Best practices for global content localization to grow your international markets Author: Dr Dave Chaffey, Smart Insights Part of the Managing international marketing Toolkit
Contents Introduction: Why smart translation matters to your future...3 How will this report help me and my business?... 4 Who is this guide for?... 5 How is this report structured?... 5 About the author... 6 A Note from Smartling s CEO... 7 Defining the Localization Opportunity...8 1. Review your business case... 8 2. Audit the current contribution of your content and process efficiency... 9 3. Set SMART objectives for your translation program...10 4. Define your translation priorities...11 Setting your strategy... 11 5. Select the best solutions to scale localization... 12 6. Evaluate your translation management technology platform... 14 7. Structure your talent and teams to deliver on the benefits... 15 Implementation actions to make your translation efficient and effective...15 8. Put actionable analytics in place... 16 9. Build-in content optimization... 16 Conclusion...19 Smart Insights (Marketing Intelligence) Limited. Please go to www.smartinsights.com to feedback or access our other guides. 2
Introduction Why smart translation matters to your future 1 in 3, 1 in 5, 1 in 7? Do you know what proportion of our global population speaks English as their primary language? In-fact, it s 1 in 7, meaning that this leaves six billion people worldwide who don t. This simple fact alone, shows the potential of translation, both in serving new international audiences and reaching non-english speakers in majority English speaking markets (nearly 20% of the US population are Hispanic and Latino). At the same time, many businesses that originated in a non-english speaking country have the opportunity to reach English speakers in other countries. As we ll see, the opportunities for improved businesses outcomes from effective translation of their digital assets are compelling, particularly with the significant growth in smartphone use worldwide. BEST PRACTICE TIP 1 LOCALIZATION DOES NOT EQUAL TRANSLATION Global marketers know that improving penetration into new markets isn t just about translation. Instead localization the process of modifying content to reflect differences in cultural preferences, from image selection to overall design is vital to creating more persuasive content that resonates with the culture and mind-set of the local audience. Yet, many business challenges arise with the need to localize more content types and formats for different countries. Vital questions for businesses to answer which we will cover in this report include: What is our go to market strategy for prioritizing translation of content assets? What is our workflow for effective and efficient translation? What parts of the process and workflow can we automate to make localization more efficient? How do we structure our people resources to support the process? Smart Insights (Marketing Intelligence) Limited. Please go to www.smartinsights.com to feedback or access our other guides. 3
Introduction How effective are our translations? What is our ROI? How can we use data to improve translation outcomes? Translation has common benefits across different types of businesses which seek to or already operate globally. These can simply be summarized as the 4S goals of digital marketing: Speak Improved onboarding and lifecycle messaging in web, app and email. Sell More persuasive and better checkout processes, products and blogs will convert and retain more customers. Serve - Quality of customer service communications is also vital to acquisition and retention. Save Quality translation can become costly. But improved processes and strategic workflows can improve ROI. How will this report help me and my business? This guide is aimed at marketers responsible for the strategy to grow business through reaching new audiences. The business outcome it addresses is growing market share in international and local markets by improving the quality of digital customer experiences to support their goals of increasing leads, sales or service quality. In this report, you will learn success factors for improving your translation process and programs. Specific use-cases where translation is vital to help improve these business outcomes globally include: 1. Transactional Ecommerce businesses including retail, travel and financial services. Outcome: Create more engaging and persuasive marketing and customer-facing content to increase consumer conversion and retention. 2. Business-to-business organizations including manufacturers, professional service and Software-as-a-service (SaaS). Outcome: Translate complex content supporting lead generation and purchase decisions for business decision makers. 3. Digital product interface businesses including mobile and desktop apps for gaming, music and travel. Outcome: Improve the quality of the user experience, and increase adoption, usage levels and retention. 4. Employee education and training for international businesses. Outcome: Deliver education of employees worldwide to improve customer-facing process and internal marketing; communications, and Human resources information. Smart Insights (Marketing Intelligence) Limited. Please go to www.smartinsights.com to feedback or access our other guides. 4
