Businesses are facing greater pressure than ever before to market their brands globally, but cultural and language differences are proving to be thorny barriers, particularly when companies sell products on the Web to a foreign audience, Forrester researchers say in a new study.

“More than half of global firms don’t feel that their company’s online customer experience is supported consistently in languages across the world,” Forrester states. “Even fewer transitioning companies (27%) believe that their firm’s online customer experience is consistent for different linguistic and cultural groups.”

Forrester surveyed 161 senior marketers in the United States and Europe, nearly two-thirds of whom work for companies with at least $1 billion in revenue. Cultural differences and translation issues were the concerns most commonly cited by marketers attempting to manage brand image overseas.

The Forrester report was commissioned by SDL International, which makes translation software.

The customer experience usually suffers at first when firms go global, Forrester’s survey found. Businesses often use separate software platforms for each country, which increases cost and reduces consistency. Only one out of five companies are using a central technology solution to help with brand management in all countries they operate in, and make sure terminology is consistent across languages.

“Companies waste a significant portion of their budgets retranslating content because they have no reliable way of cross-checking past translations,” Forrester said. “To eliminate these costly redundancies, firms should build a translation memory database and a tracking system that tracks and manages content translations. For example, Phillips Electronics cut months out of its content update process by shifting to a centralized translation management system.”

Facing these challenges will go a long way toward determining a company’s global success, Forrester says. Half of the marketers Forrester surveyed expect their companies to operate in at least five languages within two years.

“Intense competition, a growing number of channels changing customer behavior, and commoditized products make brand management and the process of creating a differentiated brand experience particularly important and complex,” the report states. “This complexity grows as firms expand operations into new markets and in new languages. Cultural differences, a lack of local marketing expertise, fragmented channels, and an absence of marketing process coordination all lead to a disjointed brand experience.”