If you want to start selling your products and services to the world beyond your domestic market, localisation is the way to do it.
Businesses around the globe use localisation to expand their reach and maximise their revenue through selling powerfully and effectively to specific new markets.
Yet it’s not as simple as sourcing some quick translations of your latest marketing campaign. If you want to gain all the benefits of localisation, you need to go deeper than language. You need to consider what you know of local cultures, norms, laws, and much more besides.
Failing to do this can harm your business when expanding to new markets. You can create a disconnect with your new audience or fail to show sufficient commitment and care, quickly ruining your brand’s international reputation.
But the benefits are there to be seen. There’s a reason why an overwhelming number of companies are planning to build localisation into their practices this year and in all years to come:
Table of Contents
What is localisation?
Localisation is the process of adapting your business offering and assets to the needs, norms and expectations of specific target markets.
This will usually involve the translation of everything from your marketing materials to your website. But the process actually goes much further. Because as well as language, with localisation you’re also adapting to the cultural, political, and often legal differences between your domestic market and your new one.
This means you really need to have a strategy behind your localisation efforts. You will also need to do a lot of research. For example:
- Do you understand local purchasing habits?
- Is there local demand for your products and services even with adaptation?
- Are the models in your advertising applicable to a local audience?
- Do you know what the local laws are governing products like yours?
- Which forms of advertising are the most effective and preferred in your new market?
These are just some of the questions your localisation strategy and research should help you overcome. When answering them, always bear in mind that your overall goal with localisation is relevancy.
Only by adapting every aspect of the products or services you offer – and often at least part of your brand and how your business itself works – can you create localised products and an approach that will be highly effective at boosting your revenue and meeting the needs of individual target audiences so you can sell there.
Why is localisation important? (The numbers)
Online shopping is big business. In the US alone, even back in 2017 consumers spent more than £332 billion in online purchases. In China, the number was more like £648 million. These numbers have seen growth every year since – growth the pandemic has driven to even greater heights.
But the globalised nature of online sales is what makes localisation so important. Especially when you consider the natural habits of those doing the shopping:
- 72% of consumers prefer to use their mother tongue when shopping online.
- 55% will only buy products on native-language websites.
- 13% will abandon their cart if the cost isn’t listed in their local currency.
- 57% of consumers count language as more important than price.
- 87% of non-English speakers will not buy from English language websites at all (this is doubly important when you remember that around 75% of internet users don’t speak English).
The business benefits of localisation
Those numbers are only part of the story behind why so many global businesses include localisation in their strategies. Some of the others include the ability to:
1) Identify international opportunities
You might face a great deal of competition for products and services like yours in your domestic market. But with the whole world to choose from, there may be certain markets that offer reduced competition or much greater demand.
For instance, many Scandinavian brands find themselves in a great position when they localise their products for UK markets. There is a certain premium and implicit positive reputation attached to all things “Scandi” in the UK, especially in industries like interior design.
Similar situations exist in other regions and industries. Localisation can help you take advantage of them.
2) Increase your revenue through targeted sales
Part of localisation is to identify the particular preferences and norms of a given region. In turn, this gives you some significant advantages when trading there. That’s why, if you have been searching for ways to improve your revenue, going international with smart localisation is one of the best ways to do it.
There are even examples of businesses that have gone further, almost wholly escaping their home market when forced out by the competition, but now thriving in other regions where demand for their services is high.
Think of Yahoo!, for instance. Barely used in most of the world, but thriving in Japan.
3) Connect with local audiences
Localisation ensures that you are talking to your new global audiences in not only the language they understand but also the way they expect to be spoken to.
If you want to build strong, lasting relationships with your audience – the kind of relationships based on a positive brand reputation and that encourage them to buy from you – localisation lets you do it.
This is only possible through extensive research and with local experts helping you ensure that you are being culturally aware and respectful. Because most audiences won’t give a business more than one chance to succeed when entering a new region.
Put in the effort required to target your consumers, understand their beliefs, values, and needs though, and you will build a lasting connection that gets your products and services accepted and used.
4) Boost your brand relevance
You no doubt tailored your brand to your own values. But you also likely considered how those values would play in your domestic market.
But there’s no guarantee that your brand will convey the same message to your audience in a new market. Not only that, but developing trends in different regions can soon leave foreign brands looking woefully out of place.
Proper localisation ensures that you have adapted your brand – as well as assets like your website and marketing materials – so that it will help you connect with your local audience.
Only by establishing this connection, based on an understanding of local needs and values, can you maximise your brand’s relevance and help local people come to like – even love – who you are and what you have to offer.
5) Overcome barriers to acceptance
Barriers to acceptance are aspects of a market that will prevent you from selling there because they are so at odds with how you have become accustomed to doing business in your home region. Picture trying to do business in a region that has significantly different:
- Laws relating to your industry
- Political situation
- Technology level (perhaps low smartphone penetration)
- Demographics (perhaps an older audience preferring different media)
- Culture (perhaps the models used in your marketing may need to wear different attire)
Part of your localisation process will involve researching and understanding factors like these. This ensures that there will be no barriers preventing you from presenting your goods and services as a natural choice for local people to buy.
6) Reduce risk
There are huge potential rewards on offer when reaching out to new markets. But there are also risks if you try to charge in without proper research.
On the most basic level, consider the names of your products or your company itself. Remember instances of big brands failing even this simple test:
- Ford – took their “Pinto” model car to South America, unaware that the name is slang for an… unimpressive male member in parts of this region.
