However, this division of labor doesn’t necessarily benefit the consumer, and it isn’t a very efficient approach for companies, either. Instead, they should try to bridge the gap that often exists between technical writing and marketing in order to pool their resources and tap into related synergies. Collaborating more closely in these areas also aids in designing more effective marketing copy and more user-friendly technical documentation.

What’s the difference between technical communication and copywriting?

While technical documentation and marketing texts are both geared toward consumers, each has to meet the varying expectations of different target groups:

• Customers (or anyone who makes purchasing decisions):
  To appeal to this group, you need creative content that clearly demonstrates the added value of your product or service and gives people a positive feeling about it. This is traditionally a job for copywriters and other marketing specialists.
• Users of products or services: These readers want to obtain technical information in a clear, precise format that enables them to get started as quickly as possible. Technical writers have a knack for explaining complex operating structures in ways that are easy to understand.

While technical communications are created for a narrowly defined user group with particular needs, copywriters often produce content for a diverse target audience. The style favored for these types of material differs accordingly:

• Technical documentation is clear, concise, and logical. It therefore features short sentences, simple words, and uniform terminology.
• Good marketing and advertising copy is vivid and dynamic. Using longer sentences and illustrative language, it seeks to establish an emotional connection with the reader.

How technical writers and copywriters complement one another

If you’re looking to implement a more efficient content strategy, you should rethink the traditional line between these two domains. Marketing copy and technical documentation can actually enhance one another in very persuasive ways.

Consider this example:

A manufacturer of wireless doorbells commissions a technical writer to create an operating manual for one of its new models. The writer proceeds to compile a clinical, factually accurate guide that is then included with every purchase.

After buying one of these doorbells, a customer takes a look at the user manual but loses interest after the first few sentences and decides to install the doorbell on their own. They unwittingly make a mistake in the process, however, and the bell doesn’t work. Disappointed, they contact the manufacturer’s customer support department. The situation results in a frustrated customer and unnecessary costs for the seller.

Consumers’ expectations for a given product are the highest when they find themselves alone with it for the first time. Companies can use this phase to shape the perception of their brand with compelling content and establish closer ties with customers.

Now, let’s rewind the above scenario and have the technical writer collaborate on the doorbell manual with a professional copywriter. A marketing expert like this can provide creative input to give the guide a bit more pep and make it more appealing to the reader. Meanwhile, the technical writer is there to make sure all the facts and terminology are correct. Together, they come up with a manual that actually encourages users to read it all the way through.

When marketing specialists and technical writers work hand in hand, they can highlight the value of a product in a way that’s both practical and user-oriented. This makes a user manual (for example) a key component of the marketing mix. After all, it’s also a form of advertising that’s sure to reach the customer directly.

In this ideal scenario, the company in question has both in-house technical writers and an internal marketing department. But many small and medium-sized firms have their technical documentation and marketing copy created by external service providers, and they usually aren’t the same agency.

This can lead to problems: When the writers need to have complex processes explained by technical experts, for instance, there are often delays, and key information can get lost. Holding separate briefings for writers in different organizations also entails more effort and higher associated costs. And finally, there’s always the risk that writers will come up with content that sounds great but happens to be complete nonsense from a technical point of view.

How both sides benefit  

A collaborative effort between these two realms doesn’t just benefit the technical side, either. A copywriter who understands the technology behind complex products can also create more convincing marketing material. Once they have been trained to do so, technical writers can influence the marketing process by advocating for the user’s perspective, as well.

The advantages of a cooperative approach are clear:

• Faster, more efficient content creation
• Less friction between the two sides
• Opportunities to enhance marketing copy with practical use cases
• User documentation that serves as a marketing tool

If you don’t have the option to create such content yourself, it’s definitely a good idea to find a service provider that specializes in both technical documentation and marketing copy. You’ve already come to the right place in Lexsys: Our growing team of experienced marketing experts and technical writers will work side by side to ensure that all the material they produce meets (or even surpasses) your high expectations.

