More than 50% of online shoppers purchase from a company located outside of their home country. The marketing and selling of products beyond borders is a reality that even the smallest e-commerce company can benefit from.
This is all possible because of constantly evolving technology. International markets that were previously inaccessible can now be engaged with. This results in increased opportunity and increased sales for businesses of all kinds.
Global marketing is no longer an option for most businesses, it is essential for continued growth. And localization is key to global marketing.
What is localization? And why is it so important in your international marketing campaigns?
Localization – Beyond Simple Translation
Let’s say, for example, that you have noticed a not-so-small part of your sales ship out to Latin American countries. As a result, you’ve decided to plan a marketing campaign targeting this region. You want to develop this promising market share and grow your business.
Your first step, naturally, is to develop a translated version of your website and catalog. You hire a translator, publish the updated site and wait for your sales to increase.
That’s a good place to start, but in today’s competitive marketplace, it is simply not enough. You need to localize your efforts.
Localization takes simple word-for-word translation to the next level. It not only reworks your original text into a different language but reworks your entire brand and brand identity for another culture.
According to Shopify, 75% of international consumers want to do their online shopping in their native language. And over 90% of these shoppers want to see prices in their local currency.
Besides translating your website into the languages of your key markets and localizing your catalog to reflect the local currency of the shopper, localization efforts should also include your social media accounts and any regional ads that you plan on running.
And be sure to skip the Google translator. With quality localization, the culture and identity of your brand and the products are coherently expressed by a local translator who is familiar with idioms and phrases, cultural norms, cultural symbolism, and less obvious taboos that you need to be careful to avoid.
Why Localization Will Help Your Global Marketing
When you localize your global marketing and international engagements by interacting with consumers in their language, you are building trust and increasing overall satisfaction with your brand and what it has to offer.
Customer satisfaction is directly tied to word-of-mouth recommendations and referrals. In the world of social media, this can also mean a boost in user-generated content hailing the benefits of doing business with your company. More than 80% of consumers are influenced by user-generated reviews and find them helpful when deciding to make a purchase.
Extending social media reach and increasing followers is a top priority for many marketing campaigns. When it comes to localization, your focus is global but your message needs to be local. Building a dedicated base of followers in each market through regional social media accounts will improve the overall performance of your content marketing efforts. Localization allows you to significantly widen the top of your digital marketing funnel.
Understanding customers is key to finding your niche in whatever demographic you work in. Through the process of localized marketing, it is possible to interact with and receive feedback from customers in a way that leads to a deeper understanding of their wants and needs. Working with skilled cultural interpreters who assist in this interaction will help you fine-tune your products and adapt to each market, leading to greater local success.
By localizing your website and online content, you will also boost your SEO rankings in those particular areas of the globe. Your localization experts for the markets you are targeting will advise you on the particular keywords and phrases that will help your company show up in the searches of your potential clients in the regions you are targeting.
Localization is key to global marketing if you hope to build a globally recognized brand. If you notice that an increasing part of sales are international, why not capitalize on that success and expand your business where it is organically showing momentum? Becoming a global brand can happen for even the most modest e-commerce set-up when you put in place a strategic localization strategy.
Conclusion
Investing in the strategic localization of your global marketing campaigns will have a significant impact on the growth of your business.
Transitioning beyond simple web translations to a holistic and authentic presence outside of your native language will fundamentally change the character of your enterprise. Increased recognition, increased sales, increased customer satisfaction, and increased growth are all worthy returns on what is a worthwhile (and necessary) investment.
Kristin Savage is interested in writing and planning to publish her own book in the nearest future. Also, she has been a reviewer at Pick Writers for a few years and is known for her thorough approach to accurately assess newcomer translation services. You can find her on Facebook.