The honest answer first: to market an Italian brand in the UK, you don’t translate your Italian marketing — you rebuild it for a British buyer, in native English, and make sure Google and the AI engines can find it. Translation gets you understood. It doesn’t get you chosen.
I’m Mark Chambers, a British–Italian marketing consultant. I hold both passports, I work natively in both languages, and I’ve spent 25 years taking brands both ways across this corridor — Italian brands into the UK, and international brands into Italy. This is the version I’d give you over a coffee, not the comfortable one.
Why “just translate it” is the most expensive sentence in export marketing
Most Italian brands I meet don’t have a UK problem. They have a translation problem they can’t see. The English site was translated once — often years ago — and never touched again. A British buyer lands, something reads half a degree off, trust drops, and they leave. You never find out, because the enquiry that didn’t happen leaves no trace.
The data backs up the pattern. Around 95% of Italian SMEs have a bilingual website, but only about a third keep it updated — which means most exporters are competing abroad with a stale, translated shopfront. That gap is where the money leaks.
Localisation is different from translation. Translation swaps the words. Localisation changes the argument: the proof points a Brit wants, the tone, the humour, the way you handle price, the reviews you lead with. Same brand, rebuilt for the room it’s walking into.
Start with the story, not the ad budget
Before you spend a pound on ads, get the brand story right in English. Not the logo — the narrative: why you exist, what you make, why it’s better, in words a British buyer feels. A Made-in-Italy brand has an unfair advantage here if the story is told properly, and throws it away if it’s told in translated marketing-speak.
When I was CMO of a German classic-car brand, the work that moved the numbers — +400% visibility, +200% engagement — wasn’t more ads. It was fixing the story and the presence underneath them first, so the ads had somewhere credible to send people.
Build a site British buyers — and AI — actually trust
Your website has one job abroad: get found, build trust, turn a stranger into an enquiry. For the UK that means native English copy, British conventions (spelling, sizing, delivery, pricing), proof a British buyer recognises, and a build that’s fast and clean. This is most of what I do on my websites and SEO work — and I build it to be found twice: by Google, and by the AI engines buyers increasingly ask instead.
For a Yorkshire bed maker I rebuilt as Belsogno Beds — Yorkshire craftsmanship with an Italian soul — the whole point was a presence that works natively in both markets at once, not one translated into the other.
Be findable where buyers now ask: AI search
Here’s the part almost no corridor competitor has caught up with. A growing share of buyers don’t scroll Google anymore — they ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini or Google’s AI for a recommendation, and act on the answer. If the AI doesn’t know your brand, you’re not on the shortlist, and you’ll never see the miss.
Getting named by AI is its own discipline — Generative Engine Optimisation — and it’s doubly empty in two languages. I’ve written the full playbook here: GEO explained: how to get your brand cited by AI — in two languages.
One senior contact, both directions
Most companies entering the UK end up with an export consultant who doesn’t do modern marketing, or a digital agency that doesn’t understand language, culture or trade — with account managers in between. I’m the rarer third thing: one senior person who sets the strategy and does the work, natively in both languages. If you want the detail on who I help and how, it’s on Who I Help.
What I’d do first, this month
- Read your English site as a British buyer would — out loud. Where does trust dip?
- Fix the story before the ad spend: one clear English narrative, with British proof.
- Audit search and AI visibility: does Google — and ChatGPT — name you for what your buyers actually search, in English?
- Pick the two markets you’ll win first. Depth beats spread.
- Measure enquiries by source so you can prove what worked.
If your English presence was translated once and never rebuilt, I’ll tell you honestly where it’s leaking. That’s exactly what the Corridor Audit is — a senior, bilingual review of where you stand and what to fix first. No retainer, no lock-in.
Or message me, in English or Italian.