We’d be thrilled to be your one-stop shop for everything from technical marketing to technical translations. The specialists at Lexsys have many years of combined experience in both technical writing and text production in general. Why not take advantage of these valuable synergies yourself?

If you’d like to learn more about how Lexsys can assist you in creating both technical and creative content, get in touch with us today to set up a consultation.

With a systematic content strategy, you can succeed where others have fallen short. In this article, we’ll explain how SMEs and family-run companies can leverage the benefits of quality content in seeing through their own digital transformations.

Why digitization founders so often at SMEs

According to an Accenture study, four out of every five digital transformation projects fail at small and midsize enterprises. The company points to the lack of a coherent through line that ties individual digitization efforts together as the main reason for this, along with a shortage of specialists who know how to digitize business processes.

Furthermore, employees are often skeptical about new ideas. People are creatures of habit, after all, and we usually don’t relish stepping outside of our comfort zones. When companies don’t effectively communicate the reasons behind planned digital changes and the benefits they’re meant to achieve, they’re bound to face some internal resistance.

For SMEs, avoiding problems like these requires a well-thought-out strategy. A 2018 study shows that getting employees on board at an early stage makes it twice as likely that a digital transformation project will succeed. Your company can accomplish this by coming up with a strategic approach to communication that accompanies your workforce along your transformation journey.

How content can aid digital transformation in the world of work

The right content is essential in making information palatable to your target audience and influencing decision-making processes. When you make an active effort to involve employees in digitization processes, they will respond more positively and be more willing to adapt. Placed in the proper context, such content can even help you enlist your staff’s support in driving your company’s digital transformation.

Unfortunately, SMEs in particular often don’t have the time or the in-house skills necessary to produce high-quality content. Not everyone is a born wordsmith, of course, and for those who don’t have a nuanced feel for language, authoring even the shortest message can be quite a chore.

Challenges for international organizations

Things are even more complicated for SMEs that operate in multiple countries and therefore need content in several languages. From simply getting things wrong in translation to lacking an awareness of the finer points of local culture, there’s definitely no shortage of ways to put your foot in it. If you’re lucky, faux pas like these will only result in a few chuckles among your target audience. In the worst case, however, you can do lasting harm to your company’s reputation.

Even though more and more SMEs are taking advantage of the possibilities afforded by digitization to gain a foothold in the global market, localized content is currently still more the exception than the rule. When information is provided in multiple languages at all, it’s generated all too often by machine translation programs.

This is a weakness that forward-thinking companies can exploit to set themselves apart from the competition. In both internal and external communications, content that’s properly written in the respective local language is more likely to gain readers’ trust and get them on board.

How language service providers can assist SMEs in their digital transformation

For many companies that operate beyond the borders of their home country, communicating in multiple languages is a complex affair. While large multinational corporations often have in-house content and localization experts to fall back on, SMEs typically don’t have the resources this requires – nor do they deal with the type of volume that would justify setting up a language service department of their own.

This doesn’t mean that the employees of smaller companies need to start adding content creation or translation skills to their profiles, however. When you need to present a brand to an international audience or provide important internal information in foreign languages, a level of cultural awareness and linguistic finesse that only comes with years of experience is essential.

This is where professional language service providers can offer the help of seasoned experts who are familiar with the nuances of foreign languages and the customs of the people you want to reach. Content creators worth their salt are capable of producing all types of internal and external communication materials, from newsletters to training videos. With their assistance, you’ll also be able to assemble a consistent content strategy across all your target markets.

A growing need for content at digital businesses

The ongoing digitization of business processes affects all areas of communication. At the same time, a company’s need for mono- and multilingual content, localized material, and other translations depends to a large extent on its size and level of maturity.

In both its internal and external communications, an international, publicly traded company with locations in several countries has to factor in target groups that speak different languages. Even though most companies opt to establish a single corporate language, it’s generally a good idea to have important process documentation available in several different versions. This approach fosters understanding and a general willingness to engage with the content in the first place. Meanwhile, marketing and advertising material obviously needs to be adapted to each target market, and technical documentation has to be written in the languages required.

