If your company is doing business abroad and wants to internationalize the brand, then it’s better to be well-prepared and have a plan. In this article, we’ll review some of the best practices involved in marketing localization.

There are countless cases of companies that have failed at entering other markets because of bad preparation and because they failed to acknowledge that going global also means going local in many places, sometimes even at the same time.

Getting your message across is not as simple as just translating a website and your content. It also involves reviewing the culture, researching your target audience’s interests and needs, adapting your overall image, and reformulating complete ideas, among other things.

What is the point of investing money in internationalizing your business if people won’t be able to understand what you’re offering?

Don’t worry, we’re here to give you the best advice on how to localize your brand.

1. Research and evaluate

Before moving a single finger, you need to know who you’re targeting and you need to know your audience. It’s crucial that you know about their culture and history, how they live, what resonates with them, and what their needs are so you can customize your strategy accordingly.

2. Define the scope

Not all the elements of your campaign might be suitable for everyone. Therefore, it’s necessary that you review your content and see what can and cannot be adapted in order to save time and money.

3. Strive for operational excellence

We’re proud to count Hogarth International as a customer of Wordbee, as they use our translation management system.

Hogarth is known for operational excellence within the marketing sphere, and is one of the largest players in marketing translations worldwide.

To achieve this kind of excellence, every translation project needs a strong software that is able to handle all the edge cases and large volumes of content, and helps you produce high quality translations with efficiency. This is where Wordbee becomes extra handy.

Wordbee offers smart translation management software, providing users with great features and tools to help them improve their workflows, simplify the process, and improve the quality while also saving time and money.

4. Create a style guide

Do you have a style guide for your brand? If not, you’d better make one. Moreover, you might want to consider creating a specific guide for each language that you’re targeting.

Style guides are a series of documents that serve as tools for defining the rules and strategies that your company uses to present itself. It is like a guidebook that states the voice, tone, style, and direction of your brand. It can even include terminology and other linguistic details that need to be considered. Style guides help you ensure high-quality results.

5. Work with local professionals

Nobody will know the target audience and their culture as well as a local, so it’s important that you include local translators, copywriters, or marketers in your global strategy plan. Local professionals will help you make sure that your message really conveys your intention.

6. Incorporate SEO

SEO translation is a specific type of website translation that will help you reach the first positions in search engines, making your content easier to find. This in return will help you convert more over time. You can read more about it in one of our SEO series articles.

7. Do an overall review

Every good plan is incomplete until reviewing all the work.

When localizing your brand, it’s important that you consider and check even the slightest of details: logo, brand name, slogans, images, colors, etc. — especially when targeting an audience that has a totally different culture.

Have native professionals who actually live in the target country review all the materials to make sure they’re localized and well-suited for the target locale. This way, you guarantee your success and that all your efforts have a high payoff in the end.