Every business and brand wants to find the best way to communicate its message to its target audience. Whether through their website, social media, or blog – the content they publish and share is the key to success. But, when a brand is trying to speak to audiences in different locations, they need to walk the extra mile to make the magic happen.
Simply translating your website content isn’t enough. Localization is essential if you want people to respond positively to your online efforts. Below, we’ll explain what localization is and what are the 6 key benefits of utilizing it.
Let’s break it down.
What is Localization?
Localization can be defined very simply. It is:
- the process of adapting a source text published for one target audience, to fit the affinities of a different target audience in another location.
The localization process thus includes so much more than just translating your website content. it also includes:
- changing culture-specific references and phrases
- redesigning it
- changing the metrics
- changing the images and visuals
Here’s an example. A literal translation of the phrase ‘raining cats and dogs’ to Spanish would make no sense to the Spanish audience. But, localizing this phrase to ‘Está lloviendo a cántaros’ which has the same idiomatic meaning, would be much better. The literal translation of this phrase is ‘it’s raining jugs’, which again wouldn’t make sense in English.
The same goes for every other element of your content that could be understood differently by a person living at a different location.
6 Benefits of Localization
Now that we understand what localization is, let’s take a look at the proven benefits and reasons why you should use it.
- Expand Successfully
Expanding your reach to a new market is challenging. You are swimming in the unknown, investing, and risking a lot. This is why you want to make sure you’re doing it right.
Well, localization is the first and most important step of this process. It’ll help you:
- break through the new market with confidence
- successfully deliver your message
- make your efforts worth
Successful expansion depends on how well you communicate with your new audience.
- Be Relatable
You want your content to speak to your target audience. You want them to click instantly and feel like you’ve written it just for them.
Relatable content will bring you more engagement, conversions, and organic traffic since people will feel more connected and closer to it. Localized content does this exactly:
- engages the audience
- speaks their language
- creates a feeling of friendliness and trust
It makes your content sound natural and makes it more effective, and memorable.
- Avoid Inconveniences
Saying something in one culture may be cute, humorous, or friendly. But saying the same thing in another culture may sound inappropriate or rude.
This is why professionals who perform localization, such as those working at TheWordPoint, understand those nuances. Changing these phrases to be culture-appropriate is crucial for not offending anyone and being politically correct.
- Improve SEO
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is key to ranking higher on Google search results. But, you need to change your SEO strategy to fit the new language, culture, keywords, and search preferences.
Localization will improve your new SEO strategy and help you rank for the searches of the new target audience.
- Build Brand Consistency
As a brand, you need to build and maintain a certain image. This image needs to stay consistent, no matter what you publish or where.
That means that your tone of voice, personality, vocabulary choices, and writing style must always be the same. This is something that you can achieve through precise and professional localization.
Direct and literal translations wouldn’t be able to do you good. But, localized content would have all the details from the source text transferred to the target text.
- Be Visually Appealing
Finally, the visual effect of your content is also crucial. The colors, images, memes, GIFs, infographics, or any other elements you’re using also need to be adapted to the new culture.
Maybe the color red means passion in one culture but symbolizes death in another. Or maybe portraits simply don’t do the trick for your new target audience, but they prefer whole-figure images?
You shouldn’t guess but rather let professional localizers do their job and help you make the best possible effect on the target audience.
Final Thoughts
Localization is golden when it comes to business expansion and growth. New markets imply new, different people and thus demand from you to make the right changes and make your content effective and engaging.
We sure hope that the 6 benefits we’ve shared above will inspire you to embrace localization and offer nothing but perfect content to your new audience.
- Author’s Bio
Joanne Elliot is a marketing expert and a blogger. She writes to help businesses globally and shares easy-to-apply tips with marketers, business, and start-up owners who want to build a solid online image.
