Growing your business successfully and continually- isn't that what every business owner strives for? No matter how big or small your business is, you should always aim for higher goals and learn new ways to expand. There are a number of business strategies you need to try, and localization is one of them.
Localization can work wonders for growing your business in terms of expanding to a new market and reaching more people. If you're not sure what it is or how to use it to evolve and grow, just keep reading. Here's everything you need to know about the ways to grow your business with localization.
Let’s begin by explaining what localization is and helping you understand just how powerful it can be for your business.
By definition, localization is:
Simply put, localization means changing different aspects of your current business presentation to make it fit a new group of people. Since these people live in a different location than your primary target audience, they'll differ in the:
A simple example would be how different nations perceive a certain color. The color red represents courage and passion in the USA, while in South Africa, it symbolizes sacrifice and mourning.
This means that localization is so much more than changing the language on your website. It’s about changing your entire image to fit the perception of the new group you’re targeting.
Now that we understand the complexity of localization, it’s time to get practical. We’ll teach you the 5 best ways to use localization to get more people to learn about your brand and successfully enter a new market. Let’s break it down.
We may be starting from the obvious, but it’s key. Offering more than one language on your website is crucial for launching your localization strategy. So, you’ll need to translate the entire content of your website and make it available for the new target group.
A professional translator should handle this for you. Some services offer translation, localization, and USCIS translation services. Their professional translators can handle this entire process for you.
People will prefer visiting a website that offers content in their native language. But be careful. Mere translation won’t do the trick. You’ll also need to adapt and change the content, as mentioned before. Here’s what you’ll need to modify:
You’ll also have to pay attention to cultural appropriateness and make sure no one is offended by the content on your website.
Images, colors, fonts, and the overall brand image you're using for one target audience may be completely off for the other one. Different cultures have different perceptions of all of the above, and you need to learn business localization tricks on how to appeal to each one.
So, rethink and change you must the visuals you're using on:
Some brands even enter a new market under a completely different name after doing proper market research. The important thing is that your new visuals evoke the right emotions, associations, and overall feeling with the new audience.
Sometimes, the content you offer originally will be of little use to your new target audience. Therefore, there would be no use in translating it and trying to adapt it to a new cultural frame.
Instead, you may have to transcreate.
Transcreation is a coined word made of translate and create, and it simply means creating new content in the target language that resembles the original in intent, style, and context. But you’re changing the main message or the means you’re using to send that message.
So, keep your eyes wide open for transcreation opportunities and be ready to do some serious rewriting. If you want to outsource, there are services that offer essay examples free and can also write custom-made content for you. It's a great helping hand when writing isn't your strongest suit.
There’s no better way of getting the attention of your target group than to pair up with an influencer who shares the same audience as you. A locally recognized influencer can help you get that initial recognition you need and make your brand familiar to people.
Choosing an influencer can be tricky, so make sure it’s someone who aims at the same group of people as you in terms of age, sex, social status, location, education, and more.
Next, be sure that they share the same values as your brand. They need to advocate for the same causes or support the same social ideas and issues.
Finally, you need to ensure that what this influencer does will also interest your audience.
55% of people globally only purchase from websites in their native language. But, if the payment process is too complicated, this number goes down even more.
You can do all the hard work and get the attention of the people from your new market. But, if you don’t simplify their payment process, they’ll probably give up buying from you.
So, make sure that you allow them to use local payment methods that are most popular in their region.
This way, when it comes to making purchasing decisions, they’ll do it without hesitation and with way less rethinking.
Localization is such a broad term, and there’s so much you can do to raise brand awareness and grow your business using it. The most important part is that you learn how to understand the new target audience. Then you can apply the strategies we’ve shared above and enjoy watching your business grow.
Hopefully, we’ve inspired you to work on your localization strategy and start applying it ASAP!
Christian Duke is a business consultant and a blogger. He writes to help business owners and marketers improve their activities, adopt new tools, acquire new business habits, and grow.
