Expanding Global Reach - Localization Insights

I recently took part in an event held by Welocalize in Dublin focused on globalization, localization and expanding global reach. There are many growing opportunities for organizations to reach new international and cultural markets and localization is a key enabler. Developing engaging content that is linguistically and culturally appropriate for local markets will increase your international customer base. Whether on or offline, content has to resonate with its audience to encourage them to take action and buy into your brand.

At the Welocalize LocLeaders event, there were localization leaders from global brands all over the world and Welocalize’s most senior management, including Smith Yewell, Welocalize CEO who is a localization veteran and has an incredible innovative and visionary approach on how organizations can grow globally. Here are some of the big discussions that took place at the event:

Understand digital marketing process. Digital was a big discussion topic at LocLeaders Dublin. Digital content is today’s main media channel and the afternoon session at LocLeaders was dedicated to multilingual digital marketing. Huw Aveston, co-founder and managing director of Adapt Worldwide led the session, reviewing the overall consumer journey and discussing how localization translates to sales and revenue.

With access to so much online information, a buyer’s journey has changed significantly. Huw talked us through some interesting statistics -  91% in B2B researchers use smartphones throughout the path to purchase and 70% of buyers use online video as part of their research* Social media has also changed the way we surf and shop with huge amounts of consumer reviews and product feedback posted every minute. Most audiences are now self-directed and are 57% of the way towards making a decision before reaching out to a potential vendor**. Online content really is king. Content must resonate linguistically and culturally with all local markets. Digital campaigns are an excellent way to grow global markets and from a business strategy perspective, it is relatively easy to measure the economic benefit of translation in digital marketing by calculating cost per clicks and conversion rates.

Driving a multilingual digital marketing strategy gives measurable revenue and competitive advantage.

Evolution of Localization Quality. There are many common themes that challenge global business and quality is one of them. Quality of content is always high on the agenda of any localization event. How to measure translation quality, how to define quality KPIs and how to work in harmony with the various parties involved in the quality process. Although quality is a well-discussed topic, the industry is evolving in how it sees quality. Linguistic accuracy is not always the highest priority. Optimum quality is now a moving target. It depends on content type, industry, customer use, expectations and overall business objectives. Most LocLeaders attendees recognized that rigid quality control for certain content types, like digital marketing can kill creativity and effectiveness in local markets. This can cause challenges when implementing a company-wide quality program but it also opens up opportunities. Recognizing that certain content can be translated to lower levels, like user generated content for example, gives clients the opportunities to translate more with static localization budgets.

 One area that generated lively discussion was gaining user feedback. Are we publishing content that our users want? Is it fit for purpose? User feedback is deemed the ultimate measure of quality, especially with most content published online. Digital content allows a two-way conversation to take place. When you purchase a laptop from Dell.com, there are many opportunities to collect feedback not just on the product, but also on the overall user, e-commerce and content experience. Localization plays a key role in every step and touchpoint of the online experience so it makes sense to gain feedback about whether the user experience was local and culturally relevant with no glaring errors or glitches. Obtaining positive user feedback or garnering less complaints from internal and external audiences is the best measure of quality.

 How to best manage in-country reviews? In-country review models can provide an excellent part of the quality process but can also cause problems. Quite often, in-country reviewers are not actually employed to review – reviewing content is something they do outside of normal working hours. This can be time consuming and slows down the localization process. The morning panel discussion on in-country reviews, led by Garry Levitt, Welocalize VP of Europe featured representatives from Nielsen, Spil Games and Videojet. The panel all agreed that the role of the language service provider (LSP) was crucial, especially as most clients do not have in-house translation resources and rely on LSPs for an outsourced localization process. Having a good partnership with an LSP was likened to having access to group therapy. Trust is important.

 Setting expectations and good communication is key to success with in-country review systems. If individual countries have estimated delivery time guidelines and localization teams set expectations correctly, then product launch teams can stream content and express concern if there are any expected delays. Standardizing the flow to all stakeholders helps regulate the internal process but it was agreed that all teams have to be realistic with some element of flexibility.

 One of the leading components to the delay in the in-country review process is the quality of the source materials and access to information to enable in-context reviewing. Garbage-in, garbage-out. If your source isn’t effective irrespective of content type, than any subsequent translated materials will follow the same levels of quality. Bad. Having localization teams working closely with the marketing teams developing the source can lead to a better and smoother translation process.

Some of the best localization minds in the business attended LocLeaders Dublin. The benefits and value of attending were obvious. Discussions carried on after the event and continued at Localization World Dublin 2016 which took place after LocLeaders. It was a great day to take part in with some superb insights from my colleagues at Welocalize and the global brand leaders who played such an active and important part of the day.

Louise

Louise.law@welocalize.com

Louise Law is Global Communications Manager at Welocalize

*Google Millward Brown Digital B2B Path to Purchase Study 2014: Google Internal Data

**Think B2B with Google