Introduction Who is this guide for? This guide will help you learn how to improve your localization efforts, if you are a: CMO, VP or Head of Marketing looking to increase online sales or online lead volume and quality Brand or corporate communications professionals wanting to enhance their content quality and cultural customization by showcasing customer value and success E-commerce manager for a transactional site serving many markets worldwide, for example, retail, travel or financial services Marketer responsible for web, mobile or digital content localization and user engagement of digital products through digital channels How is this report structured? To seize the growth opportunities of improved translation, we recommend defining your localization strategy based on the success factors for your translation program. To highlight these success factors, we have structured this report in three parts, which are the essential stages to an effective translation and localization strategy process. First, we ll cover the size of the opportunity, then your localization strategy and finally the actions to put in place so that you have the best workflows and integrations to execute your strategy. In each of these 3 parts you ll find 3 specific strategy recommendations and visuals to help you rapidly review your approach to localization Smart Insights (Marketing Intelligence) Limited. Please go to www.smartinsights.com to feedback or access our other guides. 5
Introduction About the author Dr Dave Chaffey is co-founder and content director of digital marketing management advice site Smart Insights. He is author of 5 bestselling books on Ecommerce including Digital Marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practice which are used by MBA students and marketing professional worldwide. Dave was recognized by the Chartered Institute of Marketing as one of 50 marketing gurus worldwide who have helped shape the future of marketing. Smart Insights is a learning platform that helps our 150,000 active members in over 100 countries Plan, Manage and Optimize their digital marketing activities by applying the actionable advice in our planning templates, guides and interactive elearning tools. Free members can download our free guides or benchmark their digital capability in our Toolkits covering all key digital marketing activities including Digital Transformation, Digital Experience Management, Marketing Automation, Content Marketing, SEO, Social Media Marketing, B2B Marketing, Ecommerce, International Marketing and Agency Growth. Smart Insights (Marketing Intelligence) Limited. Please go to www.smartinsights.com to feedback or access our other guides. 6
Introduction A Note from Smartling s CEO With the majority of the world s consumers residing outside of the US, companies looking to grow their customer base, expand into new markets, and delight global users need to look past their borders and consider the opportunities beyond. Establishing a global content strategy has become an imperative to attain these goals. The key to achieving strategic growth and winning on the global stage begins with an effective translation strategy, process, and execution that won t slow you down, compromise your brand voice, or come at a high cost of business. But the challenges of translation and localization are largely driven by those of digital content. In today s world, new digital content types materialize regularly, and new channels delivering that content are reimagined and reinvented just as frequently. Digital content requires continuous updates that make it complex and difficult for translation efforts to scale and keep pace with audience demands. Since Smartling s founding, I have believed that translation strategy is a growth strategy, and all growth strategies are fuelled by data and technology. While the localization industry has been plagued by a dearth of data in the past, our continued focus on combining technology with translation services emboldens our efforts to gather the data necessary to help ambitious brands make the right decisions for their global business. In leveraging machine-learning, we are leading the translation industry in changing reactive models into predictive ones for measuring localization outcomes. Our goal at Smartling is to help global companies access more markets, deliver better experiences, and build stronger relationships by transforming the way their multilingual content is created and consumed around the world. Our translation management software prioritizes process automation and intelligent collaboration so that companies can quickly and cost-effectively localize their websites, apps, and documents with minimal IT involvement. Our curated network of professional translators is continuously measured to ensure the highest quality standards and readily available to serve a variety of linguistic needs. And we re proud to say that our unique approach to localization is helping leading brands like British Airways, InterContinental Hotels Group, Spotify and WeWork tell a global story. Jack Welde Co-Founder & CEO Smartling Smart Insights (Marketing Intelligence) Limited. Please go to www.smartinsights.com to feedback or access our other guides. 7
