Why Content Translation & Localization Sparks Joy for Marketers

In many ways, marketing can feel like you’re swimming upstream. You’re warding off competitors that keep creeping up at every turn, building out programs that fit a limited budget, and trying your hand at method acting by thinking, feeling, and dressing like your target persona (okay maybe not that last one). Being a marketing professional in a pandemic (hi, COVID-19!) feels like swimming upstream AND now some jerk has asked you to hand over your cool swimming goggles in exchange for a completely unnecessary eye-patch.

Marketing during the coronavirus means navigating budget freezes, reduced revenues, and a lack of social interaction that makes building new customer relationships more difficult than ever. Yet marketers are facing increased pressure to produce more leads and attract new customers despite a shrinking pool of tools and resources at their disposal.

What is Localization & Why Do I Need It, Anyway?

A few companies have been using a secret weapon that helps them get more revenue, build stronger ties to existing customers, and unlock international markets quickly and effectively, all without breaking the bank. That secret weapon is localization & translation management, which is the process of adapting a product or content to a specific locale or market.  Let me tell you why marketers are adding localization to their list of “things that spark joy” (and why it’s way cooler than Marie Kondo-ing your junk drawers.)

Get a Bigger Piece of the Pie…And a Leg Up on Your Competition
Who doesn’t want a bigger piece of the pie? Okay, maybe not your one friend Jenny who hasn’t had sugar since 2006 (and totally doesn’t even miss it, okay?!) The rest of us, however, can agree that a bigger piece of the pie is a great thing, especially if that pie consists of a delicious filling I like to call “market share.” Chances are your competitors are already localizing and one way to really increase your market share and gain a serious competitive advantage is to localize your content (and do it before someone else beats you to it).

The World Is Your Oyster…So Speak to It in Its Respective Language
Who doesn’t love oysters? Okay, lots of people think oysters are awful and taste like boogers…and this may be my cue to cool it on the food analogies. Localization means that you can reach new audiences and speak to them in their own language, complete with idioms they can relate to and even culturally appropriate…food analogies (because a pie in the US and a pie in the UK are not the same things and you can probably guess which one is commonly made with chopped beef). Strengthening your global presence is key for growth and critical to reaching new markets (in which you may find potential customers that may not have even heard of your competitor products before), meaning you get a big heap of freshly baked…leads (okay, I’ll stop now).

Make It Rain…And Say Hello to New Markets, Customers, and Revenue
“No, thank you…I really don’t feel like our company revenue needs to increase anymore,” said no one ever. Most consumers prefer to only buy in their native language and localizing your content means that you have access to markets that may have gone previously unnoticed. New markets mean new potential customers and new potential customers mean increased revenue. Two little words I think many leadership teams would happily hear from the marketing department.

That Precious Jewel Called Trust…And Where You Can Mine It
When building out ROI, it can take time to see and measure results. So what do you say to the hesitant CEO who wants to see some value from localization right away? One immediate and important value you can get out of localization is that if you’ve got existing customers that speak other languages, localization will increase the amount of trust they have for you and your brand. You can easily identify which languages to target for your existing customer base by using Google analytics and country visit data. As a result, not only will your customers feel seen and heard, but they may also become some of your most loyal allies and biggest advocates.  And we all know that nothing adds more value than a great upsell, or helps to nab a deal faster than a good referral.

I’m Sold…Now what?

So, your leadership team has begrudgingly agreed that they’ll allow more market share, an increased global presence, higher revenue, and a more trusting customer base, so you’ve added localization to your marketing strategy and set off merrily on your localization journey. You’ve gone ahead and decided to use a localization tool (because translating pages upon pages of content by copying & pasting text into 86,253 Excel spreadsheets isn’t on your list of “100 things to do before you die”). The next thing you need to know is that not all localization tools are created equal.

Transifex Native & Why It Sparks The MOST Joy

Here at Transifex, we know a thing or two about localization because, since we started over 11 years ago, we’ve helped companies like HubSpot, Waze, and Eventbrite reap all the benefits that localization has to offer. And we take special pride in staying on the cutting edge of innovation so that we can continue to help our customers localize faster and better. Most recently, we launched Transifex Native, which offers perks that only a fully cloud-based and dynamic localization solution can bring.

5 Things You’ll Gain with Transifex Native

1. Work Simultaneously
You’ve got buy-in from leadership and now you need to localize your website, mobile apps, and key assets into 5 languages and your product into 10 languages. To do this successfully, you’ll need a translations agency to take care of the translations (or Machine Translation!) and some developers to deploy those translations. Our new solution allows you to spend less time waiting for your developers to do their thing because it allows work to be done simultaneously. So while devs work with your codebase, you can begin translating content fast and even allow translators to work on different translations at the same time. In addition to that, translators gain instant context for translations on the live web app, making their jobs much faster and easier (and your life a bit better as a result).

2. Launch Faster
As a marketer, going to market and the timing surrounding launch is calculated. Because Transifex Native allows for a fileless exchange & structure of content, you don’t have to spend precious time figuring out file types or spending hours converting files from your website. Instead, you can kick-start your localization project in minutes and launch faster. If you’ve got a codebase, we’ve got your content and you’re on your way. You can even have control over what’s live or not, keep any metadata (in non-developer terms, all the nitty-gritty stuff), and have a higher fill-up rate using our Translation Memory while maintaining a smaller word-count because Native projects talk to each other (and if all that just sounds like technical talk…trust us, this is a very good thing that will end up saving you money in the long run).

3. Become BFFs with Your Developers
By using Transifex Native, you can ensure that your team of devs will still be your friends by the time you’ve finished your localization project. They will gain a multitude of benefits including not needing to push/pull files to keep them synced, being able to localize directly on code, getting script to migrate strings from existing projects, and being able to stop localization on “code save”. In short, you’ll be giving your dev team all the tools they need to reduce any of the inefficient, manual work that comes with traditional localization.

4. Collaborate Like a Boss
Not only will your developers save time (and headaches) by freeing up their time from unnecessary localization tasks, but you will also be able to collaborate with your localization team in more effective ways by integrating with the tools you’re most familiar with like Slack. As a result, collaboration can happen in the cloud, leading to a smoother and more seamless experience for everyone involved.

5. More Results (for Less Money)
Transifex Native allows you to manage all of your digital content in one central place. This means you can breathe easy knowing that your content will be localized in the most efficient way possible. Efficiency not only means that you are saving time and effort but also actual money because the new technology can identify and remove any duplicate content you’ve got. So, if you’re translating a phrase, the translation will automatically happen across all instances. Not sure about you, but saving money is pretty high on my list of “things that spark joy”.

5 Things You’ll Lose with Transifex Native

1. Messing around with 753 files types.

2. Never-ending pull-requests & deployments for your devs.

3. Conflicts due to the development of multiple features.

4. Endless back and forth between your engineers and translators.

5. Days, weeks (heck, years if you account for stress!) of lost time for your team.

*Bonus* A whole bunch of other pitfalls due to an unnecessarily complex process with way too many components that no one ever wants to think about.

Let’s Go Global

Do you really have the time for overly complicated workflows when you’ve got about 2723746753 things you need to do? I’m guessing not really. Localization can be pretty tricky, but it doesn’t have to be. Let us help you make it as painless as possible. After all, we’re living in pretty weird times and I think we could all use a little joy (whenever we can find it.)

Is your team ready to give Transifex Native a try? Let us know and one of our awesome team members will reach out to you to find out about your needs and answer any questions you may have. Heck, we’ll even introduce you to our pets because nothing sparks quite as much joy as a happy dog, amirite?