- Nokia – marketed their “Lumia” smartphone while ignoring the fact that the word is slang for “prostitute” in some Spanish-speaking regions.
These are obvious examples of the kind of risks you can open your brand up to if your localisation process is either absent or isn’t handled by professionals. Yet there are many, many others.
Don’t put yourself in the position of having to repair brand reputation damage caused by a localisation error. Use an expert Language Service Provider and do your research to ensure you understand the local culture, norms, expectations, laws, and more in any region you are targeting.
7) Compare favourably against the competition
Some brands “do” localisation better than others. For local audiences in many regions, international brands that don’t put in the effort to adapt their offering to local conditions and needs are a sadly common and obvious fact of everyday life.
This is a great opportunity for you to show that your brand is different – that you care about your local audience and are committed to the local region.
Setting yourself up as the caring, committed alternative sets you apart from competitors who pay lip service to their translation and localisation efforts, barely bothering to reach out to local audiences. This is something that these audiences recognise and reward with brand loyalty and spending.
8) Beat globalisation
Finally, while globalisation is a positive for many businesses – it’s the reason you can localise your offering and sell to global regions, after all – it also has its downsides.
Globalisation has also increased the level of competition brands face from companies based in regions other than their own. This flip side of the coin means that now, more than ever before, localisation is vital if you want to succeed in the global marketplace.
The COVID-19 pandemic has underlined this in some ways, making it obvious that brands need to smartly localise – especially in the digital sphere – if they want to be relevant to different audiences and encourage them to engage and interact with what they offer.
Understanding how localisation works
This should all go to show why so many firms around the world – well over half in a recent survey – count localisation efforts as being so vital for the future of their business.
That doesn’t mean localisation is easy though. Simply put, on top of sourcing high-quality translation, putting yourself in the mindset of someone from a different part of the world isn’t always straightforward.
Your target consumers in different parts of Asia will have different preferences, norms, and purchasing habits than those in different parts of the Middle East, for example.
The localisation process itself is usually broken down into several parts:
1) Internationalisation (planning for localisation)
It is possible to localise your website, products, services, and other assets long after they have been created in your native language. But for the greatest ease in localisation, creating content and materials that are designed to be localised is always going to be better.
This process is referred to as internationalisation. The most common example is the first stages of website localisation:
Here, doing things like using website creation tools that integrate with international character sets (like Google’s Noto fonts) or making sure you allow plenty of white space in your web page layout so that text will still fit even if it expands during the translation process (as it often does) are good internalisation practices.
2) Translation and localisation
Skilled professional human translation of your international content is vital. Always prioritise using a Language Service Provider that uses native-speaking linguists whose first language is the one they’re translating into.
Never be tempted to use bilingual team members or free generic Machine Translation tools like Google Translate. Unless, of course, you want to tank your sales and cause hilarity and confusion among your new audience.
3) Localise beyond language
Remember that it’s not just the words you use that should feature in your localisation process. Don’t forget:
- Images and imagery
- Units of measurement
- Colours and colour schemes (many cultures attach symbolism to colour usage)
- Design and layout (some regions, such as Japan, prefer information-heavy layouts)
- Your products and services themselves (if they are unsuitable for local tastes)
4) Localise currency and payment methods
Although they would normally feature in the list above, making a special mention of the importance of localising currency and payment methods is always worthwhile.
Remember those percentages from earlier that showed people will abandon carts and not buy if they can’t get information in their local language and currency?
Payment-related disconnects are a huge dealbreaker for most people. Consumers in different regions are used to their own norms around payment and start to lose trust in a service or company if they can’t pay in the way they usually do.
For instance, in India, cash on delivery is a standard payment method. But it would be a harder sell in the UK, where the trend is towards more and more digitised methods of payment.
5) Localise logistics and customer support
How exactly are you going to serve your new customer base in this new part of the world?
You need to think through how you’re going to arrange shipping and returns to a given country. If you need to charge more for delivery to different regions, make sure you clearly signpost this.
You also need to provide customer support for buyers and potential buyers from regions who speak a different language from your regular support team. These consumers may have different contact preferences too – they may prefer online, email, or phone support – compared with your domestic audience.
Planning to cater to these needs is a critical part of the localisation process that not every company successful handles.
6) Localise for laws and regulations
Before you start selling in a certain region, it’s important to research the local laws – especially tax laws, from a revenue perspective – if you are to localise for profitable regions.
You should also check if any goods or services are prohibited in certain regions. Even items like playing cards, watches, and types of cosmetics can be illegal or restricted in certain parts of the world.
Don’t just expect that you are going to be able to sell in a region because your products seem benign to you.
Localisation and growing your global business
Done right, localisation – the process of adapting your brand, products, services, marketing, and all other assets for different global audiences – is a great way to grow a global business.
Increasing numbers of companies – including all of the worlds largest brands – do it. Because they know it will help them identify international opportunities, connect with their audience, maximise their revenue, and take a confident first step into a new region while minimising barriers or risks.
If that sounds like something your company needs, it’s never been a better time to start looking into what localisation can do for your business.
Taking your first steps into a new market?
Let’s talk. Kwintessential helps some of the best-known names in the world – the BBC, American Express, Facebook, and Estée Lauder among them – reach global audiences through localisation.
Set up a commitment-free chat about where you want to grow your business today.
