6 Best Localization Hacks That Every Global Brand Should Know About

Localization is becoming increasingly important for global brands because of its ability to help them resonate with diverse target audiences. From the language, culture, and customers to the preferences and interests of your target audiences, localization helps businesses effectively modify their brands for the target segments seamlessly.

The aim of localization is to enhance your customers' experience and make them engage with your brand. For this, you need to get some understanding of how localization works and the right strategies to make it work even better for your brand. Read this article till the end to find out some amazing hacks that will change your localization game.

Proven Hacks to Make Your Brand Localization Work

Brand Must Reflect Its True Identity in All Languages

Your brand may lose its true value when translated into many languages. You must not compromise on what your brand stands for and its core beliefs, in the process of localization. No matter if you have changed the languages, or modified the layouts, the true essence of your brand must remain consistent. For this, you must focus on creating brand terminologies and style guidelines, so that the original voice of your brand will remain unchanged. Regardless of the number of regions you are localizing your brand for. For professional document translation services for your global brand, you can partner with a professional LSP.

Focus on Keyword Optimization

All of your localization efforts will go in vain if you are not visible in a foreign market. Your global search engine ranking is very different from domestic rankings, so you must go for separate keyword optimization for each region. It is also called local SEO. You do this for each region separately considering the commonly used local phrases to search for similar products and services. To manage your SEO-friendly translation, you can use a professional cloud-based localization management system.

Localize Your Multimedia

With the textual content, you must focus on localizing your video's graphics and other media content. Videos have the ability to reach large masses because it is a seamless content consumption medium. If you are an English brand catering to the Asian market, you must provide subtitles, voiceovers, or dubbings with your videos to make them understandable for the target audience. Similarly, if your images contain any text, you must also translate them into local languages and adapt your image in a way that will look more appropriate for local markets.

Collaborate With Local Influencers

For someone who doesn’t have any exposure to the local cultures, and wants to grab the attention of the large audience in less time, they can collaborate with local influencers. You can ask influencers to talk about your brand and share their brand experience with followers. It’s a great way to make your brand visible in a new market and significantly enhance your product sales. Moreover, your product quality should be good enough to get good reviews from celebrities. Because influencers wouldn’t lie to their audience and mislead them for the lack of some quick money.

Transform your UI

With the translation, you must rethink the user interface and navigation of your website or software. Consider the layouts that your target audiences are more familiar with and you can make some changes to your current UI. It’ll make it much easier for your customers to navigate through your digital product and have a seamless online experience. You can use a professional localization project management platform to manage your localization project for each region from one single place.

If you are dealing in SaaS product localization, you must internationalize your software. It means you will keep the design of your software flexible and easily adjustable to new changes. Doing this will make your localization journey simple, easy, and less time-consuming.

Use Machine Translation Post Editing Method

In the end, machine translation can be your savior when it comes to dealing with high volumes of content translations. However, it doesn’t mean that you should start relying on open-source translation tools. Machine translation post-editing (MTPE) is a proven method to manage your translation work in less time without compromising on your quality. For this, you first get your translation done by an automated translation tool, and afterward, get this MT translation proofread by professional translations. you can use this method to manage your everyday translation workload with ease.

Make sure to use a reliable machine engine to generate automated translations. For proofreading, your translators must have good industrial experience as well as fluency in the target language.

Conclusion

You must carefully carry out your localization processes considering the linguistic, cultural, and social nuances of a target market in your mind. All the above-mentioned tactics and hacks for localization are proven by big brands that are thriving in global markets. However, you must figure out your own path and create a localization strategy that will work for your brand. To do so, you must conduct comprehensive market research for every region to get first-hand data from your customers. Only authentic market data will help you make reasonable and informed localization decisions about your brand's global expansion.