CTAs).
“If you’re going to go into the German market, go look at a bunch of German websites that are selling similar things and look at their CTAs,” he says. “Take a CTA, put it into Google Translate, and see what it says.”
4. Monitor your performance
Track your performance in each market to determine whether your multilingual marketing strategy is effective. Shopify store owners can access Shopify Analytics, a built-in tool to measure performance. It provides details about your customers, as well as specific metrics, like conversion rates by location.
Multilingual marketing FAQ
What is an example of multilingual marketing?
Multilingual marketing is the promotion of a business in multiple languages. It can refer to multilingual content marketing, which involves using educational, informative, or entertaining translated content to build relationships with target audiences in their own language. Or it could involve narrower projects like translating landing pages for local markets.
What is the difference between global SEO and international SEO?
Business leaders typically use the term “international SEO” to describe search engine optimization efforts targeting one or more target audiences in foreign countries and “global SEO” to refer to efforts to reach a global audience. An international SEO strategy might involve targeting keywords popular in Spain, for example, while a global one would look at the keywords that show up the most worldwide.
What are the barriers to multicultural marketing?
Multicultural marketers can face difficulty producing high-quality translations across a range of local languages, navigating cultural nuances, and managing multiple marketing campaigns in different regions.