1 Defining the localization opportunity 1. Review your business case The imperative for improving translation is clear from the demand of non-english speakers around the world. At the same time, today s businesses are continuously creating more content, in more systems, in more languages, and with more rapid development cycles. Achieving scalable translation efforts that impact revenue growth is complex, with many factors that need to be considered. It s also potentially costly to scale with more systems, more languages and shorter turnaround times and smaller budgets. So, being clear on the drivers and challenges from the outset is important to building a realistic business case and ROI model. Opportunity: scalable translation drivers Reduced time to market enabling more selling time for new markets and new products Higher conversion rates via more persuasive and compelling localized messaging Demand generation through organic search and content marketing Increased smartphone adoption worldwide Automated workflows reduce time spent on managing localization Challenges of scalable translation Prioritizing translation for greatest impact Achieving cost and efficiency savings Maintaining precision and minimizing copy and paste mistakes Measuring and reporting translation effectiveness Updating content sufficiently and quickly Smart Insights (Marketing Intelligence) Limited. Please go to www.smartinsights.com to feedback or access our other guides. 8
51 Media Defining investment the localisation strategy opportunity budgeting investment in media options! STRATEGY RECOMMENDATION 1: USE A TOTAL ECONOMIC VALUE MODEL TO ASSESS THE BUSINESS CASE When assessing alternatives, it s important to accurately model ROI to include both obvious and hidden costs. Read this Forrester study for more on the technique 1. Since initially implementing a translation management platform five years ago, the company surveyed in the Forrester study has since seen international sales rise from 15% to 40% of total annual revenue. 1 2. Audit the current contribution of your content and process efficiency! STRATEGY RECOMMENDATION 2: DEFINE YOUR MEASURES OF CONTENT QUALITY AND CONTRIBUTION Use the mnemonic VQVC, explained in the table, to audit your content effectiveness of different content types in meeting your business outcomes. Separately, measure your process efficiency for different content types and countries. Opportunity: scalable translation drivers Volume - Reach measures (e.g. popularity based on organic visits to your website) Quality of engagement Interaction measures (e.g. how many visitors view vs interact or download with content on your website?) Value Does the content influence purchase and support conversion Cost Are there cost savings compared to other channels Challenges of scalable translation Satisfaction Customer content satisfaction ratings and number of errors detected during proofreading Speed Time to market Cost Cost per amount of content translated Resource and process intensity how many touchpoints, handoffs and resources needed 1 Forrester report published by Smartling: Total Economic Impact (TEI) study Smart Insights (Marketing Intelligence) Limited. Please go to www.smartinsights.com to feedback or access our other guides. 9
51 Media Defining investment the localisation strategy opportunity budgeting investment in media options 3. Set SMART objectives for your translation program You may know the Specific-Measureable-Actionable-Relevant-Timely acronym for business objectives. Naturally this works well as part of the business case for improving a translation program. With online content assets, it s important to define the translation opportunity using SMART objectives of what Google s Marketing evangelist Avinash Kaushik calls Economic value 2.! STRATEGY RECOMMENDATION 3: CREATE CONVERSION-BASED FORECASTS OF THE OPPORTUNITY As part of your business case you should create financial models of the economic value of different content types from marketing content such as product content to support conversion, customer self-service content to reduce service costs and human resources information. 2 Avinash Kaushik blog post on Economic value Smart Insights (Marketing Intelligence) Limited. Please go to www.smartinsights.com to feedback or access our other guides. 10
2 Setting your strategy 4. Define your translation priorities Your different international markets naturally vary in scale, potential and culture, so a one size fits all model of translation will not be cost effective for most. Don t treat every language the same. Instead, a localization strategy is about making smart decisions about what to translate and when in order to get the business outcomes you need. As Joe Pulizzi, founder of the Content Marketing Institute said: Our job, as marketers, is not to create more content. It has never been about that. It s about creating the minimum amount of content with the maximum amount of behavior change in our customers. When entering new markets or launching new products and campaigns worldwide, the concept of Minimum Viable Content (MVC)3 is useful. To scale your translation worldwide, it s often impractical to translate all assets. Consider the range of content types that can be deployed within a modern content-led B2B campaign in this Content marketing matrix4. 3 Smartling blog: Minimum Viable Content explained 4 Smart Insights: Content Marketing Matrix Smart Insights (Marketing Intelligence) Limited. Please go to www.smartinsights.com to feedback or access our other guides. 11
