What is a localisation strategy?
It's no longer enough to have an English website. Remember, not everyone speaks English. In fact, only around 5% of the world's population is a native English speaker.
A 2020 survey by CSA Research found that 76% of consumers prefer to buy from websites in their native language and 65% of non-native English speakers prefer content in their native language.
If you want to succeed on a global scale, localisation is the key. And it's more than just translating your content into another language. It's about understanding the culture and expectations of your target audience. If you want to connect with your local customers, you need to speak their language.
A localisation strategy helps you adapt to new markets and build a great global customer experience. Companies that embrace and invest in localisation grow.
In this article, we'll look at what a localisation strategy is and how it can benefit you.
What is a localisation strategy?
A localisation strategy describes how you adapt your offerings, messaging, and content to meet the needs of new target markets and countries, their language, and their culture. You can read a full introduction to content localisation here.
When your company enters a new market, it can be a challenge to give potential customers in that country an experience that feels familiar to their local habits.
As mentioned above, you need to speak the language and understand the culture of your local customers.
A localisation strategy takes into account buying habits, customer behaviour and cultural differences. It is your business plan for how to adapt all the content of your website, emails, campaigns, social media and more to the language and culture of your target country, changing tone, imagery, currency and so on.
Creating a country-by-country localisation strategy ensures that your customers get the same experience they would expect from their local business. This will increase traffic and the potential to convert leads into sales.
What are the benefits of developing a content localisation strategy?
If you are planning to expand your business globally, you can benefit from localising your content. Here are some reasons why.
Reach a wider audience
Creating content that's relevant and engaging to your target audience abroad will help you reach a wider audience and expand your business and customer base beyond your home market. By understanding the language and culture of the people you're trying to reach, you can create content that resonates with them on a deeper level and provides a better customer experience.
Build trust
People are more likely to buy from a company if they feel their needs and culture are understood. If you can show that you've made an effort to understand your audience's culture and tailor your content accordingly, they'll be more likely to trust you. And that trust will ultimately lead to more sales.
Improve your search engine rankings
Localising your content can help improve your SEO performance, as you're giving search engines like Google more information to work with. Google's search algorithms prioritise websites with multilingual options over those with only monolingual options. By including relevant keywords in multiple languages, you can increase your chances of appearing in search results for people who speak those languages. Research the keywords that specific audiences are likely to use in their country and incorporate them into your localised content. This will ensure that more people find your website when they search for relevant terms.
Create more personalised content
Localisation helps you create more personalised (and native) content for your customers. By tailoring your content to specific regions or countries, you can ensure that it's relevant and useful to them. This is one of the best ways to build trust and loyalty with your customer base. And these two things are essential to any successful business.
Read more about the benefits of content localisation here.
Integrate localisation into your decision-making process
More and more companies are realising the benefits of localisation.
According to CSA's 2021 research study, 66% of senior executives in the language services industry saw an increase in demand for translation and localisation services in 2021.
Yet all too often, companies only include their localisation goals in the plans and strategies of their marketing or content teams. But localisation doesn't stop at the borders of marketing. Localisation plays a critical role for every department in a company. That's why it's important to have an aligned localisation strategy across teams and departments.
To grow successfully on a global scale, your localisation team needs to be closely involved in the company's decision-making process. They need to be involved at all levels of your strategic planning.
The moment you start planning your entry into new markets, you should start planning your localisation strategy.
Having an efficient and effective localisation strategy in place will allow you to use and adapt it for each new market entry.
Localising your content takes time and effort, but it is your key to reaching a global audience and new markets.
If you need help or advice with your localisation strategy, contact me and I'll be happy to help.
