Different markets have different customer preferences and behaviors. This leaves marketers with one option: localizing digital marketing efforts to target local markets effectively. After all, localization ensures your marketing strategy includes content that feels relevant and relatable to local customers.
A significant number of marketers across the world believe that localization and translation are crucial for reaching new customers effectively. Harvard Business Review, known for its comprehensive and intrinsic guides, published an article detailing the effectiveness of localization strategies in giving businesses a durable competitive edge.
In other words, investing in digital marketing localization strategies give your marketing campaign the tools to target local markets effectively and, in the process, give you a competitive advantage over others.
For this reason, we’ve compiled the following article to help you understand how to build an effective digital marketing localization strategy that will help you connect to your audience, and improve engagement.
But first, let’s get a better understanding of digital marketing localization.
What Is Digital Marketing Localization?
Digital marketing localization refers to any efforts that businesses take in communicating their brand’s products or offerings to a local audience. It typically involves any digital marketing strategies targeted toward local markets and audiences.
Think of it as ensuring your brand remains ‘locally aware’ even as a global operator. Netflix and Spotify are two prominent examples of companies that effectively embrace digital marketing localization.
Netflix, for one, tailored its content library and user experience to different markets worldwide, meaning you’re more likely to see local content on your home page frequently.
Spotify, on the other hand, has personalized its music streaming platform for users in different countries, allowing region-specific playlists, highlighting local artists, and offering content in various languages.
At the very basic level, digital marketing localization includes:
- Transcreation – adapting content and copy for local markets
- Writing language-specific reviews
- Adding local payment preferences on your site
- Using local catch-phrases in your marketing campaigns
- Having language-specific reviews on your site
- Translating web language into the local language.
So why would you, as a global business, need digital marketing localization?
Why Do You Need to Localize Your Digital Marketing?
1. To Increase Your Sales
Perhaps the most relevant reason for adopting digital marketing strategies is to increase your sales. Digital marketing campaigns that factor in the local markets allow your business to market penetration and conversions.
For instance, one study found that 75% of buyers are more likely to purchase if brands have their product language in one the local market understands.
And many other stats show that digital marketing localization helps global businesses penetrate their local markets and generate more sales.
2. To Boost Your Organic Visibility
As search engines continue to refine their algorithms to deliver localized search results, businesses that embrace digital marketing localization can expect to enjoy improved organic visibility.
Localized keywords, local business listings, backlinking from local websites, local content creation, geo-targeted PPC advertising, and multilingual SEO are applications of localizing digital marketing campaigns that will.
3. To Connect with Target Customers
Any brand seeking to connect with a local market needs to have marketing content centered around local preferences, behaviors, and cultural beliefs. Localization helps you target your market as it involves tailoring messages and offerings to resonate with local audiences.
4. It Allows You to Increase Relevance and Engagement
Relevance and engagement are two important indicators of brand success, especially in new markets. Salesforce estimates that 64% of customers expect tailored engagement. Not only that, but 52% of customers feel that brands are generally impersonal.
Digital localization strategies give you the opportunity to effectively target local customers by using content that feels relevant, personal, and relatable. This increases engagement, trust, and the likelihood of conversions.
5. It Allows You to Enhance Your Brand Perception
Consumers want to associate themselves with a reputable and trustworthy brand. And different markets have different perceptions towards different businesses and industries. Digital marketing localization strategies can help businesses enhance their brand perception in such markets.
For instance, you can show that you understand the customers’ values and preferences by adapting marketing strategies to local cultures. This breeds cultural relevance, which fosters a positive perception of the brand.
How to Build an Effective Digital Marketing Localization Strategy
As businesses expand their reach across borders, understanding the differences in cultures, languages, and markets becomes paramount. An effective localization strategy boosts your organic visibility, connects with your target audience, and increases engagement.
Here are some pointers you should consider when building an effective digital marketing localization strategy.
Determine Your Localization Goal
What do you want from your marketing localization campaign? Is it to increase your overall sales, or boost your product/ service awareness, or achieve greater brand recognition? Whatever your objectives are, having a localization goal allows you to lay the foundation for your digital marketing localization strategies.
Consider the Type of Content You Want to Use in the Project
Legendary marketers know that different types of content will appeal to different types of markets. The same also goes for the multitude of digital platforms on the internet, such as social media, online communities, email, and forums.
It would be ideal if you understood your audience first beforehand to steer you in the right direction in the way of content. Different types of content used in a digital marketing localization campaign include emails, blog posts, social media posts, product descriptions, and ads.
One way to find out your local audience’s preferences is by using a VPN. It can be frustrating to come across content that is restricted in your area when researching online. To avoid this frustration, consider using VPNs to bypass geo-restricted content and give you access to content unavailable in specific regions.
Localize Influencer Marketing
Leveraging the power of influencer marketing puts you in a ripe position to connect with the very same local audiences that you are trying to market to.
But before you do so, make sure you identify the ideal social media platform that resonates with your audience. For instance, WeChat reigns supreme in China, while Line is fairly popular with social media enthusiasts in Japan and Thailand.
After you identify that platform, the next thing would be to include social media content for localization. Crafting social media posts and ad campaigns tailored to the local market is essential for digital marketing localization. Localizing this type of content involves understanding the platform preferences of the target market and tailoring the content accordingly.
Influencer marketing amplifies the impact of localized social media strategies. In line with the text above about brand perception and engagement, collaborating with local influencers with credibility and a loyal ‘fanbase’ gives you the opportunity to engage with the local audience on a more personal level.
Influencer marketing is a proven technique that allows you to promote your products or services to a local audience. Influencers profoundly understand their local culture, trends, and preferences.
And besides, they’ve built trust with their followers through consistent, valuable content and transparent engagement.
Incorporating partnerships with local influencers and localizing your social media marketing campaigns allows you to effectively reach your target audience in order to boost connection and engagement with them.
Translate Your Website
Although it might sound like an obvious pointer, it’s worth mentioning. If you want to engage with a local audience effectively, you must translate your website content to the most popular language of your familiarity with them.
This goes beyond literal translation; it involves capturing the cultural beliefs/ practices, idioms, slang phrases, and context-specific to the local audience. Translating web content ensures that it’s understandable and resonates with the local audience.
Consider Using SEO Techniques to Boost Local Visibility
Digital marketing localization goes hand in hand with SEO techniques. Localizing your marketing content includes translating information on websites and fine-tuning it through local search keywords.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is all about optimizing content, especially for websites, to improve their visibility and rankings in search engine results pages (SERPS). SEO seeks to align your web content with algorithms used by search engines.
SEO techniques that you should consider incorporating as part of your digital marketing localization strategies include:
- Conducting keyword research for local search terms, phrases, and words.
- Optimizing meta tags, URLs, and alt tags for local relevance: These ‘things’ provide valuable information about websites to search engines. When optimizing for local relevance, ensure that these elements contain localized keywords and location-specific information.
- Optimizing your ‘Google My Business’ and other local directories.
- Creating location-specific content.
Enjoy the Power of Digital Marketing Localization Today!
Content plays a huge role in digital marketing localization strategies. Let the professionals optimize your content marketing efforts as you focus on other important areas of your marketing campaigns.
Our team of experienced content marketing professionals will help you achieve your content goals. Our services extend beyond product descriptions and blog posts. We offer SEO, paid-per-click, email, and social media solutions to scale your business and take it to new heights.
Give us a call today or visit digital marketing expert to book a consultation and see your business grow!
