Become a global marketing guru

www.sdl.com/modernglobalmarketing
Become a Global Marketing Guru:
Five Localization Strategies Every Digital
Marketer Needs

Become a Global Marketing Guru
2
It’s complex out there.
As a global marketer in today’s digital age,
it’s critical to connect with your customers
in their language, wherever they are, on
their preferred devices and channels.
To master the customer experience
journey, you have to take into
account how they want to interact
with you online – and that differs
by country and culture.

3
Global digital marketing checklist:
Is your marketing content and web strategy aligned
with your revenue goals by region?
Are you familiar with the translation solutions available
to meet your customers’ expectations?
Do you understand your customers’ preferences and
how they differ by segment, region and language?
Do you have the right tools in place to effectively
manage your global marketing programs across
multiple channels, languages and devices?
If these questions
don’t fill you with
confidence, it’s time
to reassess how you
approach your global
marketing strategy.

4
Let’s take a look at five key areas where you can
start focusing your efforts to drive global digital
marketing success:
2
Boost
your
international
SEO
3
Make your
multimedia
content
multilingual
4
Tap
into global
social
intelligence
5
Master
multilingual
website
management
1
Tailor
your global
content
strategy

5
1 Tailor your global content strategy
Content has exploded
in both type and
volume, creating a
daunting landscape for
you to navigate.
Your global content
requirements get more
complex every day.
That means you need a
fresh approach to your
localization strategy.
user guides
smartphones
social media
community forums
FAQs blogs
tablets
websites
reviews
live chat
press releases
digital collateral
documentation
advertising
eNewsletters
Content has
exploded

6
It’s not time, cost or resource-efficient to translate all content manually.
Choose the best translation method for your content based on its
value within the customer journey.
Categorize your content by:
Its worth to customers
Its shelf life
Where it’s consumed
How it’s used
The stage in the sales cycle
Impact to your brand
Then apply the most appropriate translation method to deliver your content in a timely,
effective and relevant way.
FA C T :
Not all
content is
equal

7
Human translation
Suits:
High-quality content that contains subtle
nuances and should be interpreted by a
native speaker. Especially for content where
it’s essential to communicate your brand
identity and values clearly and accurately.
Examples:
Advertising copy, corporate web copy, public
relations materials and brand collateral such
as corporate brochures.
Hybrid translation or intelligent
machine translation
Suits:
Structured, well-written content that’s
delivered at a steady pace. Here the speed
and cost of translation are also important
factors. Content is run through customized
machine translation engines before specially-trained
translators begin post-editing.
Examples:
Web product descriptions, product
brochures, technical documentation and
help guides.
Machine translation
Suits:
Content that requires real-time, speedy
translations at relatively low costs. Here
volume and speed-to-market are greater
considerations than precision.
Examples:
User-generated content such as reviews and
social media commentary, customer service
materials and live chat.

8
Precision Volume and speed HUMAN TRANSLATION MACHINE TRANSLATION
Advertising Content
Newsletters
Websites Help
Documentation User guides
FAQs Knowledge base
Alerts/notifications Wikis
User forums
Reviews
Blogs
Chat Email support
By mapping your content in this way, you’ll soon be optimizing your translation resources
and budget, while reaching more people with the right type of content, quicker.
Marketing

9
Engage with your creative
teams at the early content
stage to choose relevant
images for the different
languages, as well as factor in
different translation lengths
for layout purposes.
TOP TIP
Think ‘global’ early on
Save headaches further down the line by considering localization needs
right from the moment you start creating content.
Will your content need tailoring for different
countries, cultures and languages?
Do you need to include different examples, scenarios
or customer references to relate to local challenges?
Are there regulatory or legal differences to bear
in mind?
If you begin the content creation process thinking globally from the start,
you are far more likely to write and structure your content in a way that is
easier to both translate and localize.

10
2 Boost your international SEO
When it comes to search engine optimization, there are a few localization
strategies you can quickly start putting in practice in order to:
• Increase your website traffic
• Decrease bounce rates
• Improve the relevancy of your search
results
• Encourage online conversions
• Raise your visibility in popular local
search engines
• Drive ROI on pay per click (PPC) ads
• Boost page rankings on important
topics
Making your online content available to your customers wherever they
are, whatever their device or language – should be your top priority.

