Are you thinking of taking your product to a foreign marketplace?
Well, it is not going to be that simple. You need to transform the whole outlook of your product to attract local customers. Companies that target international markets need to build a product localization solution for every new market they are targeting.
You have to understand the local culture and social norms to efficiently localize your product for foreign markets. However, you have to do your product localization the right way without altering the actual brand voice.
Here we are going to talk about the importance of product localization for any company and how to do it efficiently.
What Is Product Localization?
It is the modification of your product and services for the targeted culture, society, and audience. Product localization ensures that your product is resonating with local customers and there are no cultural or language barriers left. From translating the web copies to optimizing the product design, you have to adapt all elements of your products to local preferences. Product localization gives your target customers a sense of belonging to your product and services.
Significance of Product Localization
Unlike western markets, in Asia, a vast majority of people can’t speak or understand English. If you are representing yourself as an English product, most people would not be able to connect with it. You will be missing out on a major chunk of the population for not localizing the product. Similarly, design adaptation is also important to make your product easily blend with cultures and sociality. Localization is critical to unleashing the full potential of your product in a foreign market. It will allow you to raise brand awareness in a new marketplace and make your product more visible to local audiences.
So, localizing your product allows you to break all cultural and language barriers coming your way in a foreign market.
What Goes into Product Localization Solution?
Finding the right localization solution for your product is important to save your time, effort, and money. There are various aspects of the product that you have to adapt to local cultures to make it acceptable for native audiences. However, you must have a good understanding of how things work in localization, and how to develop a robust localization strategy that would work for your brand. Following are the top four important steps that you need to follow while doing your product localization.
Market Research
If you want to take your product to foreign markets to enhance your customer base, the first thing you should do is conduct in-depth market research. You must know that not every market is suitable for your product. Choosing the wrong markets for your products would only waste your time, efforts, and resources. To search for the right market for your product, you can conduct a customer survey in different markets. For this, you can create a questionnaire containing open-ended questions about your product. Such surveys would give you an idea about what people in a particular market think about your product; do your product have any potential in that market; what modification you can make to your product before launching. Make sure you have figured out questions to these answers before choosing and getting into any new market.
Modify Your Product Design
What is working for the local market, might not necessarily be right for the foreign market also. You have to conduct in-detail market research to conduct your product the right way. Through proper research and development methods, you have to figure out the right way to adapt your product design for each region. From packaging to color combinations, the designs you are using, going to have a huge impact on customers. If you are selling your products and services online then you have to make certain design modifications to the website as well. Based on the region, you have to adapt the overall appearance and interface of your website to the local interests. The idea is to enhance the user experience of your customers and make them feel more comfortable buying from you.
Transcreate The Copy
We know that translation is the most important aspect of localization for its significance to eliminate the communication barriers between you and your customers. However, the translation should not be just about swapping the words from one language to another. To create more impact on your audiences through your product, you must do transcreation of web copies and other marketing content. To make your translation process agile, you can use a professional translation management system or linguistic software. Make sure to get your translation tools from a credible resource only. Otherwise, it would have a devastating impact on your product localization. Transcreation goes one step beyond translations because you have to keep the feel of the original text alive in the translations. You should hire professional native translators to do the transcreation of your product’s messaging.
However, when it comes to transcreation you can’t totally rely on any machine translation.
Internationalize The Product
Internationalization of products is the process of making your product ready for localization. For instance, if you have created a software product, you must build it using Unicode from the beginning. Your product should be designed in a way that it can easily get modified for any new marketplace. You must not use any hard coding in the software product or website, because it would make your localization process super time-consuming and challenging. Internationalizing your product makes it much easier for your developers, translators, and designers to localize the software, websites, marketing material, and content.
On your mobile app or website, you have to modify the whole design and formatting to make it understandable for the target audience. Based on the region you’re targeting; you have to change the date and time formatting or payment methods that are more recognizable to your customers.
Bring in New Technology – Bonus Tip
To efficiently achieve your product localization goals, you have to bring together both human intelligence and advanced technology. To cope with the advanced needs of your product localization, you must get support for modern tools and equipment. Most companies keep on following traditional localization management methods that are unable to meet the current localization needs. Not just that traditional localization operations are complicated and slow, but they’re also more prone to errors. Using an advanced translation management system would speed up your localization process and reduce the excessive workload in your teams. You can also customize your TMS or CAT tools to your unique localization needs and pay a monthly subscription fee accordingly. Moreover, the purpose of TMS tools is not to replace the human workforce but to support them in improving their work efficiency. Make sure to get your linguistic software or TMS from a reliable service provider only.
Conclusion
Localizing is critical for the international success of your product because of diversified cultures and differences in languages. You just equip yourself with the right tools and resources to effectively do your product localization. You must use the best translation management system and linguistic software to ease your product localization management journey. Prior to localizing your product, you better do in-depth market research to understand their cultures and social intricacies. The better you know your audience psychologies, the better you can go about your product localization for foreign markets. You must follow the tips and guidelines provided in this article to effectively manage your product localization project. You can also outsource your product localization to a language service provider with a good reputation in the market.