2 Setting your strategy Some of these techniques are more effective at driving the specific business outcomes you need. MVC is about selecting the most critical Top (TOFU), Middle (MOFU) and Bottom of Funnel (BOFU) content you need to achieve your goals in new markets. 5. Select the best solutions to scale localization Once you have a better idea of the content types you re prioritizing for different markets and audiences, then you need to consider the translation methods that give you the best balance of quality vs time and cost. As the table shows, certain translation types will work best for different types of content format. Sample Translation Services Strategy Content Format Brand Taglines, Ad Campaigns, App Store Profile Marketing Website, Mobile App Interface, ecommerce Checkout Flow, Legal Guidelines Marketing Emails, Product Descriptions (Top Sellers) Support Docs, Product Descriptions (Remaining Inventory) Customer Reviews Translation Type Transcreation Professional translation Professional (Single-Pass) Adaptive Machine Translation Standard Machine Translation Do you know your translation types? If not, here s a quick glossary of the 5 core translation techniques to consider. Note that these include an additional machine translation type in addition to those shown in the table above. 1. Transcreation. Transcreation is one part creative copywriting and one part traditional translation. Practitioners still transfer a message from one language to another, but they have more freedom to modify the details along the way. As a result, the final product usually looks more like a creative interpretation than an exact replication of its source content. 2. Professional translation. This is the model most people picture when they first consider translating a business website. Customers send their source content to translation agencies or freelance professionals, and expert linguists produce the most accurate adaptation possible. In many cases, businesses will also elect to have an editor and proofreader review the translator s work. This quality-conscious Smart Insights (Marketing Intelligence) Limited. Please go to www.smartinsights.com to feedback or access our other guides. 12
2 Setting your strategy workflow is commonly known as TEP (Translate-Edit-Proofread), and it has become the default strategy for customers who prioritize precise communication over affordability or speed. 3. Machine Translation. Computers will never fully replicate the endless subtleties of human communication, but they re certainly making progress. Statistical models, rule-based systems, and neural networks are generating vast reserves of artificial intelligence that customers can leverage to produce credible linguistic translations without any human intervention. No other translation type can rival the speed of this automated approach. And machine translation (MT) engines offer dramatic cost savings over human professionals. But, computers are not known for their creativity. And despite the promise of future improvements, MT cannot consistently match the quality of human professionals. 4. Machine Translation Post-Editing. If machine translation is the automated counterpart to single-pass professional translation, then machine translation post-editing is the computer-aided cousin of professional TEP. An MT engine takes the place of a human translator, but human reviewers are still there to elevate its output to a more acceptable standard of quality. 5. Adaptive Machine Translation. What would happen if humans and machines acted less like rivals and more like complementary partners? Well, adaptive MT is one of several innovative ideas currently pushing the translation industry in that direction. Adaptive MT engines study the linguistic decisions of human translators and post-editors, continuously learning correct terminology that can be used in their next MT output. As a result, each new translation request assigned to the MT engine is completed with a progressively higher standard of proficiency.! STRATEGY RECOMMENDATION 4: GET THE HUMAN VS MACHINE TRANSLATION BALANCE RIGHT Translations can be completed by machines, humans, or a balance of the two. Your strategy should define, based on the business value of the content, whether translations should be executed by professional translators, native-speaking staff members, agency partners, or machines where content is of low business-driving priority. Consider how you balance these different translation options as shown in the chart to see Smart Insights (Marketing Intelligence) Limited. Please go to www.smartinsights.com to feedback or access our other guides. 13
2 Setting your strategy how to prioritize different content types and different strategic importance of countries 5 : 6. Evaluate your translation management technology platform Process automation is now a necessity for any translation strategy expected to achieve significant scale. Smart software should be used to detect new source content wherever it s created and instantly pull it into a translation workspace. From there, automation should also carry content between workflow steps and place the approved final product back in its associated platform. In order to deliver the quality and ROI you seek, your translation technology management solution needs to be able to implement automated prioritized workflows. These workflows should include different combinations of human and machine translations based on your translation strategy. Key requirements to consider for maximum cost efficiency include these translation management software features: Agile Resource Allocation. Needs are confirmed and forecasted in real time, encouraging smarter recruitment and deployment of assets. Multiple Translation Options. Translation methods are matched to content requirements and business strategy, reserving premium translation resources for high-value tasks. Translation Memory. A dynamic database of past translations used to reduce costs by reusing content to eliminate repetitive tasks and ensure brand consistency 5 Smartling blog: Know your translation types Smart Insights (Marketing Intelligence) Limited. Please go to www.smartinsights.com to feedback or access our other guides. 14
