With the Scottish election coming up on 5 May, export has become a major issue. The SNP are pushing for a 50% rise in local exports over the next six years backed by £2.5m funding, while the Liberal Democrats want to double the number of Scottish companies trading overseas by 2020.

These are both admirable goals, as Scotland does need to look at trading far beyond the UK in order to be a globally significant economic player. However, the major parties are missing a trick when it comes to export that would help to boost Scotland’s capacity for foreign trade with minimal investment.

At Lingo24, we’ve found that the foreign language internet is by far the most effective way to trade overseas. Not only is it considerably less expensive to test the water with translated websites than it is to establish ‘on the ground’, but you get a better ROI for internet marketing in foreign languages, due to there being less competition.

Scotland is home to a wealth of internet marketing experience, with many world class digital marketing agencies based locally - what’s needed is a way to tap that expertise and incentivise Scottish businesses to make use of the web to sell internationally.

This could include funding for workshops on foreign language internet marketing, and match funding for businesses to set up multilingual ecommerce websites.

Many of Scotland’s top sectors are ideally suited to exporting goods and services via the internet, such as whisky producers and business consultants. What’s needed is more promotion of the benefits of trading online with foreign language ecommerce websites, as well as training to teach entrepreneurs how to do just that, and subsidies to help them achieve it.

It will likely be export that leads Scotland out of the economic downturn, and there is a smarter way to trade internationally – whoever wins the election on 5 May will certainly benefit from an understanding of the foreign language internet.

tags: eCommerce, Export, Foreign Language Internet, internet marketing, Scottish election