You know that your company has what it takes to dominate the global market, and you’re eager to start expanding as soon as possible.
But unless you take the time to develop a strong localization strategy, you could end up insolvent — or with a seriously damaged reputation.
But what is content localization? And why is it so important for your overall branding strategy?
Keep reading if you want to find out how to connect with local markets and increase your conversions in the process.
Why localized marketing matters
Creating localized content for your website, blog, and any and all other online presence that your brand has is important for many reasons.
In a nutshell, a localization strategy is the practice of geo-targeting; tailoring your content through subject matter, keywords, and languages in order to connect with a localized market as opposed to a global one.
For example, as opposed to covering global political issues or events, you might choose to focus on a more specific local election, town hall meeting, or even opening a new restaurant or entertainment venue.
Your graphics, the language you write in, the topics you cover, and pretty much everything else will be specific to a localized market. You can create as many of these localized strategies as you’d like based on the different areas you plan to target.
Essentially, you advertise how your blog, goods, or services meet the specific needs of a specific city, neighborhood, or region.
As opposed to painting the global market with a broad brush by creating a singular web page, e-newsletter, or even social media account and keywords, you create several localized versions of the same thing, each designed to appeal to a unique local market.
But why should you care?
First of all, over 3/4 of shoppers say they prefer to communicate with brands in their local language.
More importantly, you’ll increase your conversion rate by appealing to local culture, traditions, and history while offering solutions to location-based problems.
You make use of lifestyle data and analytics about your website traffic, and even use the average income of a nation to price your products or services.
It’s about tailoring the shopping experience to a unique community.
How to master localization marketing
Now that you have a stronger understanding of localization marketing, let’s talk about a few of the many strategies that you can adapt to make the most of it.
From making sure you know your goals to find the right balance between localized and broader content, read on.
1. Clearly define your market and goals
When you decide to go global, we know that you’re eager to reach as wide of a market as possible as quickly as possible.
However, rushing through the process without taking the time to truly study not just how a specific international market behaves online, but also the way their culture works can lead to disaster.
For example, take a look at a few of these global branding fails.
Even one mistranslated word, offensive image, or misunderstood Tweet can mean the end of your expansion before it even started.
So, make sure you know the laws, cultural expectations, religion, language, and even the current political situation in your localized market.
You also need to set realistic goals.
Aim for one localized market at a time, and learn from your past mistakes. In addition, make customer surveys and feedback a part of your process.
2. Create a balance between localized content and headquarters
This is a tough one.
While you want to make sure that your localized content is in line with your overall branding strategy, you also don’t want to make it too bland and broad.
Make localized content frequently referencing your company culture, products, and services as a whole. Talk about your headquarters, and your CEO, and try to keep your “lingo” and goals consistent across all of your globalized markets.
Aim for a solid balance between hyper-localized content and more HQ-focused content for the best results.
3. Optimize your website for international users
One of the most important parts of your localization strategy is to make sure that your website is actually optimized for the communities that will use it.
This means that you’ll need to create multiple versions of the website, or preferably, utilize a CMS plugin tool to automate the translation process if you want to use different languages as well as include more local blog posts and pages.
You’ll need to ensure that any site navigation is intuitive and customer-centric. Your website will need to load just as quickly and completely on mobile devices as it does on a desktop regardless of the language version.
We also suggest that you conduct a site audit to find any other technical problems with your website.
Take your localization strategy to the next level
We hope that this post has taught you not only why developing a localization strategy for your company is important, but also the steps that you can take to make it happen for your brand.
Remember to optimize your website for localized use, do your research on each individual market, and set goals you can actually achieve.
Looking for translation services that you can trust? Need assistance with desktop publishing, website translation, and marketing localization for your business? We can help.
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