Globalize Your Content With Localization

Personalized Content vs. Localized Content

Personalized content caters to the client’s needs and pain points. Localized content goes even deeper to consider the cultural, time, and language preferences.

Imagine you are a manufacturer that sells laptops to electronics stores worldwide. Your personalized content would involve creating individualized product recommendations for each buyer, helping them choose the right offer, designing product guides, and more.

Meanwhile, localized content would involve translating content to the client’s language, using their currency, designing offers in time for their national holidays, etc.

Unless you are a hyperlocal service or product provider, you need to localize your personalized content. Otherwise, some of your audience segments may fall through the cracks.

Personalized content marketing and localized marketing go hand in hand. Doing one without the other can put you behind the competition.

Why Localized Content is the Pillar of Successful Marketing

If you are catering to the global market, you must remember that only 313 million internet users live in the United States. Meanwhile, 854 million live in China, while 560 million surf in India.

Your target audience in these countries is likely to speak different languages, have different cultural preferences, and live in different time zones.

A Christmas offer may surprise a Chinese audience, while the Indian audience may never read an email delivered at 2:00 a.m. (there is a 10-hour time difference between New York and Mumbai).

Creating localized content can help you cater to different audience segments without losing a personal touch. In most cases, careful localization becomes the power behind decision-making.  

Localized Content for SEO and PPC

It’s rarely enough to simply translate the content into another language or change inches to centimeters. Most likely, you would also need to do additional keyword research.

Word-for-word keyword translations rarely work, and clients from different countries browse the internet differently. Therefore, you need to do keyword research in other target languages and implement new keywords and terms into your localized content. Otherwise, your SEO efforts could suffer.

The same works for your PPC campaigns. Besides rethinking keywords, you may need to review ad formats and colors according to the audience preferences to see measurable results. 

Six Benefits of Localization in Personalized Content Marketing

Content localization becomes a top priority when you decide to expand to the global market. The benefits of adjusting your personalized content marketing strategy to include localization efforts are:

1. Make a Local Company Impression

No matter how attractive the over-the-seas offer may be, many clients prefer to work with local companies. You create an impression of being a local service provider by localizing content.

Regardless of your actual location, a local approach makes the client feel safe and «at home,» thus boosting your marketing efforts.

2. Inspire Brand Ambassadors

Nine out of 10 people are more likely to trust a brand if it comes recommended (even from a stranger). Localized content helps build brand loyalty, and a seamless language and cultural experience can inspire word-of-mouth marketing.

Even if your product is top of the line, a complex touchpoint experience could cause your audience to start shopping around and leave negative reviews.

3. Drive Conversions

According to a Harvard Business Review study, more than 72% of consumers are more likely to buy a product with information in their language. That also works for seemingly small details like currencies and measurement systems.

When catering to B2B clients, you usually work with decision-makers who are pressed for time. They aren’t likely to waste their precious minutes by converting pounds into kilograms, and it’s up to you to do the work for them.

High-quality, localized content shortens the buyer’s journey and helps your clients make faster decisions.

4. Cut Customer Support Costs

When content isn’t localized, clients are more likely to be confused and contact support. As a result, you need to arrange 24/7 support to service all the available time zones, leading to extra expenses and lower client satisfaction rates.

From localized website content to translated Q&A sections, you cut your marketing expenses and improve client experience.

5. Gain Competitive Edge

While content localization may seem an obvious tactic, many companies are slow to adopt it. They often rely on less-than-perfect tools like straightforward translations.

The lack of personalization makes their products less appealing to the global audience. This, in turn, creates a perfect opportunity to steal market share.

When localizing your content, consider looking at what your competition is doing. You can find inspiration to fill the holes that appear when competitors ignore localization opportunities.

6. Build Credibility

In localizing content, you are gaining a better understanding of the target audience’s needs and boosting your brand’s credibility. A company that caters to a global audience without high-quality, personalized content can’t appear credible.

It’s not just Google and other search engines that you want to impress with your content. You must appear credible to people from different countries. Doing this without personalization can be tricky.

For example, sending New Year’s greetings to your Chinese decision-makers on January 1 is an honest mistake but a sloppy error to your client. One mishap like this could hurt your brand’s credibility tremendously.

The Right Time to Localize Content

The right moment to localize content is often yesterday, and localization should be a big part of your buyer persona creation.

The buyer persona parameters list cultural preferences, national holidays, measurement systems (needed for technical publications), and time zones.

As soon as you know where your audience is, you need to adjust the content accordingly:

• When you design your website
• When you create video content (add a time-coded script)
• When you are getting ready for the holidays
• When you are brainstorming for ideas
• When you are preparing to expand to global markets

In some cases, you would need to revamp entire content strategies to suit a different audience segment. In others, you need a highly professional transcreation.

Keep Localization under Control with Vistatec

When it comes to localized and personalized content marketing, it’s easy to lose track of effort and budget. It may seem as if the number of tasks is growing exponentially. Keeping your localization under control involves exploring suitable outsourcing options, including language service providers.

At Vistatec, we specialize in global content localization and personalization. Whether you are looking for digital marketing content or localization services, don’t hesitate to contact us.

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At Vistatec, we have been helping some of the world’s most iconic brands to optimize their global commercial potential since 1997. Vistatec is one of the world’s leading global content solutions providers. HQ in Dublin, Ireland, with operations worldwide.