Brand Localization for Worldwide Markets
May 26, 2016
Posted by: Simon Hodgkins, Chief Marketing Officer, Vistatec
As the global economy grows, businesses and associations are looking to develop and drive their brands in many new markets around the world. This can be extremely unpredictable and challenging due to a large number of social and cultural subtleties of each of the new business and market sectors. The hidden dangers of erroneously imparting your brand-voice are significant.
With an increasing number of countries developing faster than ever, partially fueled by advances in enabling technology and also the pace of global demand, organizations are rapidly making up for lost time in looking to affect business in these markets.
The working populations around the world are developing steadily with more disposable income than ever before. Established and emerging brands alike are targeting these developing markets. Successfully developing one’s brand, products and services into these markets is becoming an urgent requirement for global organizations and companies who are looking to scale revenues effectively.
Global experience shows that the approach taken for your home market may not necessarily be the best approach to meet the requirements of new global markets. The mind-boggling nature and scale of advertising, e-commerce, content and workflow and technologies, the political and legal frameworks, product utilization and diverse market conditions, all play a key part in how you globalize your brand.
Partnering with a language service provider that will support you with high-end language quality, in-depth brand knowledge and scalability is paramount to success when going global.
Developing a winning localization strategy helps your organization to prepare for markets outside of your original home markets. Your plan for successful localization is the way to a strong on-brand image worldwide. However, without talking in the voice of your customers, your brand and service offerings can miss out on reaching their intended audience.
Companies that focus on their localization strategy will see a far greater return on investment in the longer term. Reaching your intended audience and influencing behavior with targeted brand messaging through powerful localization will increase your overall business success.
There is a recognized and growing need to localize your brand assets, websites, collateral and other forms of communications and content for new markets. Localization is becoming a much more prominent and urgent requirement to deliver on your success. Worldwide brands are looking to not only protect their existing brand voice but to scale and grow it in many new markets.
You need to be mindful of the fact that different regions and countries are exceptionally sensitive about content and the language in which it is being delivered. Interpretation of your messaging into local languages and cultures is an unquestionable requirement to successfully tap into new markets.
The challenge of protecting your brand while growing the brand in multiple countries cannot be underestimated. Organizations must strike a balance between adapting their brand image and content to the local requirements and ensuring that their worldwide brand is unmistakable in each of the markets and business sectors. It is vital to understand how the brand «speaks» to the specific customers and sectors:
- What pulls in customers in the different markets?
- How does the impression the brand conjures up in the new market emulate or contrast from the home market in which it was originally created?
Brand observation and business sector infiltration in new markets will help improve the wider worldwide marking techniques. They will help an organization figure out which of their universal development procedures are practical, or how they ought to be altered and refined to make them supportable in a global context.
There are a few key approaches to guarantee brand integrity and consistency across markets in multiple geographies:
- Brands that use straight forwardness in their messaging commonly have a less demanding time interpreting their general overall image and voice.
- Steering away from popular and colloquial expressions and instead sharing brand and service qualities enthusiastically and succinctly will make it much easier to interpret a brand voice for different locales.
- The more precise the brand language the easier it is to catch the substance and value of the brand across languages.
- Brands that apply consistency and clarity to their messaging avoid confusion and disarray when communicating globally.
To conduct business across global markets, companies localize their brand by customizing their branding and messaging to «speak» to the various local target markets and audiences in the right language.
Organizations invest a lot of energy, time and money in global marketing and localization. For the best return on investment, you ought to consider important elements such as:
- What is your organization’s message?
- What is the overall story you are telling audiences about your brand image?
- Does your brand story fit your global plans and ambitions?
Knowing your customers in the specific target markets, a thorough understanding of the target locales, and strong sectorial knowledge is a key factor of overall localization success. From a marketing perspective, global and local brands should be part of a successful overall marketing plan. Working with a language service provider with extensive in-country expertise and experience is the best way to develop your winning branding and localization strategy.
To accurately localize your content requirements, including your online and digital experiences, you should understand how various types of content facilitate your end-user interactions. Having a broad content plan will help you to structure and streamline your existing and new localization requirements and, ultimately, ensure that your message is effectively transferred into the target languages that you have identified from a 360˚content experience perspective.
Working with Vistatec as a localization partner can play a large role in your overall global branding success; given Vistatec’s industry-defining global experience and expertise. Our specialists in digital marketing globalization can work with to ensure your overall global brand localization objectives are fully effective.