Entering International Business Is Easier with Good Localization
When your company is ready for international business, you’ll need to have superior-quality localization resources in place.
Especially when your customer service team is spread thin, investing in your localization resources will help your startup to engage your target market efficiently and effectively. Picking your international business localization strategy isn’t simple, however.
Asking a few key questions will help to guide your company to success.
What Are The Global Challenges Of International Markets?
When your company is entering the international space, you probably won’t be breaking into dozens of countries at once. Instead, your target markets will be the focus of your expansion efforts.
While each of your target markets has unique localization needs, there are also a handful of challenges which you’ll face in any international market.
Your company needs to understand these general challenges before moving on to plan for each target market’s specific challenges.
These challenges range from the obvious, like language barriers, to more subtle cultural disconnects between the English-speaking world and the outside.
The thing that you need to remember is that according to a report published by CSA Research, your startup will be held to the same standard as every other company on the internet when you go international.
If the prospective customer can’t read your marketing materials, they’re not going to buy your product even if it’s the perfect one for their needs. This means that reliable translation services are the single most important aspect of your startup’s international expansion strategy.
Furthermore, this means that translation and localization services can’t be afterthoughts for your company. They’re part of the meat as far as the international business environment is concerned.
What Are The Unique Challenges To Entering Our Target Market?
You’ll need to identify the unique challenges of your target market if you want your startup to succeed. Importantly, your competition will be in the same boat as far as these unique challenges go.
The main difference is that they may have had a long time to overcome those obstacles—but your company might not. Especially if your company is a startup, you can’t afford a bungled launch.
Three questions will help you to identify unique international business localization challenges in your target market:
- What are the cultural expectations for the type of product that your company sells?
- Do customers interact with startups in the same way that they interact with established companies in the target market?
- Which market entry strategies have been shown to fail in the target market?
Notably, these three questions do not explicitly pertain to translating between languages. Unique cultural challenges can crop up in the areas that you’d least expect them. (Tip: Check out our post on how to achieve a successful international market penetration.)
In particular, the Harvard Center For Negotiations claims that international businesses often stumble with the mode of communication that their target markets prefer. Business culture in the West favors communicating at pre-ordained times, using direct language.
In contrast, many Middle Eastern businesses prefer a more discursive and often metaphorical style of communication, which extends to their preferred marketing materials.
If your company isn’t prepared for unique challenges like these, your experience entering international markets will be very difficult.
If, on the other hand, your company is more prepared than your competition, having a handle on localization can lead to massive revenues. According to a study published by Agility PR, 74 percent of businesses polled in 2017 claim that content localization is a revenue driver.
Localization is the first step in providing personalization. As your company already knows, customers crave personalization in their customer experiences.
This means that conquering your target market’s unique challenges more gracefully than your competitor will be more than merely a good translation job by your customers—it’ll be a more tailored experience, too.
How Should We Execute Market Entry Strategies?
According to an article published by SEMrush, localization details as small as the domain structure that your company chooses can have a large impact on your chance of success.
Given the importance of these details among many others, how should your company enter your target market?
The short answer is that your company will need to use the right translation and localization service. Having the right tools on hand to adapt your product and your marketing practices to your target market will mean that your company is ready to dominate international business.
If you’re interested in learning more about using translation and localization services as drivers of profit for your business, check out Professional Translation as a Business Driver for Global Growth and Profit, which will discuss the issue in greater depth.