2 Setting your strategy Reporting dashboards and translation KPIs. A technology platform can capture all your translation data in one place. This provides visibility into the process and cost of translation efforts. It also enables better data-driven decisions in the long run for localization strategies as well as for translation workflows and options. Smart Insights (Marketing Intelligence) Limited. Please go to www.smartinsights.com to feedback or access our other guides. 15
3 Resourcing digital marketing Implementation actions to make your translation efficient and effective 7. Structure your talent and teams to deliver on the benefits We are in the era of Digital Transformation as many businesses run change programs to increase the contribution of digital media and content to their business while driving cost-efficiencies. Adopting new digital marketing techniques and marketing technology to give the maximum benefits often demands changes to the type of skills, process and team structure in a business.! STRATEGY RECOMMENDATION 5: DEFINE CLEAR RESPONSIBILITIES FOR DIGITAL MARKETING ACTIVITIES It s essential for clear central and local activities to be defined for businesses looking to improve their online presence globally. It s essential since competing with digital marketing requires many new paid-owned and earned media techniques including content marketing which require an increase in use of digital content assets. This visual was used by an Ecommerce team to discuss and define the best location for digital marketing activities. Depending on the type of content; its important to the business and the scale of the country market, some types of translation may be centralized which is more cost effective while other business critical content will need to be translated locally. Smart Insights (Marketing Intelligence) Limited. Please go to www.smartinsights.com to feedback or access our other guides. 16
3 Implementation actions to make your translation efficient and effective 8. Put actionable analytics in place Almost all businesses have analytics in place on their website or mobile apps, but far fewer have the people or process in place to gain value from the insight available. In a translation context, actionable analytics means you need in place both the effectiveness measures to ensure the content is meeting your goals for sales, service or internal communications and efficiency measures of creating and translating this content. You should then compare effectiveness and efficiency measures to see where the translation quality of content in some countries is sub-optimal. This example 6 from Smartling clearly shows a problem in translation efficiency in one country (France). 9. Build-in content optimization Optimization is about making your content work harder for you by reviewing content effectiveness and then making improvements. This will be particularly worthwhile for marketing content since you can feature the best performing content more prominently in the customer journey and look to improve content that isn t working to help you achieve your lead generation and conversion goals. 6 Smartling blog: the translation management data deficit Smart Insights (Marketing Intelligence) Limited. Please go to www.smartinsights.com to feedback or access our other guides. 17
3 Implementation actions to make your translation efficient and effective! STRATEGY RECOMMENDATION 6: ENSURE CONVERSION OPTIMIZATION CAN HAPPEN AT A LOCAL LEVEL Treat your content assets as a portfolio as shown below. Work to improve problematic content and surface performing content more prominently in the customer journey. This article 6 gives some nice localized examples of how conversion can be improved by varying creative treatments and copy for US English and Japanese audiences. 7 In some businesses, Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) through AB and multivariate testing has become an important technique for marketers to improve the effectiveness of your content. Yet marketers need to manage these tests for localization, so you should think through how your translation processes and tools support this. An example of variations in country purchase drivers, an electronic product manufacturer characterized these differences they saw affecting conversion rates and average order value in European markets: 7 Smartling Where Transcreation Ends and Localization Begins Smart Insights (Marketing Intelligence) Limited. Please go to www.smartinsights.com to feedback or access our other guides. 18
3 Implementation actions to make your translation efficient and effective 4 Conclusion You will have seen in this report that there is immense opportunity for improved localization of marketing and business content. But, we have also shown that this opportunity needs to be managed carefully to exploit this opportunity. The range of outcomes businesses are looking to achieve requires a range of content types across a range of audiences in different geographic markets. Given the potential revenue uplift and cost and time savings of an improved localization program, it s important to put in place the right people, process, platforms and performance measures. We recommend that you don t use a one size fits all localization strategy. Instead, for scalability across multiple languages we suggest you use a solution that enables you to prioritize your translation efforts where they will have the biggest impact. We hope the recommendations in this report have given you some actionable takeaways you can follow-up on. If you have any comments, or questions around this report our services we d love to hear from you. Please contact us via our websites: Smartling Smart Insights Smart Insights (Marketing Intelligence) Limited. Please go to www.smartinsights.com to feedback or access our other guides. 19