But what about a young startup with international ambitions that wants to start by focusing on a multilingual website and social media presence? At digitally minded companies like these, the most common types of suitable content include the following:

• A corporate website and blog
• Social media posts
• Marketing assets
• Advertising
• Press releases
• Annual reports
• Newsletters
• A company app
• Explainers and how-to videos
• Specification sheets
• Risk assessments
• Test reports
• Knowledge databases
• Assembly instructions and directions for use
• User manuals

Even if a midsize company does have an in-house writer or foreign-language correspondent at its disposal, they most likely aren’t well-versed in all the necessary areas. Depending on the industry, various documents might require highly specialized knowledge of a particular field. While creativity and a clever way with words are key when adapting a slogan, creating or translating an operating manual, for example, takes technical expertise.

Language service providers can slot seamlessly into internal gaps like these to provide both linguistic skills and area-specific insights. 

What SMEs should look for when choosing a language service provider

In the digital age, the search for any service provider typically begins online. It takes just seconds to find dozens of candidates promising to provide appealing content that will guide your company to international success.

Here, knowing what’s important when working with a language service provider can save you a great deal of time and aggravation. In our view, dedicated contacts, defined processes, and tailored solutions are right at the top of the list.

In addition, modern language service companies rely on a mix of automation, AI technologies, and other cutting-edge tools like authoring systems, video editing programs, and audio recording software. The most professional providers also have native-language copywriters and linguistic experts on staff who concentrate on specific fields. The texts they produce are thus guaranteed to reflect the right vocabulary, area-specific knowledge, and an awareness of conditions in the local market at hand.

How SMEs can optimize their collaboration with language service providers

The more information a company can provide to its language service provider of choice, the more seamless their collaboration will be. What target groups need to be addressed? Through what channels is a particular text going to be published? What tone is the company hoping to strike?

Questions like these need to be answered before the work begins and compiled into a guideline for the content creators to follow. Even when existing texts are to be translated into other languages, an in-depth briefing like this is worth the time and effort because it minimizes follow-up questions and related delays. If you need assistance in putting together a project brief of this kind, Lexsys will be happy to help.

With a fine-tuned content strategy guiding your efforts, you can support your company’s digital transformation and put successful change processes in place. No matter whether you need content in one language or several, or original texts or translations – Lexsys is the only partner you’ll need. We’ve spent years writing and translating texts in virtually every area of business. If you’re interested in working with us to drive the digital transformation at your midsize company, why not get in touch today?

The right content can be a highly effective means of communication. Whenever a decision is to be made, a well-thought-out content strategy presents opportunities to influence the outcome. A customer journey – that is, a customer’s entire experience, from an initial impulse to their decision to make a purchase and the subsequent support they receive – can be guided down to the last detail with the help of tailored content.

At the same time, however, high-quality content enables you to provide essential support for internal processes, as well. It can serve as a strategic instrument in change management and help optimize product launches. To find out how you too can steer decision-making processes by presenting the right information at the right time, simply read on.

How a decision gets made

A decision journey comprises a series of stages, from initial connections to final confirmation:

1. Awareness: Getting the ball rolling
2. Evaluation: Providing information that gets you taken seriously
3. Conversion: Bringing the decision home
4. Retention: Ensuring loyalty

Next, we’ll take a closer look at these stages and show you how you can reach your target audience in each of them with highly customized content.

1. Awareness Stage

Every decision starts with an impulse that leads to a potential customer’s first contact with your brand or offering.

In the case of a customer journey, the catalyst is usually a problem of some kind. The customer starts looking for a solution and comes across information on how you might be able to help. If you present the right content at this stage, you can turn an opportunity into a qualified lead.

In the context of change management within a company, a conscious effort is typically made to generate awareness. If a firm is planning to introduce a new employee program, for example, it will probably send an e-mail to its workforce well in advance. This will make the employees more receptive to the pending changes.