11
Identify your search engine targets
Popular search engines differ from country to country. Find out which search engines are
the most popular in your target markets and optimize your websites accordingly. Benchmark
your current rankings on these engines so that you can measure your ongoing success.
Google is the world’s
largest search engine
BUT...
Baidu covers
70% of the market
in China
Yandex covers
60% of the market
in Russia
Naver covers
80% of the market
in Korea

12
Find the best search terms in each language
Direct keyword translations are not good enough
You may invest considerable time and effort on finding the right keywords for your domestic
markets today, but applying direct translations isn’t always the answer. People think differently
and structure search phrases in unique ways based on their country and culture, even mixing
English with local language.
You need to research and define the best set of keywords relating to your brand, products and
services for every market you serve.
In Italy, the direct Italian translation for ‘cheap flights’ is ‘voli economici’. But
the hybrid English/Italian term ’voli low cost’ has eight times more hits.
Phrase Volume Country Language
Cheap Flights 4,400 Italy English
Cheap Flight 880 Italy English
voli low cost 246,000 Italy Italian/English
voli economici 33,100 Italy Italian
offerte voli 22,200 Italy Italian
compagnie low cost 14,800 Italy French/English
33,100
hits for the
Italian term ‘voli
economici’
246,000
hits for the
hybrid term ‘voli
low cost’
Mamma
mia!

13
Create an SEO memory bank
Save and share your hard work. Store your market-specific keywords in a central database so
that your SEO experts and online contributors alike can incorporate them into your website
content. Include the terminology into the body of text, metadata descriptions and all tags to
drive your search rankings within different local search engines.
78%
of people
research online
before buying
Only
27%
of internet
users search
in English

14
Next steps:
Advanced search engine algorithms such as Google Hummingbird 13 are changing the
landscape of SEO. It’s not as easy as it once was to manipulate search results and boost
rankings. As focus shifts towards creating a better overall visitor experience, here’s how you
can stay abreast of this trend:
Proactively link
back to your site at every
opportunity. Social media
plays a critical role and it’s
important to identify the
right social channels for
each market.
User experience
matters and will affect
your rankings. Design your
website to provide a quality
experience across
all languages.
Ensure your
metadata and coding is
clean, logical and search-crawl
friendly. Remember
to take into account the
requirements of each of your
local search engines.
Create relevant,
quality content around a
particular family of topics
and keywords that you
would like to boost rankings
for, and make it available
in local languages.

15
3 Make your multimedia content multilingual
Whether you’re managing marketing for a B2B or
B2C company, video is a critical tool for attracting
and engaging your audience. It’s one of the most
accessible and engaging ways to interact with your
customers and prospects around the globe.
As with text, customers prefer to watch videos in their
native language. It makes the subject matter easier to
understand, building brand trust and inspiring action.
The thought of optimizing your video for different
countries and languages may seem scary, but it’s
a valuable asset in the digital marketer’s toolkit,
strengthening branding, awareness, lead generation
and customer satisfaction.
The key is matching the right localization method to
your video to help keep costs and timelines under
control.

16
The brain
processes visual data
600,000
faster than text1
One minute
of video is worth
1.8 million
words2
90%
of consumers globally
watch video content over
the internet3
1Social Media Today
2Forrester Research
3http://www.accenture.com/SiteCollectionDocuments/
PDF/Accenture-Video-Over-Internet-Consumer-
Survey-2013.pdf

17
Subtitling
The most cost-effective method of tailoring
video for international audiences. The
original audio file is transcribed and text
subtitles are overlaid on the video. Typically
any on-screen text will remain in the original
language.
Suits:
How-to and informative videos, user-generated
videos and cases where it’s
obvious that the information originates in a
different language or country.
Voice over
For when it’s important to watch the video
in local language. After transcription and
translation, a professional native voiceover
artist will re-record the audio track. The new
audio is inserted into the video in place of
the original audio.
Suits:
Videos where there is no one speaking on
screen, or where you want a newscast type
production with the original voice turned
down in the background.
Full-scale production
For when you need to create a truly
professional finish. All text, graphical
elements and audio tracks are translated,
tailored and recreated, so that the end result
looks and feels as though it was originally
created in the viewer’s native language.
Suits:
Professional branding, awareness and
advertising videos where quality is
paramount and budget is less of a concern.

