Global growth used to be reserved only for big companies. They could afford to invest money and time and survive repetitive budget breaking.

Breaking the budget was often caused by wrong assumptions. The most popular and costly belief was that what worked for one target market would work for every following one.

The reality was that taglines would often become offensive, weird, and misleading.

A good example is when Swedish company Electrolux wanted to expand to the USA. For that occasion, they translated their tagline to "Nothing sucks like an Electrolux."

Long story short, they had to pull off and come back a few years later — with a different brand name and a more proper tagline.

Oh, and they were selling vacuum cleaners, in case you didn't get it, as 99% of the consumer market in the USA.

Conquering a foreign market is a high-risk investment but not impossible to do without failing. So let's dive into localization strategies that will save you from that.

What are localization strategies?
Localization strategies include:

business expansion,

product internationalization,

interface translation, and

general content and marketing materials

adapted to the consumer market.

Shortly, a localization strategy is a holistic approach to international business expansion. It's also a multidisciplinary approach that involves work across different departments.

The basis of the localization approach is to consider the cultural differences of the target market. This mindful management of business expansions to new markets can help you gain big portions of a global audience.

website localization

If you think this is an exaggeration and that English can solve everything - think again. Even though a global market sounds heavenly, the reality is that 60% of internet users rarely or never buy from English-only websites.

The same study shows that more than 70% of them prefer to purchase a product or service when they can find all information in their native language.

What goes into planning a business's localization strategy?
Most of the articles out there talk only about software translation, but localization starts far more before that.

The details may vary depending on your industry and niche, but for a proper localization process, you'll need to gather people from the following departments:

business development,

legal,

finance,

product,

security,

marketing, and

some translators.

A quality localization manager would be of enormous help too.

Localization strategy

It's important to plan the roadmap for localization for every department. Also, to figure out which parts of the project can go simultaneously for a faster pace, etc.

To help yourself out and plan better, try to answer on following questions as well:

How long will the localization last? Consider all steps and hours per department.
What are the predictable costs? Inhouse hours, outsourcing, legal costs, etc... Everything you can predict from the road map.
How big a budget do you need? Make three options - minimum, maximum and ideal. It'll be much easier for you to understand how much you can stretch.
Is this investment a good move for you right now? Business expansion is always a good idea, but is it the right time for your business to go that way? Do you have enough money and people so the extension to a new target market won't affect your core business?
What are potential KPIs and ROIs for the localization and for every department? Yes, the ultimate goal is releasing a product and getting a high conversion rate. But how'd you know you're getting there during the localization process? Are you moving at the right speed or walking the right path? Is the current localization strategy working? Set the smaller goals, and the smaller wins will make an awesome compound effect at the end of the road.