Cryptocurrency thrives on having a global reach. A strong, personal connection, however, formed on the understanding of a localised context, will be the key to overcoming diffidence in potential customers.
With more than 1,600 cryptocurrencies on the global market, you have to seek the most direct route to a customer, on the local market — as virtual the latter may be. Your software, your website, and every aspect of blockchain operation have to inspire confidence, by offering an experience that feels as trustworthy as real money does. Your cryptocurrency must be seen as safe, reliable, and, most importantly, familiar.
From Start-up to Daily Business
Right from the beginning, you need your company to be saying the right things to the right people. Cryptocurrency thrives on trust, and trust depends on perception. Since most blockchain enterprises do not have the benefit of a long track-record on which to rely, first impressions need to be solid in various respects: a strong technical base, reliable methods, sound business strategies, excellent prospects for growth.
If that first impression has to be forged in the earliest of stages, your potential targets will have one key thing to go on — your literature. Be it for technical white papers, be it for the Initial Coin Offering prospectus, be it for investors’ kits, be it for your website, be it for your app. Yes, English may be the lingua franca in technical circles, but not all your targets are going to be technical in nature.
Influencers and investors come from all over the world, and whilst they themselves might believe that they can communicate well in English, there is no shorter, more direct route than speaking your target’s language, and doing so like a local; convincing them that you are not a far-flung faceless entity, but a friendly, trustworthy enterprise that understands where the targets are coming from.
SEO & Marketing
At some point you will need to make the shift from a passive presence to actively reaching out for various levels of people and institutions. Placing your cryptocurrency on the market entails the creation of material specific to each market. While the core message might remain the same, the manner of delivery must be tailored to function properly in the various aspects of each local scenario.
It is not enough to have one global strategy for SEO. The performance of keywords changes between the different local markets you might be interested in. More than simply translating all the marketing materials, you need to rely on the knowledge and experience of those who understand your local markets to help you create campaigns that function effectively — an effectiveness bred out of resonance with the local ethos.
The striking of a chord, in an indelible manner, that does not rely solely on the description of an effective product — your currency — but which packages it in a linguistically and culturally familiar envelope, and then delivers it to precisely the right address. The latter aspect, of turning up just where you need to be, is a crucial aspect of online promotion that can be so easily missed if applying a one-size-fits-all approach to your marketing strategies.
Localisation for Persuasion
It takes one to know one. It takes the familiarity of a local to persuade another local. Anyone who has studied a language may be able to translate into that language, and true enough, the resultant text will be legible and will impart the necessary information. Would that text be enough, however, to convince someone to take a leap of faith?
The question is not, simply, whether a text is grammatically correct, but whether idiomatically, for example, it has the right flavour. In the cryptocurrency market, where competition is fierce, you need to have an edge, not simply to earn trust and credibility, but to take the further step of convincing your target you and your currency are indeed a good thing. That you are worth investing in, because there are no sharp edges to the process, because you are not a cold, technical, distant entity, but someone they might be able to work with just like their local bank manager, their local financial advisor, their local business consultant.
Someone who understands their needs in a local context, even if operating from a global position. That sense of comfort with the familiar goes a long way to make a blockchain operation feel tangible — a crucial aspect in a business that trades the real for the ethereal.
The Language of Trust
Cryptocurrency is a strange beast that is based on the breaking of new ground — technologically, culturally — whilst retaining roots that are deeply enmeshed with the history of humanity. That is quite a tall order, with high stakes and little room for error. Effective translation and localisation are a key pillar of the successful operation of a blockchain enterprise.
