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mars 14, 2020 |

Going Global: 5 Areas Where Localization Services Can Help Your Business 

Going global is no longer a trend just for large companies. Medium and small organizations can also find international partners and buyers to expand their businesses in foreign countries. The key to a successful global strategy is using localization services to make your brand and products appealing to international audiences. 

It may seem like a paradox, but becoming a global company actually means going local in multiple markets. In plain English, you should build customized business relationships with every local audience, just like you did with your current clients.   

Your online presence, information about your products, and customer support should all be available in languages that your potential customers are comfortable using. This way, you’ll capture their attention, gain trust, and increase your revenue. 

Here are five areas where localization can help your business to gain market share worldwide.  

1. International Compliance

As part of your localization project, you will dedicate significant resources to handle compliance information. It’s a delicate area, where a simple translation of your original content using Google Translate could bring you more trouble than clients. 

Every state has specific requirements and legal standards for product safety, user manuals, instructions, packaging, refunds, and data protection policy, among other documentation. So, you want your content to comply with the rules, to avoid penalties and bans in local markets. 

Not all countries have the same standards, so just using the same text rewritten in several languages isn’t going to cut it. You need to collaborate with legal experts and make sure you provide potential clients with all the information required by the authorities. 

As a general rule, most countries ask for the information to be written in a language that is accessible to all users. So, you need to make sure your messages are comprehensive and don’t leave room for interpretation.  

2. Packaging

Most companies focus on localizing websites, apps, and social media to increase brand awareness and connect with customers. However, this is just the first layer. You can use localization services to customize the customer experience even further. 

Packaging is one of the areas where localization services can improve the way in which customers from different countries perceive your product. Studies have revealed that buying habits and packaging are highly connected, which means that packaging localization can become a critical element in your globalization strategy. 

For a successful localization of your packaging, you need cultural insights and in-depth market research. Both are essential elements that will help you find suitable solutions that attract local buyers and are relevant to your brand at the same time. 

When carrying out packaging localization, you’ll need to change one or more of the following elements: shape, color, visual elements, material, text, and regulatory content. It can turn into a complex task, so having a reliable localization partner is essential at this stage.   

3. Overcoming Cultural Differences 

The primary difference between plain translation and localization is that the latter aims to overcome not only language barriers but also cultural differences between your brand and a foreign audience. 

When you localize, you do more than rewrite your content into a different language. Instead, you perform a series of more significant changes to your website, app, or product to make it more appealing to a public with a different cultural background. 

Cultural factors affect customer behavior on multiple levels. By localizing, you eliminate those elements that could keep a local public away from your products. At the same time, you add new ones to convince people that you’re a reliable provider that is aware of and respects their core values. 

During the localization project, you adapt your website and product to new rules. This includes a series of changes, such as:

  • Expressing units of measure using the metric system
  • Listing prices in the local currency
  • Introducing payment methods that your target audience trusts
  • Switching to visual elements that are relevant to a new public  

The list can be pretty exhaustive, depending on the country or region that you localize for and the similarity between cultures. For an American company, for instance, localizing for the British or German audience requires fewer changes than localization in Chinese. At the same time, a Chinese company will make more efforts to localize for the American audience than for a Korean one.   

4. Customer Support

Customer support influences brand loyalty for 96 percent of customers worldwide. While localization services don’t influence customer support directly, they still have an impact on how people see your brand among other similar companies. 

A localization project can bring that little something extra that makes the difference between regular services and excellence. People are more likely to buy from you (in both B2B and B2C) when they have information available in their mother tongue. 

Not only does localization show people that you care about their experiences with your brand, but it also makes it easier for them to connect with you. Every element that you localize helps your customers to find similarities between them and your brand. 

5. Marketing

Localization services are essential when you market your products to a multilingual public. By translating and localizing parts of your marketing content, you can maintain a unique brand voice across countries. At the same time, this effort contributes to making every specific audience feel important to your business. 

Marketing localization helps you to make an excellent first impression when you expand outside national borders. That’s because you adapt the way you communicate to a new target audience. This helps people to resonate with your messages and trigger emotional responses. 

Localization increases the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns and has long-term effects on how people feel about your brand. In other words, it builds loyalty, improves customer retention, and ensures consistent revenues in the long run. 

Localization Services Are Essential to Global Brands

No monolingual brand can build a consistent global presence, even in English. Almost 80 percent of the world’s population is proficient in other languages. The only way to reach these people and make them engage with your brand is by addressing them in a language they can understand. 

In the global business environment, localization services have become vital for success. That’s why you need to work with professional translation companies that understand the implications of going global. Localization experts and linguists can use their skills and experience in this field to help you communicate with multilingual audiences and convert them into loyal customers.