Customers expect to be treated like kings because they are. When you impress a customer with a high-quality service or product and first-rate customer support, you not only earn their repeat business but also turn them into brand ambassadors who will sing your praises and refer business to you. You can "level up" your business and connect with customers in real, authentic ways, thanks to the benefits of localization. Live platform can help you completely focus on providing solutions for your communication bottlenecks in your new target. Therefore, you could serve your customers in a timely manner and over their preferred channel.
When entering new markets, what makes a brand stand out? Localization. In order to enter a market successfully and succeed over the long term, one must "think globally but act locally." Customers are becoming more discerning and are more likely than ever to choose brands that offer an exceptional global customer experience in their own language. Due to the virtually endless options and choices for purchases. In fact, 76% of customers prefer purchasing products with information in their own language
With this in mind, it's more crucial than ever for global companies to implement a business localization strategy. The strategy should outperform their competitors and speaks to their customers' native tongues.
Read on, we will go through the importance of localization for your brand, and the benefits of localization. Also, we will highlight how to boost global customer experience into your new target.
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Localization efforts are a specialized type of translation that can overcome linguistic and cultural barriers. However, its main purpose is to give businesses a competitive edge by connecting with niche markets' international populations. Although translation is a crucial step in the localization process, its main purpose is to give businesses a competitive edge by identifying and seizing chances to connect with niche markets' international populations. Additionally, localization entails more than just translating your content. It is about cultural respect, relationship building, relevance, and improving global customer experience overall.
Every new target market must be studied in order to localize your brand properly. Your sales plan must also be adjusted. A UX strategy that supports the user's brand experience in each market (and native language) you target is also required in addition to this adaptation.
Speaking the local target language is crucial for success when companies target new, foreign markets. To help you connect with your new target customer, you should use a strong localization strategy to make your brand message sound native. An effective localization strategy will boost global customer experience. Also, with the benefits of localization will enable you to spread your message to an international customer while preserving your brand identity.
Most businesses that enter the international market undervalue the impact of localization. Beyond monetary rewards like discounts or loyalty programs, offering tailored content that takes into account your customers' changing needs and offering service desk support in their own language are important factors.
Many companies come to the conclusion that product localization is simply not worth the time because they worry that it will increase administrative costs and lengthen the release cycle. There is no getting around it, though, if the objective is to increase the reach of your brand on a global scale.
The user experience is made as friendly and effective for your new target market when you use culturally appropriate visuals and terminology, which you should decide when setting up a localization strategy. The easier it is for customers to use your website and communicate with you, the more likely it is that they will stay and become loyal customers.
Related Read: Improve customer experience with multilingual customer support
Let’s dive into the benefits of localization that you and your customers can enjoy.
Websites that reflect the linguistic and cultural differences between various markets and their preferred languages demonstrate that your brand respects and is aware of each market's unique culture. This encourages customer trust, and it’s among the first benefits of localization.
Key performance indicators (KPIs) also experience a significant increase when trust is lifted. KPIs track a business's performance, including its operations, procedures, and project development. KPIs must be correlated to quantifiable business objectives in order to be meaningful. The general goals of the expansion project or business strategy will determine whether any localization program is successful.
Global customer experience improvements are the overall benefits of localization. Making a product that better suits the target market is what led to this improvement. Your target market can benefit from a product or service that is a perfect fit by making adjustments based on local culture, religion, slang, buying habits, imagery, colors, and many other factors.
Localization can directly result in higher sales figures in the market that your brand is targeting. The benefits of localization related to sales are the next most crucial ones. Moreover, customers will be more likely to complete the purchase if they have a better understanding of your product/service. What it is, what it does, and why it's the best option.
On the other hand, if they have trouble understanding the product information or must manually convert measurements and currencies, they might look for a simpler solution.
In the end, people prefer to stick with the brands they adore, even if there is a more economical option. The overall customer experience of the chosen brand is what keeps customers coming back. Even though the alternative might give a similar result. Additionally, localization products are a crucial component to deliver and boost global customer experience.
Now that you know what localization efforts entail and why it's crucial to localize your website, brand messaging, and customer experience, let's take a look at some tested strategies for leveraging localization to boost global customer experience.
Finding out as much as you can about your target customer is the first step in localizing a website. Without knowledge of the market you're entering, it is impossible to create a successful localization strategy.
If you don't plan ahead, marketing to new audiences and international markets can be risky. Knowing the nations you want to do business with is essential. Inappropriate messaging could potentially harm your brand's reputation and even offend your new target market, forcing you to stop operations there before they even get off the ground.
Just a few of the components you'll need to master across the various languages in your target markets are imagery and cultural nuances.
Which action comes first? It's critical to perform customer-focused research to determine which markets are most suitable for the expansion of a product. This will assist you in gaining a fundamental comprehension of your target market that will serve as the foundation for your localization efforts.
After choosing the markets you want to enter, you must determine the actual strength of the market opportunity. Working with a local partner or having a person physically present in that market to understand the needs and values of your new customers fully is the best way to go about doing this.
Working with local experts is crucial as this is how you'll obtain accurate, locally relevant experience and feedback. Pay close attention to local feedback. Do some preliminary research to ensure that you truly comprehend the local market dynamics, competitors, promotion strategies, etc. Frequently, the marketing and content strategies you employ in one country will be ineffective in another.