Getting all stakeholders on board as early on as possible is helpful in the case of a product launch, as well. Bringing something new to market is a complex affair, and the sales team responsible needs to have enough time to prepare.

At the beginning of the awareness stage, target groups often know little or nothing about the subjects companies want to bring to their attention. They also wouldn’t search for information on these topics; they simply don’t have them on their radar. This is why it’s important to pique their interest and present content that encourages them to explore the material at hand further.

In this stage, the following types of content are particularly effective:

• Social media posts and e-mails that address new target groups
• Content that’s both informative and entertaining, such as videos, podcasts, or animations
• Search-engine-optimized web content that attracts new visitors to your website
• Infographics

2. Evaluation Stage

The next stage is about nurturing the interest you’ve attracted. To that end, you provide the leads you generated in the first stage with relevant information that will encourage them to consider your offerings.

For a customer journey, this means taking potential customers by the hand and guiding their decision-making in your direction. You’ll need to highlight the advantages of your solution and clearly show them how you can improve their current situation.

In the case of change management, explaining the underlying reasons for the changes planned is key, as is underscoring the improvements that can be expected.

In the process of launching a product, this stage is the right time to give your sales team more details on the plan you’ve put together. When exactly is the launch expected to start? What target groups is it meant to address? What marketing activities are planned?

To get people excited about your brand, product, service, or proposal at this stage, consider the following ideas:

• Brochures, flyers, landing pages, product presentations, and similar content that contains detailed information
• Easily digestible information in the form of videos, animations, interviews, or FAQs
• Case studies, white papers, press releases, newsletters, articles, blog posts, materials for employee communications
• Training courses, webinars, podcasts

3. Conversion Stage

Once you’ve managed to bring potential customers this far, it’s important that you reinforce the faith they have placed in you. This is the only way to coax them into taking the final step, whether it’s making a purchase decision or becoming an eager participant in what you’ve proposed.

In this stage, those in the middle of their customer journey are especially receptive to success stories and reviews from other customers. The goal is to convince them of the benefits of your solution and how serious your company is.

In change management processes, you’ll need to identify challenges and provide answers to potential problems. Make it clear to your employees that you’re prepared to tackle such obstacles and have the resources required to do so.

A product launch also presents opportunities to dispel any remaining concerns and stoke enthusiasm. Here, you can show your sales employees the materials and other resources you plan to support them with during the launch. By reducing your team’s workload, you’ll increase their commitment to the process.

When it comes to winning people over, the right content is crucial:

• White papers, case studies, press releases, articles from opinion leaders and other sources
• Internal communication campaigns
• Sales tools and guides
• Training courses
• Personalized offerings

4. Retention Stage

You’ve done it: The customer is reaching for their credit card; your new employee program has been rolled out; your latest product is out there on stores’ shelves. While the bulk of the work is now done, you can still incorporate content into your communication strategy in beneficial ways.

The customer journey is an area where the retention stage plays a particularly important role. It offers the chance to turn one-time customers into loyal brand ambassadors. To pull this off, you need to be ready to provide help and support in solving the problems they may encounter. User-friendly guides and service hotlines are just two examples of how you can have a positive influence on customers’ experiences with your brand after they’ve made a purchase.

Maintaining employee loyalty in a change management process is a tricky subject. Changes in the workplace can lead to frustration and disappointment. In the worst case, employees may find themselves no longer identifying with your company, or the changes themselves may founder. To prevent this from happening, be responsive to your employees’ gripes, establish settings where they can share their experiences, and appoint staff to serve as points of contact.

To promote loyalty within your sales team following a successful product launch, it helps to keep your ears open. What went well – and what could have gone better? By taking advantage of your team members’ experiences, you can further hone your ability to design future launch processes.

