5 trends in 2024 & their impact when expanding your business to Germany

5 trends in 2024 & their impact when expanding your business to Germany

Trends form their way into our lives and can influence, change, inspire, frustrate, or amuse us. It is definitely not necessary to chase after each trend, I prefer to observe the pattern in general and get more insights from what guides those patterns. However, in business, I don’t ignore the Zeitgeist (lit. translation: the spirit of the time) but I like to add my spin to it, and I relate them to my customers who plan to or already do business in English and German.

In the report you can read about 5 trends this year and what they mean for translating your website, app, marketing material, email campaigns, etc., followed by how we integrate them at Translations on Purpose to support clients now – because customer experience is still the number one for us business professionals, right!?

 

Nadia S. Krauss: Pioneering the Path to Soul Health

Nadia S. Krauss: Pioneering the Path to Soul Health

In the 1980th, imagine, could you or your parents have started a conversation around health and energy levels, reclaiming your body, getting your power back, or being on a self-journey to find your soul purpose? You would have received a blank stare or a disdainful smile, or rolling eyes… However, nowadays, that language is part of our common vocabulary and we are getting increasingly aware that we are way more than just the sum of our body parts.

Back then, what would you have done when finding yourself just on time but everybody else hasn’t caught up yet? Pioneering a new country or pioneering a new paradigm isn’t a goal for most of us, but a few Souls take on just that path.

We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience. -Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

For spirited Nadia back then in Germany knowing about the connection between body-mind-spirit-soul for our human well-being meant starting with a compromise in choosing a profession as an Aerobics instructor – what was not even a profession from a German perspective. She became a certified Mind-Body Fitness Instructor (still not an “official” profession back then!), and opened her own brick-and-mortar business devoted to fitness for body and soul! She offered her services as a dance instructor, personal trainer, and consulted on nutrition and diets. Well rounded and thoroughly trained through Germany’s vocational system and additional institutions, such as the AOK, the official government social health department of Germany, pioneering a new paradigm was still less than welcomed. When you are American, you have to understand that the vocational system in Germany is strong, yet well regulated, and to make a career within the German-structured society, you fundamentally do that overall the well-paved path.

Nadia, literally, had people from out and inside the German bureaucratic system telling her: “The work that you want to do can be successful in another ten years.”

After burning out twice and picking herself up and trying again another way, her personal life and marriage started to be affected as well and she realized that something had to change.

The couple sold everything and on 11.11.11, she and her American husband left Germany for working on a cruise ship. The Royal Caribbean International, based out of state Florida, USA, became a three-year journey completed with the decision to live in the United States. Nadia’s immigration papers took time and to be flexible while waiting in Germany for her Greencard, our pioneering Soul started an online business, the first iteration of “Happy Wholesome Life” … did I say that online businesses weren’t a thing yet in Germany at that time…?

Nadia’s expertise in her profession offered her upon arrival in the state of Georgia a job as a corporate health coach – what seems likely another straight-up career, except that she had to comply with corporate interests before even mentioning the word ‘Soul’… Being wiser now, she worked behind the scenes deep-diving into the business aspects of building up her soulful online business.

“In order to bring my mission into expression, I had to come to America.”

Stepping out of the German system with it’s deep structure and culture brought healing to Nadia’s German-African roots. America provided the historical ground and opportunity for enfolding her soul mission through her business: Wholesome Life SOULutions (https://nadiakrauss.com/). With it, she is pioneering Akasha Chronic reading and soul-alignment in the US. What is the Akasha Chronic? The Akasha Chronic is the complete record of all events, thoughts, words, emotions, and intent that have occurred in the past, present, or future, believed to be encoded in a non-physical plane of existence. With Nadia, you will learn about your primary spiritual gift in this lifetime through reading in your Akasha Chronic, and her Akasha Clearing is meant to dissolve blockages, limitations, restrictions, and karmic patterns.

Learn more about that in Nadia’s English book “The Magic of Transformation”. It’s a personal record and guide to transforming yourself. Walking her talk, she is going for full circle and is now writing her German book anew, for the German mind and soul, and trusts that a perfect-fit German publishing deal is possible… Curious? Then keep updated through her inspirational-practical podcast in English and German (https://nadiakrauss.com/soul-health-mentor/)

The last question I asked was if and how the German language influenced her business in the US?

