The Localization of Marketing – The first to break or invaluable resource?
Photo by Jeremy Zero on Unsplash
As we oversimplify localization, globalization, and above all collaboration, for part 11 let’s dive into finding alignment across localization.
Marketing has unique challenges. Creative people design, write, and brand. For localizers, when images are added to the text, the meaning of the words will often be lost. Those responsible for the localization of marketing have gained learnings that should not live in a vacuum (or silo). The reality is that marketing may have been the first to break. Meaning, during the fight for global customers, brands have made mistakes in their marketing messaging. They learned that the more complex their content, the greater the need to dedicate resources to fix the problems (the big three: alienating customers, non-compliance, and lawsuits) that arise. The big three are not inclusive of marketing. What happens when we create awareness and drive people through a funnel? We acquire customers and want to keep them.
Customer retention = User experience
Successful projects and teams rely on breaking through silos. Marketing projects can educate and contribute their learnings from translation memories, style guides, and glossaries with the product team. Lead generation is all about driving a customer through awareness to purchase and purchase to retention with satisfaction influencing future customers. The user experience is having the user press that call to action and become a customer, have a personalized and intuitive experience and evolve with the customer’s growing needs and demands.
Content is king
Automation will always be a goal for many companies. Translation memories, machine translation, replacing people with machines will constantly be evolving. However, the complexities and versioning of content will be evolving, and technology will always be trying to catch up to the current demands. Content is the user interface, the user experience, and the marketing deliverables. Adjustments will be made, as per the demand, and the competition for each market (domestic and international). The versioning of content is localization. The more versioning, the deeper the localization needs to be.
No more new terminology
We need to stop coming up with new terminology that confuses our colleagues and clients and further isolate localization. Introducing new terms such as Glocalization, transadaptation, and even transcreation can be confusing without proper context. The localization industry is constantly discovering new opportunities for growth and the truth is that as the complexities of content grow, so will the dependency on the expertise of that language services provider. It has been challenging to wrap our heads around the increasing demands of content. Ultimately, it is through collaboration, innovation, and setting everyone up for success - from translator to engineer to project manager to sales associate - that is required. Know your audience. The use of confusing and newly made-up words, without a general consensus of approval or proper context, is going to deepen the disconnect and devalue localization services. I like a more practical proactive approach to partner with every stakeholder to translate the priorities and get the best resources in place. Localization is all about seeing where we align, where we are completely unique, and where we must alter to fit the situation.
The power of the user story
Subject matter experts are exactly that, experts on a specific subject. We can’t all speak the other’s language, but we all can have a shared goal. That said, and every engineer will hopefully agree, the user always has a difficult time communicating or really understanding what they need. In Agile, your project owner has requirements, problems to fix, and a vision of what they think their user experience should be. User stories were designed to discover needs, priorities, trends, and frustrations with visualization. Before I was a product owner, I was considered a power user: a user who understood the needs and priorities of my teammates. I was simply a good listener, I looked for trends, overlap, and redundancies. I noticed where we had the same issues and where our problems were completely unique. I asked what problems they were trying to solve and reviewed the existing infrastructure. People saw me as a generalist who might have been out to steal their technology (which I sometimes would). Agile gave me the platform I needed. Utilizing user stories removes the barrier between functions and allows people to interpret their needs clearly and gives every user a voice.
Success user stories
Participating in a transition from waterfall to agile was eye-opening. No more throw it over the fence, wait six months, and think everyone is crazy for not understanding. Engineers now have a clear vision of requirements. With regular re-evaluation of requirements by all of the stakeholders, you start to see satisfied customers - and happier engineers. The creative environment can be chaotic and reactive. Trust in infrastructure is not easy to come by (from my personal experience). User stories are simple and easy. “As a project manager, I would like to filter my projects across functions.” “As an analyst, I need to see specific data.” This is way more helpful than, “read my mind!” and “it’s common sense” and my all-time favorite “garbage in, garbage out.” Visualization of the problems that need solving is the key to creating effective tools, workflows, and sales.
Implementing localization
Product, services, and their supporting messaging ALL contain content. Everything you create is a piece of content regardless of the purpose. There is a user, audience, and intended task to complete. Localization can be implemented at every stage of a buyer’s journey. The complexity of marketing deliverables brought us untranslatable jargon, offensive imagery and increased personalization. When those challenges arose, localization needed a specialized approach to translation, and after multiple rounds, implemented solutions such as testing the design (pseudo-localization) and the distribution of a style guide. As we compete for customers, we improve the product experience and apply many of the same solutions we learned from marketing such as transcreation, completely new in-language copy, new imagery, and graphics. Avoiding endless rounds of versioning, knowing where and when to version, and not overburdening resources is an upstream localization strategy.
Alignment localization
Here is a new term: “Alignment localization.” The alignment of localization processes, tools, and supporting documentation across teams, initiatives, and partners. There is a collaborative objective to evaluate localization requirements at every stage from creation to execution. If you are versioning, there is localization. Localization is a strategic partner to advise on the implementation of versioning.
The future is now
A global mission is to compete for international consumers. These customers are demanding personalized digital experiences. Localization strategy is an opportunity to evaluate the complexities and influence stakeholder decisions. As with Agile, it too should be revised and reprioritized regularly. Localization strategic partnership is where localization professionals bring value at every stage. Partnership being the key word. Collaboration across functions is required when there are complex problems to solve. Before the negative feedback and poor user experience, talk to your localization professional.