Local, high-quality content that you can share via email makes it much simpler to develop relationships with customers. Not only will localizing email marketing platforms and pertinent local content such as newsletters, e-books, or videos help you strengthen customer relationships, but it will also improve your SEO ranking. Handle all email communication completely inside Live platform, use templates to answer the most frequent & repetitive questions easily. Also, associate emails to appropriate resources, and get insights by deeply analyzing context from both - mass emailing or personalized emails. It might also be helpful to include contributions from regional sources to help you more effectively "speak the language" of your customer. Another strategy for establishing your authority as a local authority in your niche and generating more organic traffic is link-building with local sources.
Depending on their linguistic and cultural background, your social media target customer may have different interaction preferences. According to a Life Marketing study, 71% of customers who have had a positive customer experience with a brand on social media are likely to recommend the brand or product to their friends, family, and acquaintances. Therefore, catering to social media preferences can be beneficial as it presents a chance for engaging with potential customers. Also, can help to boost global customer experience rates, enhance brand reputation, and promote repeat business.
The creation of culturally appropriate content that showcases your brand's history and mission should be the aim of social media localization. However, keep in mind that you shouldn't over-saturate them with posts. It is crucial to make sure that the content you create here appeals to your target customer on an emotional level.
Nowadays, algorithms focus on localized versions of websites to provide users with results specific to their location. Google also employs a few vertically-specific ranking factors, which further reduces the results that users see.
What exactly does all of this mean? It implies that, in comparison to non-localized websites that do not provide information in the local language, localized websites now rank higher on search engine result pages.
You'll need to make yourself stand out in the eyes of search engines by employing clever strategies like hreflang tags, subfolders, and subdomains if you want to guarantee that your brand is listed among those results. Utilizing local servers will help your website distinguish itself as a multilingual website, which is something else you need to do. These are some local SEO entry points, though a localization expert will be familiar with all of these technical details.
It might be tempting for you to think there is no room for you in the overcrowded local market. Don't let this discourage you though, that's not necessarily the case. A market can be strong if its target market is competitive.
To stand out in a competitive market, you will need to come up with original and striking ideas. Analyze your competitors. What kinds of stories do they tell? How do they engage with existing and potential customers? In what ways are they forming connections with regional audiences? What distinguishes one location from others in terms of its branding?
We don't necessarily mean in terms of products either, you don't have to launch a whole new line of goods in order to win over your target market. Making value-added services, such as better customer support or more dependable processes, can lead to quicker, easier, and more affordable wins (faster shipping, for example). These are simple adjustments to make, and they will restore the crucial element of trust.
The customer experience is essential to influencing someone to choose your global brand over a competitor. You can swoop on a local competitor who has become complacent in a particular area of their business and win over potential customers by meeting that need or expectation.
When done correctly, website translation and brand localization—which are largely based on cultural understanding—provoke favorable emotional reactions from customers. The use of localized product reviews is one brand localization strategy you can use. Through the positive experiences of like-minded people, you can give your customer insight into your products and services.
When you translate and localize your product reviews, you show integrity and transparency, which can strengthen customer relationships, create trust, and help bridge the linguistic and cultural differences between the local market where your brand first appeared and the international market.
The most crucial aspect of your strategy is to understand who your local customer is and what they expect because this information will serve as the framework for all subsequent actions. Due to the inclusion of the human element at each stage of the customer journey, localized reviews can help you improve overall customer experience ratings. When you localize content like your product reviews, it has a positive and long-lasting impact on your customer. Brands targeting new markets need to shift their focus toward the customers. Pay close attention to local feedback.
It is important to provide support to your customers in their own language. Customer support that is provided in the customer's native tongue not only increases effectiveness but also builds trust in the company. Positive customer support interactions are closely related to overall customer satisfaction and loyalty. Locally accessible customer support channels are one of the best ways to make this possible.
To ensure favorable customer experiences, support centers, live chatbots, and FAQs should be made accessible to all language speakers. In today's digital world, customers frequently visit a brand's website first and choose self-help resources like company knowledge bases or academy pages before contacting a customer support team. And for this reason, it is imperative to localize this kind of content in order to make sure that it is appropriate for the new target market.
According to Statista statistics, global retail e-commerce sales are forecast to grow by 56% over the next years, reaching about 8.1 trillion dollars by 2026. Therefore, now is the ideal time to begin developing localization strategies for your e-commerce platforms.
You can effectively ensure that your online commerce platform meets the linguistic and cultural expectations of the new audiences you interact with by localizing it. This is one of the best ways to offer your global audiences genuine online shopping experiences that are tailored to their specific requirements.
You'll be well on your way to global expansion once you incorporate these strategies into your localization plan. The best investment you can make for long-term growth as a growing brand is a localization, despite the fact that it may seem like a time-consuming and expensive process. You must localize your website to eliminate linguistic and cultural barriers so that you can deliver top-notch support to customers in a new area.
You've done your research and know who your new target market is. The time has come to use it in the real world.
It takes time to establish trust with new audiences, keep that in mind. Be realistic about your expectations for the success of your localization strategy and redesigned marketing initiatives. The following are some crucial points to keep in mind:
Although multilingual self-service channels are the way of the future for customer support. Companies still need to implement localization strategies for market research, emails, social media, SEO, standing out from the competition, product reviews, customer support channels, and e-commerce platforms.
The customer experience journey doesn't just start with a purchase. The moment a brand becomes visible to a new customer, a truly remarkable global customer experience journey begins!
Don't hesitate to get in touch with us today if you want to learn more about how the Live product family can help you to boost your global customer experience strategy.
Learn more about how the Live product family can help you support and improve your customer experience strategy.