„I now focus on refreshing and polishing my German language. Before that, everything in my business from marketing material to networking groups to clients was done and expressed in English only.
However, now with adding the German side, when writing and expressing a concept in German first, I gain a tremendous & deeper understanding and clarity of it, and that helps me to express myself even better to the point in English.“

Nadia is now pioneering the Akasha chronic reading and soul-alignment services also in Germany and in German. And you are correct… it’s unknown in Germany and she is forging the ground again. However, those “ten years” passed, our vocabulary changed and the world is in a different place … so shall we jump on the bandwagon of pioneering the new paradigm?

 

 

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21 Ways to Get Known, Liked and Trusted Internationally

21 Ways to Get Known, Liked and Trusted Internationally

Most business owners and marketing and sales executives don’t listen to their customers or communicate with them – unless those customers speak some English.

Many proudly announce themselves as a global company but when it comes to language translation and providing information in the foreign audiences’ native language, the answers I receive are less inclusive.

Did you know that over 50% of internet users at a research study said they would not buy a product online if the information is not presented in their native language?

The world is getting smaller, calling, emailing, messaging, and traveling goes faster across the globe. Websites are born internationally and can pop up in search engines globally, right? Advertisement algorithms are so sophisticated and social media is reaching every worldly corner to post easily. With reviews and social proof everybody can find the best options. But does this global access creates enough trust in consumers to pop in their credit card info and click buy?

Today, everybody can make themselves known, liked and trusted – so important to make sales and good profits. Many companies simply ignore the importance of making their content available in their customers’ language(s) and initiating two-way-conversations.

Don’t let the language barrier scare you and let sales slip away.

Here you can find 21 ways to master the Know-Like-Trust factor to make yourself found and known and liked and trusted beyond your immediate fan circle and become a real international company – and making more sales overseas.

Stand out and become KNOWN with the following strategies:

  1. Get clear on your audience: Same as in your country, define your target audience or narrow down and focus on a group to test the waters of foreign language communication.
  2. Learn some customs and cultural significances of that target audience (such as holidays, gestures and logistic exceptions).
  3. Translate relevant content pieces for that target audience in their native language.
  4. Translate your lead magnet into the target country language to stand out with your offer. And not only that, you get email addresses in exchange and can potentially communicate directly.
  5. Interview an expert of that country, translate the questions and answers.
  6. Write a guest blog for a relevant blog in that country (translate your guest post).
  7. Not just translate keywords and SEO-alt-tags – allow some research to adopt them to your business and goals, so the right people can find you.

 

Following are ways to make yourself ‘LIKED’ beyond that ‘like’ button

  1. Respond to reviews (in the reviewer’s language) to make them feel heart.
  2. Build relationships and engage actively to nurture likeability (in their language – yes, find this translator to partner and be your voice in another language).
  3. Show your face, be visible – even with subtitles on videos, people can relate better that way.
  4. Be nice, be customer service … yes, in German, French or the language that your customers speak
  5. Listen – research – ask questions in their language.
  6. Consider traveling in a foreign country and get in person with your Likers and Fans
  7. Attend international events outside your native country

 

Trust, being TRUSTED, the secret ingredient for people to buy into your services or products

  1. Don’t disappoint or frustrate your website visitors – deliver what you promise or communicate what is in their language and what not
  2. Be consistent: even if you can’t translate your complete brand, marketing material, etc. – yet show consistency across one channel
  3. Post those foreign language testimonials
  4. Translate one or so case studies to show your expertise
  5. Don’t use Machine Translation uncontrolled
  6. Translate at least key elements such as shopping carts, show their currencies
  7. Offer guarantees and trials (translate that info)

Yes, all those ways mostly relate to and involve strategically translating your voice, your message, your copy, your brand into your customers’ native language.

Is that approach new to you? Did you think about but are not sure how and where to start? Are you not trusting Google Translate (that’s in most cases a good thing) or even not any human translator to find your voice in another language? Are the costs of translating your content too high?

Our website and blog is dedicated almost entirely to shine a light on the aspects of growing your business beyond borders, communicating authentically with your foreign language audience, getting more customers and making more sales.

Come back regularly or stay in touch with signing up for our newsletter Translation-Marketing-Connection on language translation and marketing beyond borders.