The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) administer critical programs for residents of the United States in need of free or low-cost health plans.
These programs are particularly critical for individuals with limited English proficiency (LEP) — in 2021, nearly 20% of the nation’s population with LEP were enrolled in Medicaid and State Children’s Health Insurance Programs had LEP. Likewise, 23% of children enrolled in Medicaid had parents who spoke English “less than very well,” back in 2019.
As important as these programs are for millions of LEP patients across the nation, their effectiveness ultimately hinges on their ability to connect with and enroll eligible residents. That’s why it’s particularly important that CMS marketing strategies utilize multilingual content — after all, it’s hard to make your message resonate with an audience if they can’t understand the very words you’re using.
LEP patients often report difficulty understanding their eligibility for CMS programs. Similarly, many LEP individuals are completely unaware that these programs exist in the first place, due to the prominence of English-language marketing that is simply inaccessible. Multilingual CMS marketing strategies can help with all of this. From creative content like informational videos and brochures to more run-of-the-mill content like SMS messages and letters addressed directly to patients, it’s absolutely critical that Medicare and Medicaid providers connect with people in the language that they speak.
In this blog post, we’ll take a look at the different approaches you can take when developing a multilingual CMS marketing strategy. While these approaches differ slightly, the end result is the same: CMS marketing campaigns that resonate with people no matter what language they speak.
Approaches to Developing Multilingual CMS Marketing Materials
Depending on the resources and budget available to you, you can either craft the marketing content directly in your target languages or you can create content in English first, working with a trusted language service provider to translate the content into your target languages.
Create Content Directly in the Target Languages
It may be daunting to craft marketing content in a language you don’t speak — but using this approach allows you to develop marketing campaigns that are authentic and tailored specifically to your target communities.
Creating content directly in the target languages requires you to work with a wide range of professionals: in-language copywriters, SEO specialists, marketers and designers, to name a few. By leveraging AI tools, you can easily generate content briefs in the target language and send them off to content specialists who will develop whatever you need — blogs, social media posts, scripts, etc. — in the languages you need them in.
By eliminating the need for a translation step, you can ensure that your CMS marketing materials are culturally and linguistically appropriate, without having to wonder if something got lost in translation. That said, there are a handful of trade-offs to this method.
To start, contracting marketing professionals in several different languages can get costly. Depending on the number of target languages you’re working in, you also risk fragmentation across different languages — for example, your Spanish content may end up being visually and tonally quite different from your Chinese content.
When you work with a language service provider to translate English source material, the provider handles all of the hiring work on their own — if you choose to create content directly in the target language, all of the work of searching for, vetting, and hiring marketing professionals will be placed on your organization. Consider how much time and money your organization has to put toward these materials before opting to go with this approach. You’re likely to find that it’s cheaper and less labor-intensive to create English materials and translate them.
Create Content in English, then Translate It
If you don’t have access to content marketing professionals who work in your target languages, you can instead develop English-language marketing materials in house before commissioning translation or localization from a language service provider.
If you go this route, there are two different approaches you can take: Either you can create content using your brand’s standard tone and voice, or you can use plain language, which will help streamline the translation process and make your content more easily understandable. Below, we’ll take a look at the pros and cons of these two options.
Use Your Standard Brand Voice
This is likely to be the easiest approach for healthcare providers. Your marketing team can simply craft their content as normal, adhering to your standard branding, style, and terminology. Once the content’s been drafted, you can send it off to your language service provider and request the translation services needed.
Maintaining your brand voice in the target language will likely require your language service provider to transcreate — rather than simply translate — your content. Though they are closely related processes, transcreation goes a bit deeper than translation. Transcreation attempts to mimic the tone and feel of the original documents, so transcreation specialists have to take into account several additional elements beyond the text itself, such as SEO, local culture, copywriting best practices, design, etc.
In the end, this will yield a final product that closely aligns with your brand’s style, while also making sure that the content resonates with LEP individuals. However, transcreation is a more complex process than plain translation. Your language service provider will have to spend more time focusing on your brand’s voice and style, which means you should anticipate a longer turnaround time on projects and potentially higher costs to complete.
Use Plain Language
The term “plain language” refers to writing that is concise and easy to understand on the first read. Standards of plain language might differ quite a bit from your brand’s standard voice and tone, but it can be worth it in the long run to sacrifice your branding a bit for plain language content.
Plain language tends to be easier to translate and doesn’t usually require . That means language service providers can typically provide you with a quicker turnaround time on marketing materials that have been written in plain language. This means that it’s particularly suitable for healthcare content under strict regulatory deadlines, such as notices of action and member letters that must be translated and delivered within 72 hours.
But using plain language isn’t just about lowering costs and reducing turnaround time on your translations. Health literacy rates in this country are low — 36% of adults in the US have basic or below basic health literacy rates. Plain language breaks down complex medical concepts into small chunks that readers can easily understand. By explaining things in clear, concise language, you make medical information more accessible, enabling patients to understand your message and improve their health literacy.
Learn more about how to streamline the translation process by writing in plain language here.
Summary
Multilingual marketing strategies are the key to connecting with individuals with LEP. When it comes to programs like Medicare and Medicaid, it’s important that healthcare providers make an effort to engage individuals in all languages so that they can understand their eligibility for free or low-cost healthcare services.
Here are a few different approaches to developing multilingual CMS marketing content for LEP patients:
- Develop content directly in the target language: Yields high-quality, authentic marketing materials, but it can be too costly and labor-intensive for healthcare providers.
- Develop content in English, then translate it: Cut down on overhead by creating the content in-house and commissioning language services as needed.
- Use your standard brand voice: Maintains brand unity across all languages, but you may have to pay a premium for more complex language services.
- Use plain language: Makes your content easier and quicker to translate, but you may end up sacrificing aspects of your brand’s style.
No matter which approach you select, the end product will be a CMS marketing campaign that effectively reaches patients with LEP. At Avantpage, we’ll gladly assist you in developing a multilingual marketing strategy. Whether you need translation, transcreation, or web localization, we can help — contact us today at [email protected] or (530) 750-2040 to get started.
