Localization for Global Marketers - course intro

Konstantin Dranch

We’re launching an online course for digital marketers to learn localization. Here is why you should take it.

Speak the language of your customer, and your every marketing tool and channel perform so much besser. Consider email: as a professional, you get between 50 and 300 of those a day. In a split second while you decide whether to try it or trash it, the brain makes innumerable calculations. By the time the brain’s translation appendage is engaged, it might be too late for marketing content.

In figures, email click rates increase 15 to 30% when translated. Costs per click on premium Google keywords drop 30-70% when you switch from English to other languages: just try it yourself with any CPC calculator for words like “accounting software” and “logiciel de comptabilité”. On the landing pages personalized to the reader’s language time and content engagement go up. Celebrity marketer Neil Patel managed to increase his organic traffic by 47% from SEO when he added translations.

 

7 languages or a hundred

Localization and personalization tempt the customer to listen to your message amongst the relentless buzz of advertising. Consumer brands, in particular, want to be as local and as world-ready as possible. It’s no wonder that Microsoft presents its Office suite in 91 languages, Airbnb doubled its language coverage to 62 in 2019, and Canva went through the roof with 100+ languages in its marketing and product.

Business to business software companies do not strive to get to 60, 90 or 100+ languages, but they too go multilingual, even though their products are consumed by bearded engineers who are supposed to know English on a decent level. Red Hat, acquired by IBM, speaks 9 languages with a special tender love and care given to Japanese, and one of the hottest robotic process automation startups UiPath started with Chinese and rolled out 6 other languages soon after.

There soon will be 8 billion people in the world, and only 25% of them understand English. It’s a dominant language online, but its share in the economy is decreasing, while the shares of Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, Turkish, Indian and African languages are all on the rise.

If you’re in marketing in 2020, and your company’s product is sold online globally, you need to get started multilingual.

It takes skill

Languages create an organizational and logistics challenge for the marketing department. Localization leads to multiple content versions, it stretches deadlines and makes changing copy on the fly and propagating these changes across all language versions as difficult as conducting Bach’s with a full symphony orchestra. Not every marketing department can add languages out of the blue and stay agile.

I remember my first multilingual campaign: it was both a win and a fail. Instead of sending an email newsletter to 70,000 people around the world in English-only, I added Japanese and German for an extra oompf in these premium markets. The results were impressive, open rates on that email and click rates improved by 30% compared to averages. But it also took three days out of my calendar to translate, segment the database, put German and Japanese into the correct layout and polish it to good quality. I knew then that I couldn’t do localization for every email manually and keep up with my objectives. This is where I discovered that localization can bring a lot to the table, and it also needs to become efficient so that it can be integrated into the daily marketing hustle-bustle.

 

Learn it online

This is why we decided to develop Localization for Global Marketing. The eLearning scene lacks entry-level practical stuff and tactics for marketers who go from mono- to multi-lingual. This is a course for people who want to add localization management to their skill set.

  • In the first part, we cover the ROI of languages and how to pitch localization to the company’s management.
  • The second part will be about setting up a localization program: selecting and onboarding translation providers, preparing your email and website CMS for multilingual, adding basic automation and measurement.
  • The third part deals with continuously improving efficiency, quality, and speed.

Whether you’re a veteran marketer looking for a new idea, or a student who would like to build up your profile for a high-powered job, this training course will let you walk a mile in the shoes of a specialist localization person, and try multilingual in your communication mix.

The course is recorded by a team of marketing and localization people led by AP Portugal.

We’ll keep you updated on our progress, and suggestions are welcome!

 

ABOUT KONSTANTIN DRANCH

Konstantin is a localization industry researcher and international consultant. Involved with localization since 2012, Konstantin has co-created two conferences, authored dozens of leading reports and research, and he engaged audiences at hundreds of conferences around Europe, the US and Asia.

 

ABOUT US

 

AP PORTUGAL Tech Language Solutions is the expression of service and vision in the areas of translation, interpretation and communication technology services.

With offices in Lisbon and Porto, it is the only Portuguese company certified by both International Quality Standards ISO 17100 and ISO 18587, and also by DGERT as a training entity. Internationally renowned for its skills in the areas of translation, interpretation, transcription, localization, subtitling and proofreading, the company is also specialized in event and conference management, audiovisual equipment rental, and VRI - Video Remote Interpreting.

The company’s intervention extends to the area of creative content production in any language, allowing AP | PORTUGAL to support companies and organizations through its Copywriting platform, also focusing on text, audio or video solutions based on Artificial Intelligence.

AP PORTUGAL includes the Artiga Center - European Centre for Amplified Events -, a facility which offers all equipment necessary for any type of event, be it hybrid, face-to-face or digital, besides being equipped for face-to-face or digital Team Building activities.

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