The following types of content are well-suited to fostering loyalty:

• How-to guides, instructions, training materials, and so on
• Best practices and FAQs
• E-mail newsletters
• Exclusive content and offers
• Brand communities
• Databases that compile the collective knowledge of all participants

The possibilities are virtually unlimited

When utilized properly, content can strengthen buy-in, engender trust, and help build relationships. International companies should also bear in mind that localization lowers the threshold for internal and external audiences to understand and apply your carefully created content. To guarantee flawless communications that these target groups are sure to understand, leave it to the specialists in transcreation and multilingual content writing. This will extend your reach and enable potential customers around the world to connect with your message.

With sophisticated content at your disposal, you can cover a great many bases and help your business get ahead. To maximize your success in doing so, you’ll want to align all your activities within a holistic content strategy. This is another area where Lexsys can help: Our content experts know how you can effectively address your audience in every stage of their decision-making and guide them from one stage to the next.  

To find out how you can tap into the full potential of your content marketing, why not get in touch with us today?.

The Translation Spectrum: from (Fairly) Literal to (Highly) Creative

That being said, there are some types of text, like technical manuals and spec sheets, that require more literal translation while others, like marketing copy, call for considerably more creativity. In fact, marketing and advertising documents generally involve more than straightforward translation into the target language and have to be localized in line with the target culture. As a result, the target text may differ significantly from the source in terms of wording and even key concepts.

So, what exactly does localization entail? Explaining this can be tricky. But our seasonal example should give even non-linguists an idea of how literal translation – no matter how grammatically and idiomatically correct – can fall wide of the mark if there are relevant differences between the source and target cultures.

To Translate or to Localize? That is the Question

Let’s imagine you’ve been asked to render the following sentence in German: “What did Santa bring you?” No problem: “Was hat dir der Weihnachtsmann gebracht?” Job done? Well, that depends.

The translation certainly isn’t wrong: It’s grammatically correct, seems to convey the sense of the English, and will be easily understood by German speakers. But whether the German sentence is fit for purpose depends entirely on the context in which it appears.

Sorry, Santa Claus Isn’t Coming to This Town

Let’s say our sentence is taken from a U.S. commercial that an international client wants to localize for the German market. In the original, an American parent is talking to their child; in the localized commercial, both characters are German. (Note: We’re not talking about subtitling or dubbing the original here. Our client wants a complete reshoot for the German-speaking market.)

Now our translation is starting to look problematic. It’s not that Germans don’t know who Santa is – as is clear from the many Father Christmases dangling from balconies or thronging the confectionary shelves of supermarkets. The issue is that Santa doesn’t bring German kids presents. And that’s not because those kids are worse behaved than their peers in the United States.

No Fireplace Required

In Germany and other central European countries, the person who makes kids’ faces light up at Christmas time isn’t Santa but the Christkind (or Christkindl). Unlike Santa Claus, this bringer of gifts is not an elderly gentleman, but rather a cherubic child. And he delivers his presents not on December 25 but on Christmas Eve – and not via the chimney.

With this in mind, it’s time to go revisit our translation and get it more in tune with the German cultural context. Fortunately, in this example, we only need to replace one word. Our sentence now becomes: “Was hat dir das Christkind gebracht?” And we’re good to go.

Same Procedure as Last Year?

Admittedly, this is a very basic (and deliberately loaded) example, but it gives you some idea of how challenging localization can be, especially where the central concepts of the source are unfamiliar in the target culture.

Imagine, for example, that you’ve been asked to localize a German commercial based on “Dinner for One” for an English-speaking audience. This 1960s English vaudeville sketch has been broadcast on German TV every New Year’s Eve for decades and has become something of an annual tradition. However, to the amazement of many Germans, it’s virtually unknown in the UK. And if you’re wondering what “Same procedure as last year?” means above, you’ve just proved our point.

In this case, you’d better get ready for some interesting discussions with your client. Depending on their outcome, the final product might be very far removed from the German original. So far removed, in fact, that it is transcreation. But that’s a topic that would need a blog to itself.

