Doing business internationally is quite a common practice nowadays. Indeed, by going global, you significantly boost the growth of your company, regardless of its size, niche, or operational model. That is so mainly because doing business in a foreign company requires a lot of patience, courage, and organizational skills. Now, before you start working on your international strategy, there are a few important steps to take. One of them is the research of your potential audience. Another one, which is as important is localizing your business, from A to Z, which, of course, includes your website.
Going Global by Targeting Locally
Localization has become an important element of any international business strategy. Nine out of 10 best translation services online that work with businesses insist on localization. The importance of targeting your potential audience locally relies primarily on the fact that by doing so, you’ll be able to appeal to it more precisely. Just think about it, perhaps, the best advertisement is word-of-mouth. So, if you manage to satisfy enough people, they’ll spread the word, and your sales will boost. On the other hand, one country may have lots of people living in it, all of which have different interests, needs, and tastes. Satisfying all of them will be quite a challenge.
However, satisfying a potentially proactive audience can boost your word-of-mouth ad strategy. So, by appealing to a relatively small audience with people with similar interests, you have a serious potential to boost your sales significantly at a relatively low cost. The first step of appealing to the local audience would, of course, be the website localization. There are lots of ways to do that, posting valuable content, adapting the website’s interface, and making the content (both written and visual) more culturally relevant. For maximum effect, you may want to check out these 10 useful tools for translating your website content to get more prepared. This will help you achieve the following.
5 Reasons to Invest in Website Localization
- Improving your competitive edge.
While your competitors might only start thinking about what your potential audience wants, you’ll already have that audience. You don’t really need much time to study and successfully target a relatively small audience. The effect this has, however, is huge. On top of that, your international competitors who do not have a translated and localized website will get far behind you by overlooking this important step in the first place.
2. Letting familiar with your customers.
Not only you will get to know your customer by researching them, but you’ll also provide them with a great chance to know the best side of you. By being able to familiarize themselves with you in their native language and by essentially seeing you from a familiar point of view, your customers will automatically trust you more and be more eager to spend their money with you. Additionally, if you’ll be able to present your foreign nature to them appropriately, you might even outrun your local competitors by a mile.
3. Improving your SEO.
By properly approaching your original content in another language, you essentially create a more than decent and unique copy of it in that language. And the more unique your content is the greater chance of your website being found using a search engine. Further, if more people visit your website, your SEO boosts in all languages. Finally, if more people in different countries find out about you, your audience grows exponentially.
4. Increasing your conversion rates.
The research old and new alike persistently finds that customers trust the international companies that speak their language more. So, adapting your website to the local culture is about to bring the double of that effect.
5. Improving your image.
By showing that you purposely adapt and not just translate your website to the local audience, you show that audience your respect. And it’s much more pleasant to partner with someone who has respect for you.
Greater than Just an Idea
As it can be plainly seen, localization does lots of good things to your website. One of the most important things in doing business internationally is getting the customers to know you and see you in the best light possible. And by adapting your website to your customers’ cultural views and values alone already does that. So, make sure to study your audience as thoroughly as possible, find out what these people find familiar, comfortable, pleasant, attractive, and hit that spot with all the marketing resources you can.
BIO: Elizabeth Baldridge spends a lot of time on the move. Her limitless enthusiasm and love for life just don’t let her stay in one place for long. On top of that, her career path as an author, educator, and motivational speaker all work fine with that.
