become a global marketing guru: five localization...

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Become a Global Marketing Guru:Five Localization Strategies Every Digital Marketer Needs

Become a Global Marketing Guru2


It’s complex out there.

As a global marketer in today’s digital age, it’s critical to connect with your customers in their language, wherever they are, on their preferred devices and channels.

To master the customer experience journey, you have to take into account how they want to interact with you online – and that differs by country and culture.



Global digital marketing checklist:

Is your marketing content and web strategy aligned with your revenue goals by region?

Are you familiar with the translation solutions available to meet your customers’ expectations?

Do you understand your customers’ preferences and how they differ by segment, region and language?

Do you have the right tools in place to effectively manage your global marketing programs across multiple channels, languages and devices?

If these questions don’t fill you with

confidence, it’s time to reassess how you

approach your global marketing strategy.



Let’s take a look at five key areas where you can start focusing your efforts to drive global digital marketing success:

2Boost your

international SEO

3Make your multimedia

content multilingual

4Tap

into global social

intelligence

5Master

multilingual website

management

1Tailor

your global content strategy


Content has exploded in both type and volume, creating a daunting landscape for you to navigate.

Your global content requirements get more complex every day. That means you need a fresh approach to your localization strategy.

1 Tailor your global content strategy

smartphones

community forums

FAQs

blogs

tablets

websites

reviews

live chat

digital collateral

documentation

user guides

social media

press releases

advertising

eNewsletters

Content has exploded




It’s not time, cost or resource-efficient to translate all content manually. Choose the best translation method for your content based on its value within the customer journey.

Categorize your content by:

Its worth to customers

Its shelf life

Where it’s consumed

How it’s used

The stage in the sales cycle

Impact to your brand

Then apply the most appropriate translation method to deliver your content in a timely, effective and relevant way.

FACT: Not all

content is

equal





Human translation

Suits: High-quality content that contains subtle nuances and should be interpreted by a native speaker. Especially for content where it’s essential to communicate your brand identity and values clearly and accurately.

Examples: Advertising copy, corporate web copy, public relations materials and brand collateral such as corporate brochures.

Hybrid translation or intelligent machine translation

Suits: Structured, well-written content that’s delivered at a steady pace. Here the speed and cost of translation are also important factors. Content is run through customized machine translation engines before specially-trained translators begin post-editing.

Examples: Web product descriptions, product brochures, technical documentation and help guides.

Machine translation

Suits: Content that requires real-time, speedy translations at relatively low costs. Here volume and speed-to-market are greater considerations than precision.

Examples: User-generated content such as reviews and social media commentary, customer service materials and live chat.




Advertising Content

Newsletters

Websites Help

Documentation User guides

FAQs Knowledge base

Alerts/notifications Wikis

Reviews

User forums

Blogs

Chat Email support

Prec

ision

Volume and speedHUMAN TRANSLATION MACHINE TRANSLATION

By mapping your content in this way, you’ll soon be optimizing your translation resources and budget, while reaching more people with the right type of content, quicker.

Marketing




Engage with your creative teams at the early content stage to choose relevant images for the different languages, as well as factor in different translation lengths for layout purposes.

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Think ‘global’ early on

Save headaches further down the line by considering localization needs right from the moment you start creating content.

Will your content need tailoring for different countries, cultures and languages?

Do you need to include different examples, scenarios or customer references to relate to local challenges?

Are there regulatory or legal differences to bear in mind?

If you begin the content creation process thinking globally from the start, you are far more likely to write and structure your content in a way that is easier to both translate and localize.



When it comes to search engine optimization, there are a few localization strategies you can quickly start putting in practice in order to:

• Increase your website traffic • Decrease bounce rates• Improve the relevancy of your search

results• Encourage online conversions• Raise your visibility in popular local

search engines• Drive ROI on pay per click (PPC) ads• Boost page rankings on important

topics

Making your online content available to your customers wherever they are, whatever their device or language – should be your top priority.

2 Boost your international SEO


Identify your search engine targets

Popular search engines differ from country to country. Find out which search engines are the most popular in your target markets and optimize your websites accordingly. Benchmark your current rankings on these engines so that you can measure your ongoing success.



Google is the world’s largest search engine

BUT...

Baidu covers

70% of the market

in China

Yandex covers

60% of the market

in Russia

Naver covers

80% of the market

in Korea


Find the best search terms in each language

Direct keyword translations are not good enough You may invest considerable time and effort on finding the right keywords for your domestic markets today, but applying direct translations isn’t always the answer. People think differently and structure search phrases in unique ways based on their country and culture, even mixing English with local language.

You need to research and define the best set of keywords relating to your brand, products and services for every market you serve.

In Italy, the direct Italian translation for ‘cheap flights’ is ‘voli economici’. But the hybrid English/Italian term ’voli low cost’ has eight times more hits.