Bonus Round

If you’re up for a Christmas localization challenge, how would you translate the following into English: “Was hat dir der Nikolaus gebracht?”

Clue: Ask yourself why all those chocolate “Santas” we mentioned above disappear from German supermarket shelves around December 6.

Season’s Greetings

The team at Lexsys would like to wish all our customers, partners, and visitors to this website a peaceful – and safe – holiday season. We’ll be taking a break from blogging for a few weeks and will publish our first post of 2021 toward the end of January. Until then, we wish you all the very best. See you next year.

So why is that when we’re in the driver’s seat – that is, creating for a customer instead of being one – we can’t seem to provide the right information at the right time? 

Rightly, criticism has been lobbed at the ubiquitous FAQ pages on websites. FAQs, shorthand for frequently asked questions, often lead customers from “know where” to “nowhere,” say critics. Most FAQ pages don’t contain frequently asked questions at all – instead, they serve as a kind of dumping ground for the “frequently assumed questions” that product teams think customers want answered. As James Hupp, a content strategist and supervisor for the US government agency 18F, put it: “FAQs are a way to show you’ve thought about what your users should know but haven’t thought about your users.”  

Indeed, there are many good reasons to get rid of your FAQs. 

They’re old, a holdover from the earliest days of the web when content was more company-centric than customer-centric. They’re not well maintained, because they are often created for new sites and get ignored, despite new developments in company sales and services. Or, worse, they’re too slow for a fast world, because instead of being properly maintained they become long and unsorted lists with trivial questions ranked as important as the others.

If this is the kind of FAQ page you’re offering your customers, stop reading this post and give us a call. We are happy to help you create the right website content that can improve the customer service experience of your brand, worldwide.

If you’re not convinced that your FAQs need to go, don’t worry – you’re in good company. Amazon, Siemens, Google, Apple – they all have an FAQ page, several in fact! Indeed, despite the reasons we listed above, FAQ pages continue to play an important role in the websites of the world’s leading companies.

So what can you learn from them to make your company’s FAQs more meaningful for your customers? 

Use FAQ to win at SEO

According to Search Engine Journal, FAQ pages are one of nine essential website pages that create the most value in search, right alongside the home page and the contact page. The rise of Google rich answer boxes is a major reason. “FAQ pages are ready-made for getting your content to appear in the coveted answer box,” said Stoney G. deGeyter, vice president for search and advertising at the Karcher Group. Google even offers tools for web developers to help them structure their FAQ data to yield the best search results. 

Audit your FAQs for performance 

The US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau answers thousands of questions on issues ranging from auto loans to mortgages through its FAQ tool, AskCFPB. In an interview with Digital.gov, the then product manager Ashley Gordon stated that just 10 to 15 percent of its content draws the most traffic. “We are going through a three-phased approach to determine why some questions get more traffic than others,” said Gordon. “In addition, as relevant rules change, we have to audit our content. For example, we have 300 questions about mortgages, and many of them will need to be updated in the near future.” Besides improving search results, an FAQ audit can help you identify and fix the customer pain points that are damaging your company-customer relationships. 

Listen to (and answer) your users 

Steve Krug, author of the bestselling web usability book Don’t Make Me Think, put it simply: “When you’re creating a site, your job is to get rid of the question marks.” Don’t make the mistake of creating an FAQ page that tells more than it answers. If Google rich answer boxes are any indication, it’s that customer’s are eager to have quick and ready access to their most pressing questions. So it’s your job to ensure that, for your customers, answers are easy to find and useful, whether these are pre-sales questions or post-sales support queries. This effort in designing the FAQ page can be invaluable for also showing your customers that your organization is already and actively listening to their concerns. As the usability consulting firm Nielsen Norman Group said, “The flow of information in and out of the FAQ shows visitors that sales, marketing, customer service, and UX [personnel] are on top of active customer issues.” 

In the same respect, we want to hear from you about your experience with FAQs. Share with us in the comments below or call us to get help with your own!