Marketing in Quebec for US Companies: French First, by Law and by Habit

Marketing in Quebec for US companies looks easy on a map: Montreal is a short flight from New York, and plenty of buyers speak English. Then the first French-speaking prospect lands on an English-only page, a Quebec reseller asks for French packaging copy, and the launch stalls on questions nobody planned for.

Référenceur works out of Francorchamps, Belgium, and Wemperhardt, Luxembourg, which makes French our everyday working language rather than a service bought from a vendor. That matters in Quebec in a specific way: we know European French well enough to spot where it would sound foreign to a Montrealer, and we write English copy for U.S. readers just as natively. Over more than 15 years of client work, we’ve earned an average of 4.7/5 across 107 Google reviews. If you want the wider picture first, our French-language marketing agency page covers every French-speaking market we serve.

Who Reads French in Quebec, and Where English Still Works

A common U.S. assumption is that Montreal runs on English. The data says otherwise. According to figures the Office québécois de la langue française (OQLF) published from the 2021 census, 77.5% of people in Quebec speak French most often at home, against 10.4% for English. In the Montreal metropolitan area, the French share drops to 63.8%. On the island of Montreal itself, 44.0% have French as their only mother tongue.

Bilingualism is real but partial. Quebec’s statistics institute (ISQ) reports that 46% of Quebecers could hold a conversation in both French and English in 2021. A majority of the province, in other words, is not bilingual, and few people enjoy buying in their second language.

Three practical consequences follow:

• Montreal and the rest of Quebec are different audiences. Outside the Montreal area, the French share is higher still.
• B2B buyers in downtown Montreal may read English, but the person who signs the purchase order may well work in French.
• Your French pages need their own keyword research. Quebec search terms are not a translation of your U.S. list.

What Quebec’s Language Rules Touch in Your Marketing

The French language law Quebec marketing teams run into first is the Charter of the French Language, amended by Bill 96, which received assent on June 1, 2022. The OQLF enforces it. Treat what follows as questions for your lawyer: this is not legal advice; check with your counsel.

Enforcement is not theoretical. In an OQLF press release dated May 9, 2025, the Office reported that the Court of Quebec fined a furniture retailer C$1,500 on January 21, 2025, because its website was only in a language other than French. The OQLF’s 2025 list of convictions shows six cases, with fines ranging from C$700 to C$3,000. The amounts are modest; the cost of rebuilding a site and repackaging stock is not.

There is also a transition for products: some items made before June 1, 2025, can still be sold until June 1, 2027, under conditions the OQLF spells out, including a cutoff date for French trademark filings. Whether, and how, these rules apply to a U.S. seller with no establishment in Quebec is precisely the question to put to Quebec counsel before you spend on media.

Law 25: Why Your U.S. Cookie Banner Fails in Montreal

Quebec’s privacy reform, known as Law 25, rolled out in stages between September 2022 and September 2024. The Commission d’accès à l’information (CAI), Quebec’s privacy regulator, summarizes the parts that hit marketing teams directly:

1. Tracking is off by default. Technologies that can identify, locate, or profile a person must not be activated by default. People must be informed first and given a way to switch them on. A U.S.-style banner that fires every pixel on page load doesn’t fit that model.
2. A plain-language privacy policy. Organizations that collect personal information through technology must publish a privacy policy written in simple, clear terms on their website and notify people of changes.
3. Data leaving Quebec. Before personal information is communicated outside Quebec, the organization must assess privacy factors, and the transfer must be covered by a written agreement. If your CRM, ad platforms, and email tool all sit in the U.S., that assessment is part of your launch checklist.
4. Penalties with teeth. The CAI notes that administrative monetary penalties can reach C$10 million or 2% of worldwide revenue.

In practice, we configure Google Tag Manager so analytics and ad tags wait for consent. Your counsel decides what the policy says; we make sure the site behaves the way it says.

Quebec French Is Not Paris French: A Vocabulary Check

Quebec has its own standard, and the OQLF actively recommends French terms for everyday digital words. Copy written in Paris, or in Brussels, can read as imported. Picture a Boston outdoor-gear brand whose French site talks about “le shopping” and “les chaussettes.” A Quebec shopper would expect different words, and would notice.

These small words sit in menus, product filters, and email subject lines, exactly where trust is won or lost. Because we’re native French speakers from Europe, we flag these differences ourselves, and we recommend that a Quebec reader sign off on final copy for consumer brands. Our French website localization process builds that review step in from the start.

Running Campaigns Into Quebec From the U.S.

A Quebec campaign is not your U.S. account with a French ad group bolted on. Here’s the structure we use:

• Separate campaigns for Quebec, with location targeting set to the province (or to specific regions) and the French language setting enabled.
• French ads that point to French landing pages, never to the English homepage.
• Prices shown in Canadian dollars, with shipping, duties, and taxes explained before checkout, because surprise fees at the border kill repeat orders.
• Conversion tracking split by language, so you know whether French traffic pays for itself (our conversion tracking guide covers the setup).
• Microsoft Advertising tested alongside Google for B2B offers.

The details of bidding and budget split by country are on our Google Ads in French-speaking markets page. On the organic side, a French section with fr-CA hreflang annotations helps Google serve the right version to Quebec searchers; our French SEO agency handles keyword research in Quebec French and the technical setup. For background on site structure across countries, see our international SEO guide.

Beyond Quebec: Content That Can Travel, Carefully

The French you produce for Quebec isn’t wasted elsewhere. French speakers number in the hundreds of millions worldwide, and Quebec is only one corner of that audience. Specifications and support articles can often be shared across markets; headlines, offers, and vocabulary usually can’t. When France is next on your list, our page on marketing in France for U.S. companies covers the different rules that apply there.

If you’re weighing a Quebec digital marketing agency for US companies against a team based in Europe, here is the honest trade-off. A Montreal firm lives inside the market. We bring native French and native-level English under one roof: a team from Belgium and Luxembourg that knows where European and North American French part ways, and a remote routine that holds up: we meet over video, share screens to review pages line by line, and send a report every month, scheduled at hours that suit your time zone and ours. Get a Free Assessment and we’ll review your site, your labels, and your consent setup against the questions on this page. You can also request a free assessment of an existing Canadian ad account.

Frequently Asked Questions About Marketing in Quebec