Phrase Volume Country Language

Cheap Flights 4,400 Italy English

Cheap Flight 880 Italy English

voli low cost 246,000 Italy Italian/English

voli economici 33,100 Italy Italian

offerte voli 22,200 Italy Italian

compagnie low cost 14,800 Italy French/English



246,000 hits for the

hybrid term ‘voli low cost’

33,100 hits for the

Italian term ‘voli economici’

Mammamia!



Create an SEO memory bank

Save and share your hard work. Store your market-specific keywords in a central database so that your SEO experts and online contributors alike can incorporate them into your website content. Include the terminology into the body of text, metadata descriptions and all tags to drive your search rankings within different local search engines.

2 Boost your international SEO78% of people

research online before buying

Only

27% of internet

users search in English




Next steps:

Advanced search engine algorithms such as Google Hummingbird 13 are changing the landscape of SEO. It’s not as easy as it once was to manipulate search results and boost rankings. As focus shifts towards creating a better overall visitor experience, here’s how you can stay abreast of this trend:

Proactively link back to your site at every opportunity. Social media plays a critical role and it’s important to identify the right social channels for

each market.

User experience matters and will affect

your rankings. Design your website to provide a quality

experience across all languages.

Ensure your metadata and coding is

clean, logical and search-crawl friendly. Remember

to take into account the requirements of each of your

local search engines.

Create relevant, quality content around a particular family of topics

and keywords that you would like to boost rankings

for, and make it available in local languages.



Whether you’re managing marketing for a B2B or B2C company, video is a critical tool for attracting and engaging your audience. It’s one of the most accessible and engaging ways to interact with your customers and prospects around the globe.

As with text, customers prefer to watch videos in their native language. It makes the subject matter easier to understand, building brand trust and inspiring action.

The thought of optimizing your video for different countries and languages may seem scary, but it’s a valuable asset in the digital marketer’s toolkit, strengthening branding, awareness, lead generation and customer satisfaction.

The key is matching the right localization method to your video to help keep costs and timelines under control.

3 Make your multimedia content multilingual




The brain processes visual data

600,000 faster than text1

One minute of video is worth

1.8 million words2

90% of consumers globally

watch video content over the internet3

1Social Media Today2Forrester Research3http://www.accenture.com/SiteCollectionDocuments/PDF/Accenture-Video-Over-Internet-Consumer-Survey-2013.pdf


Subtitling

The most cost-effective method of tailoring video for international audiences. The original audio file is transcribed and text subtitles are overlaid on the video. Typically any on-screen text will remain in the original language.

Suits: How-to and informative videos, user-generated videos and cases where it’s obvious that the information originates in a different language or country.

Voice over

For when it’s important to watch the video in local language. After transcription and translation, a professional native voiceover artist will re-record the audio track. The new audio is inserted into the video in place of the original audio.

Suits: Videos where there is no one speaking on screen, or where you want a newscast type production with the original voice turned down in the background.

Full-scale production

For when you need to create a truly professional finish. All text, graphical elements and audio tracks are translated, tailored and recreated, so that the end result looks and feels as though it was originally created in the viewer’s native language.

Suits: Professional branding, awareness and advertising videos where quality is paramount and budget is less of a concern.






YouTube is the

2nd largest search engine

worldwide

64-85%

of people are more likely to buy after watching a

product video4

7/10 people feel positively about a brand after viewing their video

content5

4http://axonn.co.uk/axonn-research/video-content-marketing-20135https://blog.kissmetrics.com/product-videos-conversion/

Think about localization from the start of a video project. Decide on the appropriate markets, languages and content, mapping to the most effectual video localization technique. This will help guide the production process avoiding mistakes further down the line, while enabling you to deliver relevant content to your target markets within cost.

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Marketers like you are feeling the pressure every day to drive activities that really accelerate sales. Faced with flat budgets, a faster-paced global economy and better informed consumers, it’s a huge challenge for you to attract and retain new international customers, as well as deliver a higher ROI with every targeted campaign and product launch.

4 Tap into global social intelligence




You may be familiar with your domestic audience, but do you know your global customer? – What they care about, the triggers behind their attitudes and behaviors and the different cultural nuances from country to country?

Maybe you’ve tried traditional market research methodologies such as surveys, focus groups or complex software that promise in-depth insights. These are costly, time-consuming and difficult to execute in multiple languages.

Recent SDL research into six global hotel chains found that while customer experience satisfaction levels in the United States were high for these leading brands, big gaps appeared in other markets. By analyzing the global conversations taking place online in local languages, the team identified patterns which pointed to a weaker brand affinity in Spain and Germany. Companies are able to take decisive action based on comprehensive, data-driven social intelligence such as this.

58% of consumers are

willing to pay more for a superior customer

experience

80% of organizations

believe they deliver a superior customer

experience

8% of customers

surveyed actually agree


There is so much digital information out there about your customers

Harnessing that information to get a deeper understanding of your different global markets, languages and cultures, means you can deliver overall better international customer experiences.

With the right social intelligence mechanisms in place, you can:

Successful global brands of the future will have access to live insights about what matters to their customers, in every market. Social Intelligence enables you to be agile, collaborate across functions, identify success factors for campaigns, product launches, market expansion and your brand, as well as measure and respond to these insights.



