Global and Local Marketing: What It Takes to Win Abroad

The toolbox for promoting a business across borders keeps growing, and most of these tools are simple enough to pick up in an afternoon. That ease tempts companies to push one message at the whole planet, and those do-it-yourself campaigns tend to fall flat and drain a real chunk of the budget.

Roughly 62% of buyers stay away from English-only websites, whatever their command of English.

Know How Your Markets Differ

Before you spend a dollar on an international campaign, get clear on how global marketing and local marketing actually differ.

What does global marketing mean?

At its core, global marketing sends one shared message to as broad an audience as possible. The home page of your website does exactly this job, so write it to reach the widest crowd and tell them what your company offers.

Most global marketing copy goes out in English, which for many of the people reading it is not their mother tongue.

A global push is a strong way to build name recognition and open doors with larger accounts. If English is not the language you grew up with, you will want a translator to shape copy that lands with a worldwide audience. You will also want an SEO specialist to tune that content so it climbs the international search results.

What does localized marketing mean?

Localized marketing zooms in on a far smaller, sharper group. Picture a sales letter written for prospects in a handful of European countries.

To lift your conversion rate, write emails in the reader's own language and respect the customs and habits where they live. The same holds for any material aimed at a specific country, including the landing pages people arrive on.

There is real depth to localized marketing. Even when the underlying content barely changes, smart teams run nearly every campaign in the language of the market itself. To be sure the message sits well with that culture, lean on native speakers who know both the language and the local way of doing things.

Why localized marketing beats a one-size-fits-all approach

Roughly 62% of buyers around the world stay away from English-only websites, whatever their command of English. CSA Research found that 30% of its 3,002 respondents never purchase from English-language sites, and a further 29% almost never do. Across the 10-country sample, 56% either spend more hours on pages in their own tongue than on English ones, or skip English-language URLs entirely. People read, pass along, and enjoy material in the language they think in. So if you are after real engagement on the ground, translating for each market belongs at the center of any serious global plan. That is the work we help you do.

Search engines such as Google can fake a local feel through pay-per-click ads, where marketers run text ads aimed at people in chosen countries and invite them to click through to a site.

Skip the landing pages, though, and all those clicks buy you traffic rather than orders. Worse still, a good share of the clicks you pay for end up going nowhere.

The smarter move is to spend the budget with care. One study from Common Sense Advisory Inc. found that big companies put between 0.03% and 1% of yearly revenue toward multilingual content and code.

A CFO might read that as money down the drain. Yet the figures hold up: spending of this kind tends to bring in enough return to cover itself and add profit on top. Among firms already running localization programs, 63% pour more than $3 million a year into language services, treating that line item as a revenue engine rather than a cost. In short, localization outperforms blanket global advertising because it lets you speak to each audience on its own wavelength.

A closer look at localization

Gearing up for a localization project feels a lot like any other campaign you have planned. What changes is the set of resources you call on to carry it out.

Pin down your potential market

With a global campaign, the reader's location hardly matters, since the aim is simply to reach as many people as you can. Local campaigns work the other way: you decide exactly who you are speaking to. A product that takes off in one country can land with a thud in the next. To keep from burning budget, spot the weak markets early and pour your energy into the ones that show promise.

Get to know your target market

History is full of companies that stumbled abroad because they never grasped the cultural rules of the countries they entered.

Bring in help

Solid research starts with knowing your market inside and out. Team up with a localization partner and you gain a dedicated group of linguists living in the country itself. Putting in-country linguists on the job matters more than most expect: they keep you from costly slips and keep your message from getting lost along the way.

Putting it into action

With the research and planning behind you, your company can shift into the rollout stage of the campaign. As noted above, this stage closely mirrors running a campaign on home soil. Just hold to any extra instructions your localization partner hands you.

How can I tell whether I need to translate for a local market?

If you are setting up shop overseas, make sure your target market abroad can build the same pull and traction you already enjoy at home, because that often shapes how well you do there. The aim is to do as well in other countries as you do in your own backyard. Reaching it calls for a careful study of the local market and the people in it, done in your chosen country before any translation begins. Translating marketing material is rarely just translation; more often it pulls in localization and adaptation too. Reshaping your strategy for a country or region carries real weight, and grasping the culture and the demographics counts just as much as the language when you choose the words for a new audience. Adaptation means rebuilding the message to suit a different culture and a different set of consumer needs while holding on to the meaning underneath. These are deeply specialized services, transcription among them. That is why companies often turn to a transcription agency able to cover their multilingual needs.

