Why localised marketing content is key to succeed globally

This is truer than ever in the post-COVID world, with the pandemic driving a boom in ecommerce that will open up even more global trade opportunities for companies and consumers alike.

You can position yourself to take full advantage of this trend with careful planning, production and localisation of your global marketing content.

The global ecommerce explosion

The global cross-border B2C ecommerce industry will be worth more than US$4.8 trillion by 2027, according to a 2019 report from Zion Market Research, which projected a compound annual growth rate of 27.4% in the coming years.

In 2020, Latin America was the leading region for retail ecommerce sales growth worldwide, findings from eMarketer showed, followed by North America, central and eastern Europe, and Asia-Pacific. The report also predicted that worldwide ecommerce as a whole will approach $5 trillion in 2021.

There is clear potential for brands to achieve serious growth on the international stage, but to really take advantage of these opportunities and maximise your return on investment, you need to get your marketing strategy right.

A key element of that is designing a localised communications plan that will enable you to connect with the right international audiences.

Why you need to localise your global marketing content

International markets will be a source of enormous opportunity for businesses in the coming years, but it’s also important to recognise that the growth of global commerce will push up customer expectations and intensify competition.

According to research by Shopify, cross-border ecommerce increased by 21% year on year from January to June 2020, while use of translation apps soared by more than 3,300% worldwide during the COVID-19 pandemic. Dropshipping and currency conversion apps also saw increased demand. The company said these trends “suggest overseas and regional competition isn’t likely to subside”.

To build a strong foundation within global markets, it’s essential that you’re able to communicate with local audiences in a natural and sophisticated way. This is a subject Locaria explores in our Procurement Guide to Global Content Purchasing, by Lindsay Hong, which notes that there is increasing pressure on brands to tailor their marketing and develop positive, meaningful relationships with their customers.

CSA Research provided further evidence of this in its Can’t Read, Won’t Buy – B2C report, which found that 76% of online shoppers prefer to buy products with information in their native language. Four out of ten respondents to the company’s survey said they would never buy from websites that communicate in other languages.

Effective localisation of your marketing content – including everything from website copy and social media posts to email and video – will help you deliver a strong customer experience and build lasting international relationships.

The ability to deliver relevant content throughout a multi-venue customer journey matters. That reality doesn’t change for global consumers, but to be successful companies must adapt information, imagery and business fundamentals to the linguistic and country-specific requirements of an omnichannel experience. – CSA

Language and localisation services – understanding the costs

When you’re planning a marketing strategy to target opportunities in global markets, one of the key factors you’ll need to consider is procuring the right services to achieve your goals. That will involve sourcing the most appropriate language and localisation capabilities for your needs. This means identifying the most important types of content for your marketing plan, and the processes involved in adapting and tailoring these formats for particular markets.

Arguably the most important consideration of all for procurement is cost. Where linguistics is concerned, the amount you spend on services like translation and localisation will depend on criteria such as your target language. Costs can be influenced by the availability of linguists who are fluent in the language you need, or fluctuations in demand for particular languages.

As you can see in our whitepaper, localising content for Bulgarian, Vietnamese or Korean audiences is likely to be cheaper than tailoring your communications for customers who speak Japanese, Finnish or Canadian French.

Before purchasing content services, you could also benefit from thinking about the repetitiveness of your content, especially if you’re considering paying on a per-word basis. Words that are repeated frequently only need to be translated once, which could help to reduce your overall cost. If you do decide to pay per-word, check that the overall price is calculated in terms of ‘weighted word count’, so you don’t miss out on this potential saving.

Ultimately, the decisions you make on what sort of language services you need and how to pay for them should reflect the unique needs and goals of your business, such as the markets you’re targeting and the content types you’re using.

To learn more, download our whitepaper

Synopsis by Gunilla Huddleston