
Global business
Localization strategy
To succeed in going global, connecting with international audiences on an emotional level is key. It starts with communicating with potential customers in their native language and goes on with providing a personalized experience designed around local expectations, needs, and wants. This is where content localization comes in.
Be it web pages or marketing campaigns, adapting your content to the local context of your international audiences can make a big difference. It can help you gain trust, build relationships, promote customer satisfaction and loyalty, drive conversions and sales across markets, and ultimately, expand the global footprint of your business.
To break the language barrier and gain customers worldwide who will stick around to become true advocates of your product, you’ll need a solid content localization strategy and robust localization technology. Keep reading to find out how both can help you make the most of your content localization efforts.
Content localization is the process of adapting content assets to the culture and language of customers in a target market. It goes beyond content translation, which is only one aspect of content localization.
Besides translating text from one language to another, content localization includes a significant cultural component. It’s a systematic way of considering as many aspects as possible when making content fit for a target audience in a specific market.
More specifically, content localization aims to adapt content of any form to locally accepted cultural norms that guide people’s behavior and interactions: style, register, images, symbols, colors, currency, date and time formats, and more.
In an ideal scenario, content localization also checks for potential double meaning, unintended connotations, or offensive expressions in slogans, names, jokes, and idioms, and finds brand-secure alternatives.
Familiarity and a feeling of trustworthiness are of utmost importance when winning over new customers—and you can create these qualities by meeting your audience where they are: on their turf, in their language, and with content that resonates with them personally.
Studies have shown that localization can have a significant impact on business results. In fact:
These findings make it clear that if you’re not localizing your content, you’re missing out on connecting with a large portion of global consumers. As a result, you could be losing out on valuable leads, conversions, and revenue.
The simple answer is: As soon as you’re ready to launch in a new market. Entering foreign markets with non-localized content could not only result in missing out on conversion opportunities, but it could also take a toll on your business’s reputation. Potential customers who do find your content might not find that it resonates with them.
Even if localization follows a few months after launching, the damage might have already been done. That’s why it’s best to be proactive about it and have a plan in place from the start. This applies to even the seemingly least significant online campaigns—localize first, launch after, and avoid any potential embarrassment or cultural faux pas.
Once you’ve started operating in a new market, it’s important to keep up with changing trends and consumer needs by regularly monitoring your content. Localization isn’t a one-time event but rather an ongoing process that you’re better off integrating into your content strategy from the outset.
A good content localization strategy can help your company quickly get traction in a local market. A brand that’s able to speak its audience’s language and acknowledge its culture is telling them, “We get you, we care about you, and we want you to feel comfortable doing business with us.”
The main benefits of content localization include:
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In multilingual content marketing, not all content formats are created equal—some types of content hold greater importance for localization than others. As a general rule, any type of content aimed at facilitating your operations in a specific market or intended to boost brand awareness, establish credibility, or drive conversions should be prioritized for localization.
Here are some common types of content that may need localization:
If you’re expanding into a new market, you’ll most likely deal with different legal aspects: establishing entities, hiring, registering intellectual property, understanding tax structure, protecting data, and entering disputes are just a few legal processes that might look different than what you know—and there might be several more, completely unknown to you.
Linguists with subject matter expertise in law can be a great investment—they will know about rules and legislation as well as how best to comply.
We’ve seen how important it is to create brand trustworthiness and sound local—that’s why marketing localization should be at the top of your priority list. Make sure to invest time and effort in meticulously and consistently adapting your brand voice, message, and style to each target market while maintaining global brand consistency.
Ensure that you put the same care into the localization of your blog posts, landing pages, email marketing campaigns, social media posts, and paid ads as you’ve put into their creation in the original language. An expert with an extensive background both in marketing and the target audience will be able to help you get this done. Don’t forget to localize visual elements in your collateral, too.
Technical documents, such as manuals, product documentation, or how-to guides are often highly technical in nature and require a very specific skill set for localization. They contain important information to allow customers and prospects to use your products or services with ease, so great attention to detail is essential.
It’s advisable to work with technical translators with industry-specific expertise. A lot can be lost in translation if the specialist working on them is unfamiliar with the subject matter, and your reputation could suffer as a result.
You’ve probably put a lot of work into designing a user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) that’s appealing and easy to use, so make sure you don’t lose all that progress by failing to localize. Your app or website should be intuitive for users in every market, with language and flows that are appropriate for the target audience.
Each culture has different expectations and preferences regarding UX, so you need to do your research. Consider things like the use of color (red can mean excitement in some cultures and mourning in others), imagery, and emojis—all of which can send very different messages across cultures. Even where you place the call-to-action button or search bar on your website can make a difference.
Before setting out on your content localization journey, you need to make sure that your approach to localizing content is integral to your overall global content strategy. To define your approach, you can break down the content localization process into 3 key stages: analysis, decision-making, and action.
Before you can start localizing your content, you first need to take a step back and analyze your current situation. This will help you determine what content to prioritize, what markets to focus on, and what type of localization services you may need. The analysis phase can be broken into 3 main parts:
First order of business is to gain insights into your company—its needs, goals, and objectives:
Asking yourself—and your team—these types of questions will help you develop a clearer understanding of what localization can do for you and how to best go about it.
Next, focus on surrounding factors such as market research, target audience, and competitor analysis. You’ll want your strategy to be based on data. This will help you determine how your company fits the target market, what type of content is most popular, what your competitors are doing, and where there might be gaps you can fill.
Your research should also include things like an analysis of search engine results, social media listening and multilingual sentiment analysis, and website analytics to get a better idea of how your brand is currently perceived in the market.
Finally, you’ll need to take a close look at your resources, including your budget, timeline, and team roles. Considering the business environment and stakeholder expectations also plays a role here. All of these factors will help you determine which content to prioritize, what localization services to use, and how best to implement your strategy.
This is also the time to set some measurable goals so that you can track your progress and return on investment (ROI) after implementation.
In this phase, with the data you’ve gathered, you’ll be ready to make decisions. You’ll be deciding which markets to enter at what time. You might also be making decisions such as how wide you want to localize, which assets, which parts of the user journey—if not all, etc. This is also when you’ll decide which localization technology provider to use.
There are 3 types of decisions you’ll need to make during content localization:
With the decision-making done, you’re ready to start executing step by step:
During the planning and prioritization phase of the analysis stage, you should have set some measurable goals and key performance indicators. Once you’ve implemented your content localization strategy and the dust has settled a little, it’s time to look at those goals and see how you did.
There are different ways to measure the success of a localization project or program. Depending on your specific goals, you might want to look at any or all of the following metrics:
Nelson Mandela once suggested that talking to someone in a language they understand means that you’re talking to their mind—whereas if you talk to them in their mother tongue, the message will go to their heart. Content localization is all about reaching audiences’ hearts.
Localized content is key to how your customers perceive your brand in international markets. Get it right, and you’ll connect with them on an emotional level, which will likely result in an increase in sales, an improved customer experience, and strengthened customer loyalty. Content localization can enable a successful entry into the global market, building a lasting presence and trustworthiness.
Crafting a localization strategy that works for your business can be challenging, but the potential rewards are more than worth the effort. By setting clear goals, choosing solid tools, and following effective processes and established best practices, you can ensure that your content will turn heads and hearts in every market you enter.
Last updated on September 22, 2023.