Your boss comes into the office and announces that he’s read that an international B2B blog is a great way to reach new customers – but this means you’ll have to start working on English content. If you’ve never done this before, this might sounds like a scary task. To help you out, I thought I’d cover some of the things you need to think about.
In this article, I’ll guide you through the steps to optimise your English content creation for international B2B marketing – so your English B2B blog becomes a go-to hub for experts in your industry. When they have a question or need inspiration, they head to your website. When they receive an notification of a new post, they eagerly click on the link because they know you’ll share content that informs and entertains them – or that makes them think.
It is aimed specifically at companies in the DACH region targeting global audiences. As a native English copywriter, I’ll share my experience on defining your target audience, content strategy, writing style, and translating from German to English, and more. Let’s dive in.
Could you be missing out because you aren’t present online? Corporate blogs are standard in many countries, but here in Germany, many companies are still hesitant to invest in English content creation — even though it can be a powerful tool in international B2B marketing. If your company isn’t visible online, your potential customer may not find you. But you can bet that they’ll find your competitor.
With English one of the most important global business languages, there are multiple benefits of starting a blog. Here are just some of them:
• Improve your visibility in your target markets and create leads
• Improve SEO to drive more traffic to your website
• Establish your company as an industry expert and a world-leader
• Offer potential customers in a different time-zone value (and answers to their questions) when they are online
• Ease worries of your customers about dealing with a foreign company
• Demonstrate that you speak their language — literally!
• Reach all non-German speaking markets, since English is the international business language
But before you start writing your first post, let’s pause for a moment. If you start writing without planning your blog’s theme, tone, and structure, you may end up confusing your readers rather than convincing them to get in touch. You’ll need to make decisions on the content you’ll share, your writing style, and whether you’ll share content in both German and English.
Set clear goals before you start building your English content strategy and determine how will you measure your success. Do you want to attract potential customers via SEO to your website, generate more leads, impress your customers with your insight and show your expertise, or maybe showcase new developments and increase customer loyalty?
Define your ‘target audience’. Who are your international customers? Are they mostly in Europe or in Asia and the US? This determines whether you’ll use British English or American English [[link]], but also your tone, and even humour, which may vary by region.
Don’t make it all about you. A lot of companies use their blog to announce upcoming events, product developments, buying guides, and special offers. You could share insightful English content that adds value for your readers, such as industry news and trends, upcoming compliance regulations, or explain complex topics that are often misunderstood – such as the difference between digitization and digitalization.
Tip: Don’t do too many time-senstive posts, e.g., if you only post about product updates or upcoming events, your content will quickly be out-of-date.
Do you want to sound professional and serious, or a bit playful and cheeky? This will depend on your industry and how you present your company on your German website. Just as we all have to decide on ‘du or Sie’, [[link to du or Sie blog post]], we have to decide on our company voice. If you use ‘du’ with your German customers, you’ll probably want to stick with a more informal tone. Do be careful with the use of swearwords in English marketing content [[link]] though, as they are often seen as inappropriate.
Tip: Create a content and style guide for written content. Include your company voice/tone, whether you’ll write in British English or American English, any preferences regarding punctuation or formatting, etc. This makes sure that you are consistent, even when multiple people write for your blog.
Consider if you need all content in English and German, as it might not make sense to provide every blog post in both languages. For instance, if you are writing about a issue that only affects companies that produce in the USA, it might be of little interest to your German readers.
A common term in the translation industry is ‘transcreation’, which is a creative combination of copywriting and translation. Copywriting is the art of writing content with the goal of persuading the reader to take a specific action. A translator with copywriting experience – particularly one who is a native English speaker – ensures that your content sounds authentic and natural, and that it speaks to your target audience.
If you are a German B2B company, there is a good chance that the readers of your content aren’t native English speakers. You might not be able to translate into multiple languages, if your target audience is spread across Europe and beyond, but it makes sense to translate into English, a leading business language. But this means that you have to be particularly careful that your content is clear and easy to understand. Avoid idioms or cultural references, unless they are well known globally.
Denglish is a mix of English and German where the words look or sound English, but either don’t exist or have a different meaning in English. Even if your target audience isn’t native speakers, they are probably not familiar with Denglish words, so they are best avoided.
Consider also the formality of your writing as Germans often use more old-fashioned English, such as terms like therefore, hence, and thus, which feel a bit stiff for British or American readers. Going back to non-native readers – take a big step away from the German ‘Schachtelsätze’, those long, complicated sentences that take days to read and understand.
Don’t just translate your German SEO keywords into English. Think about what your English speaking target audience is looking for, and how they would search.
It’s often tempting to try and do everything in-house – especially if you’ve got an awesome marketing team who already create excellent German content in-house. But think about how much of their time you will have to allocate to this, whether they’ll have to learn new skills, and what they could be doing instead.
Years ago, I worked with a fantastic American woman was brilliant at marketing and partner management. She was an amazing asset at trade fairs and events, but she struggled to write marketing content in English or translate German content, even though she was also a native speaker. We realised that when she handed it over to me, that I could do the job better and quicker than she could, leaving her free to do what she did best.
What’s more effective — having your team spend days writing and rewriting a blog post, getting increasingly frustrated, or asking me to write or translate your English marketing content quickly and professionally? On my Services page, I have some examples of project pricing to help you assess this question.
If you need help turning your German marketing ideas into engaging English content that helps you connect with an international B2B audience – let’s chat. As a native English copywriter in Germany, I’m ready to help support your global B2B content strategy.
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