Capture more international buyers: tailor your strategies for regional

product launches and brand campaigns. Monitor and adapt your campaigns in

real-time based on responses.

Create engaging, tailored content:

understand what type of content appeals to different segments to drive resonance and

engagement.

Promote global brand advocates:

consistently meet your customers’ expectations

to create passionate evangelists who will

amplify your marketing message.

Understand global consumer behavior: uncover the buying journey for different

segments and plot their next likely steps.



4 Social intelligence checklist:

Uncover where the strongest opportunities are to influence purchasing behavior

Find out how to prevent costly mistakes before a product or brand launch

Start using real-time feedback in your customers’ language to adjust campaigns

Compare your brand affinity globally and how you rank against your competitors

Easily track and measure your campaigns against your marketing objectives

Cut down time and costs involved in traditional marketing research

Successful global brands of the

future will have access to live insights about what matters to their customers, in every

market



The ultimate goal of optimizing your content, SEO, video marketing and social media efforts for global audiences is to drive traffic to your websites. It’s where your marketing efforts bear fruit. But what does the backend of your website look like? Do you have the right content management system (CMS) and translation technology in place to support consistent global user experiences?

5 Master multilingual website management



5 CMS health check:

Are translation capabilities integrated into your CMS?

Is your productivity compromised because of slow, bug-ridden or poorly designed tools and systems?

Can you easily launch new websites in different languages?

Can you quickly post content, images and multimedia on all your sites?

Are you able to optimize your different sites for search and social and easily test page designs?

Do you need better support to execute marketing in multiple languages?

In essence, can you tailor your online

experience to your audience based on geography, culture

and language?


Integrate your translation management

With all the new types of content emerging as well as the sheer volume, to maintain multiple websites and remain globally relevant, you need a streamlined translation process behind the scenes.

Integration of your translation management tool and web content management system can dramatically speed up the time it takes to publish new content.

Integration in practice:

Let’s say you have eight different language websites and you want to make updates to a product page. You can edit the content in English, for example, straight from your CMS and then quickly and easily send the page for translation from the tool. You don’t have to painstakingly highlight only the copy that has changed or work outside the system. Your translation memory then recognizes previously translated content, so it will only translate the new text, saving you time and money, while the translated copy is automatically populated on your language sites directly from your CMS.



Integration of your translation

management tool and web content management

system can dramatically speed up the time it takes to publish new

content


Use machine translation to your advantage

Machine translation often gets a bad rap owing to the various free, yet rough translation tools available online. But machine translation can be more sophisticated than you think. With trained translation engines tailored to specific industries, you can get a match that meets your time, cost and quality requirements. Here’s how you can use it to your advantage:

Translate user-generated content

Equip your customers to talk to one another about the products and services you’re offering. Delivering customer reviews, social posts and forums across languages is a great way to engage global audiences. But the vast quantities of content created and its relatively short shelf life makes human translation costly and frankly infeasible.

By integrating customized machine translation into your online and social platforms, you can ensure your relevancy across markets, serve up a broader range of credible content and provide a better customer experience for all.

Adopt truly-multilingual chat

In today’s digital world, your customers demand instant feedback from your organization. But providing such a high level of engagement in multiple languages can be a challenge.

By integrating machine translation functionality into your instant chat tools, you can provide the real-time, two-way communication your customers expect. Your employees don’t even have to speak multiple languages, yet they can still support customers throughout their buying journey.





They type their question into the online chat box in Spanish.


Involve marketing in the CMS decision-making process early on. Content creators should be brought up to speed, invited to provide feedback on usability and should be given the right technology and processes in order to fully support multilingual web publishing.

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Let’s look at this example of a Spanish customer who wants help with one of your products:

This is automatically translated and delivered to the help agent in their native language, let’s say English.

The English-speaking agent types their reply in English.

This response is automatically translated and delivered back to

the consumer in Spanish.

Become a Global Marketing Guru

SDL (LSE: SDL) allows companies to optimize their customers’ experience across the entire buyer journey. Through its web content management, analytics, social intelligence, campaign management and translation services, SDL helps organizations leverage data-driven insights to understand what their customers want, orchestrate relevant content and communications, and deliver engaging and contextual experiences across languages, cultures, channels and devices.

SDL has over 1,500 enterprise customers, over 400 partners and a global infrastructure of 70 offices in 38 countries. We also work with 72 of the top 100 global brands.

For more information, visit www.sdl.com

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Global marketers who are able to successfully navigate the maze that is localization and translation, will ultimately succeed in winning the hearts and minds of their international customers. And with the right partner, you can overcome time, cost and technical barriers to connect with your customers in new, meaningful ways.

To learn more about how we can help you to become a master global marketer, visit: www.sdl.com/modernglobalmarketing

In summary

“If you talk to a man in a language he

understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in

his language, that goes to his heart.”

Nelson Mandela

SDL_eb_Become_a_Global_Marketing_Guru