Move the sales needle

Brochures, flyers, ad copy, and similar pieces exist, among other reasons, to lift sales and connect with the people they target. Their pull, then, decides how well you break into a market and earn the trust of buyers there.

Marketing pieces have to be translated so they carry the original message and tone faithfully, then shaped to fit the local culture. That takes solid market research and a firm grasp not only of the product or service on offer, but of the local market and culture that steer how consumers act.

For campaigns that cross borders, sharp marketing translation can lift both sales and recognition by a wide margin. Get the translation wrong, or skip the cultural homework, and a brand's image abroad can sour in a hurry. A poor reputation in a foreign market can mean outright failure there, stalled sales, and even heavy losses.

What a company spends on marketing is a real piece of its push to go global, and it rests on knowledge, data, and detail, which means studying the target market plus the country's culture and language ahead of time. A translator, after all, needs the language, the marketing sense, and the writing craft to do the work justice.

Language gaps can block your message before it lands

A skilled translator can do a lot to carry your marketing message into another language. Still, to sell your product or service well in a new market, you face real hurdles in keeping the translated message both appealing and distinct. That calls for a clear read on what the original creator meant, plus a way into the minds of the audience so you grasp what they need, what draws them, and what sparks their interest in the brand.

This is the point where language gaps and fine shades of meaning take over. Phrases, slang, metaphors, puns, and rhymes rarely move cleanly into another language, and they can shed the meaning, style, and force of the original. Most of the time you cannot carry these word for word, or they end up saying nothing. Translating a headline or a slogan, for instance, demands an ear for small nuances so the result stays catchy and clear. Translation, handled this way, is the right tool for the job.

How do you tune your message to local cultural differences?

Each country, and often each region within it, carries its own culture, traditions, values, and at times religion, which shapes how ideas and messages get expressed and understood. To get full value from your message, to render it so it speaks to the local audience and keeps its meaning and style, think hard before you translate a single line.

Cultural differences are why people in one region carry different needs, interests, preferences, motives, and buying patterns. People in each place also have their own ways of talking and presenting themselves, with distinct language, symbols, ideas, and shorthand. Knowing your audience and their culture, then, is what lets you carry your message across and hold their attention.

Translators have to weigh a country's faith and values as well. Where one religion holds sway, it tends to shape how the whole society runs. It also colors how people tell right from wrong and decide what deserves respect. Keep these points in view as you translate your message, so you avoid giving offense to anyone.

Your brand name

Now and then your company name itself has to change. Like the body of your message, the name should capture what your company is about and steer clear of offending or jarring anyone. It should carry the image you want customers to hold, and it should mean something rather than chase attention for its own sake. A few well-known slip-ups:

• Braniff International turned a line praising its fine leather seats, "Fly in Leather," into Spanish that read as "Fly Naked."
• Clairol rolled out a curling iron named "Mist Stick" in Germany, where "mist" is slang for manure.
• Coca-Cola's name, in its early days in China, sometimes came out as "Bite The Wax Tadpole."

Images, colors, and numbers

An image is what makes a brand easy to spot, and it is part of who that brand is. To send the right message, stir the right feelings, and leave a good impression in people's minds, you have to pick those images with care. They should add up to a brand image that is both valuable and consistent.

Words are not alone in this. Images, too, can carry different meanings, set different contexts, and stir different reactions.

Packaging is a clear case. Of course the text on it has to move into the local language. But language is only half the story. In many African communities, for instance, high rates of illiteracy make it common to print pictures on a package to show what is inside. That choice makes the product easier to reach and grasp for buyers.

Companies, then, have to adjust how they build campaigns in these markets.

Going international opens a company up to more customers and to a far broader mix of cultures, subcultures, values, beliefs, and ways of acting. Speaking to all of that takes a real feel for local audiences so the message fits the market in front of you. Swapping text word for word is nowhere near enough.

Marketing translation, in the end, is a demanding job that asks for time, research, insight, and marketing know-how, along with a grasp of the culture you are entering. That is why global and local marketing lean so heavily on translation, and translation on them. A translator has to bring not only knowledge and hands-on experience with the target culture, national or regional, but marketing chops as well. Without a professional on the job, marketers cannot get the right translation for the market they are chasing.

So more and more companies reach for translation services to shape their messages for different cultures and markets, lift their odds of doing well abroad, and grow lasting ties with clients overseas.

Translation Services for Global Marketing

No two projects look alike, yet the heart of what we do never shifts. When ABC Translations handles your content, you can trust what comes back every time. Our translations are: