Marketing Localization Guide: How To Avoid Challenges

The importance of localization in content marketing cannot be overstated. You may reach new audiences and boost engagement rates by creating content specifically tailored for international markets. This is crucial since it makes your content more pertinent to clients around the world. Localized content can also increase regional awareness of a global brand.

Marketing localization is a crucial component of the equation whether you’re a multinational corporation wanting to globalize your marketing strategies or a small firm looking to do the same.

A certified marketing localization agency helps the business to grow in all possible ways that business owners never imagined. In this case, hiring a professional marketing localization company can be a good choice. These professional marketing localization services are experts at providing high-quality translation services within one’s price range and can help you save time and money. 

What does local marketing actually entail?

One of the most common myths surrounding marketing localization is that you can drop your content—which took your marketing team weeks or months to develop—and expect your translation partners to adapt it across languages without the same amount of context and expect the same results. Your localization team must be involved from the beginning of your campaigns if you want them to succeed abroad.

What do you need to make everything right? 

• • Discover new products to learn what the target market wants.
  • Conduct market research to learn about the competition.
  • Internationalize and localize the product interface and the website (pay attention to different language peculiarities).
  • Payment method localization: Is there a popular local solution you should use, or can you utilize the same payment providers as in your current location?
  • Marketing strategy localization: Are there more or fewer competitors on the channels that you can access where you are now? (For instance, how popular are the terms you need to target in the new market, and how difficult are they to rank for? Are there any industry influencers you could collaborate with?) How much does each click cost?
  • You cannot simply translate your content. 
  • Do you need to modify your pricing (increase/decrease prices; remove/add plans) to meet local standards, or is it directly convertible into a foreign currency?
  • How will you localize your chat, knowledge base, and Resource Center apps for third parties? Do they provide any localization services?
  • Will your legal materials need to be modified for the new market? Terms and conditions, privacy policies, and data processing? Will some analytics and monitoring tools be eliminated?
  • What about the success, support, and sales teams, lastly?

Challenges of marketing localization 

Challenge №1

This particularity of marketing localization requires translators to use both their technical and creative skills. The intended message (the essence of the text) must be condensed into a small number of words, and those words must have the same impact on the target audience as they do in the original text. As a result, translating a five-word slogan can actually take hours or even days.

Challenge №2

There is never really enough time when it comes to translation. Most clients mistakenly believe that short texts take less time to translate because there are “just a few words” in them. But if those few words aren’t translated correctly, they might make or ruin a marketing campaign. Determine who your target market is and what their cultural preferences are.

A good sense of adaptation is necessary when marketing locally because what may be effective in the source language may not be in the target language. After reading the source text, the translators typically have many questions for themselves. Should a movie reference, for instance, be translated exactly as it is? Will the target audience understand the intended pun? Can something else be used in its place? If so, how exactly? Is the writing too direct? Does it need to be buffed? What literary device can be employed to accomplish this?

Challenge №3

The marketing content authors don’t always write to have it translated into other languages. In reality, the majority of them are unaware that it will. The translators are responsible for making the translation appear natural and as if it never existed as a translation in the first place.

An excellent translation will go unnoticed, but a poor one will stand out like a sore thumb, especially in marketing. This is the paradox of invisibility. The better, the more “invisible” you are.

Examples of global marketing that made history

Bad example: BMW

Following local concerns regarding the commercial’s usage of the United Arab Emirates’ national anthem, BMW was forced to delete an advertisement from the country in 2016.

A local football team’s players began the advertisement by singing the UAE’s national anthem, but they stopped midway through to dash out of the stadium and into a fleet of BMWs. Locally, the advertisement generated criticism for disrespecting the national anthem due to its suggestion that the automobiles were more significant than the song.

BMW then decided to halt the advertisement’s local screening while they edited it with a new soundtrack. BMW may have avoided mistakes and selected a different, more culturally appropriate manner to market their product if they had been more aware of the local culture. Not having to reshoot the advertisement would have saved them a lot of money.

Good example: Coca Cola

The Coca-Cola “Share a Coke” campaign of 2011 succeeded in marketing. The concept of putting people’s names on Coke bottles and cans originated in the US. It was a sentimental advertising campaign emphasizing establishing a personal connection with customers.

Because of the campaign’s strong emotional appeal, Coca-Cola was able to significantly increase customer awareness and engagement while also seeing explosive sales. In a nation with 23 million inhabitants that summer, Coke sold more than 250 million brand-named bottles and cans.

Marketing teams from each market were permitted to add their unique creative twists to the concept while bringing it to more than 70 different nations while keeping the central idea of customized Coca-Cola bottles and cans in mind. For people worldwide to be able to relate to the names that would be presented, they had to localize them.

Coca-Cola may have wasted millions of dollars on an unsuccessful campaign without a solid localization strategy to support such a significant global marketing effort.

Final thought

Companies can now expand internationally more quickly than ever before. However, many businesses misjudge how challenging it is to enter a new market. Marketing localization, when appropriately done, enables global marketers to successfully build campaigns that connect with clients globally and encourage them to purchase your product. The end outcome? Choose the best marketing localization services and conquer the world! Over time, there will be an even more rise in global sales.