18
YouTube is the
2nd
largest search engine
worldwide
64-
85%
of people are more likely
to buy after watching a
product video4
7/10
people feel positively
about a brand after
viewing their video
content5
4http://axonn.co.uk/axonn-research/
video-content-marketing-
2013
5https://blog.kissmetrics.com/
product-videos-conversion/
Think about localization from the start of a video project. Decide on
the appropriate markets, languages and content, mapping to the most
effectual video localization technique. This will help guide the production
process avoiding mistakes further down the line, while enabling you to
deliver relevant content to your target markets within cost.
TOP TIP

19
4 Tap into global social intelligence
Marketers like you are feeling the pressure every day to drive activities
that really accelerate sales. Faced with flat budgets, a faster-paced global
economy and better informed consumers, it’s a huge challenge for you
to attract and retain new international customers, as well as deliver a
higher ROI with every targeted campaign and product launch.

20
You may be familiar with your domestic audience, but do you know
your global customer? – What they care about, the triggers behind their
attitudes and behaviors and the different cultural nuances from country
to country?
Maybe you’ve tried traditional market research methodologies such as surveys, focus groups
or complex software that promise in-depth insights. These are costly, time-consuming and
difficult to execute in multiple languages.
Recent SDL research into six global hotel
chains found that while customer experience
satisfaction levels in the United States were
high for these leading brands, big gaps
appeared in other markets. By analyzing the
global conversations taking place online in
local languages, the team identified patterns
which pointed to a weaker brand affinity in
Spain and Germany. Companies are able to
take decisive action based on comprehensive,
data-driven social intelligence such as this.
58%
of consumers are
willing to pay more for
a superior customer
experience
80%
of organizations
believe they deliver
a superior customer
experience
8%
of customers
surveyed
actually
agree

21
There is so much digital information out there about your customers
Harnessing that information to get a deeper understanding of your different global markets,
languages and cultures, means you can deliver overall better international customer
experiences.
With the right social intelligence mechanisms in place, you can:
Successful global brands of the future will have access to live insights about what matters
to their customers, in every market. Social Intelligence enables you to be agile, collaborate
across functions, identify success factors for campaigns, product launches, market expansion
and your brand, as well as measure and respond to these insights.
Capture more
international buyers: tailor
your strategies for regional
product launches and brand
campaigns. Monitor and
adapt your campaigns in
real-time based on
responses.
Create engaging,
tailored content:
understand what type
of content appeals to
different segments to
drive resonance and
engagement.
Promote global
brand advocates:
consistently meet your
customers’ expectations
to create passionate
evangelists who will
amplify your marketing
message.
Understand global
consumer behavior:
uncover the buying
journey for different
segments and plot their
next likely steps.

22
4 Social intelligence checklist:
Uncover where the strongest opportunities are to influence
purchasing behavior
Find out how to prevent costly mistakes before a product or
brand launch
Start using real-time feedback in your customers’ language
to adjust campaigns
Compare your brand affinity globally and how you rank
against your competitors
Easily track and measure your campaigns against your
marketing objectives
Cut down time and costs involved in traditional marketing
research
Successful
global brands of the
future will have access
to live insights about
what matters to their
customers, in every
market

23
5 Master multilingual website management
The ultimate goal of optimizing your content,
SEO, video marketing and social media efforts
for global audiences is to drive traffic to your
websites. It’s where your marketing efforts
bear fruit. But what does the backend of
your website look like? Do you have the right
content management system (CMS) and
translation technology in place to support
consistent global user experiences?

24
5 CMS health check:
Are translation capabilities integrated into your CMS?
Is your productivity compromised because of slow, bug-ridden
or poorly designed tools and systems?
Can you easily launch new websites in different languages?
Can you quickly post content, images and multimedia on all
your sites?
Are you able to optimize your different sites for search and
social and easily test page designs?
Do you need better support to execute marketing in
multiple languages?
In essence, can
you tailor your online
experience to your
audience based on
geography, culture
and language?

25
Integrate your translation management
With all the new types of content emerging as well as the sheer volume, to maintain
multiple websites and remain globally relevant, you need a streamlined translation process
behind the scenes.
Integration of your translation management tool and web content management system can
dramatically speed up the time it takes to publish new content.
Integration in practice:
Let’s say you have eight different language websites and you want to make updates to a
product page. You can edit the content in English, for example, straight from your CMS
and then quickly and easily send the page for translation from the tool. You don’t have to
painstakingly highlight only the copy that has changed or work outside the system. Your
translation memory then recognizes previously translated content, so it will only translate
the new text, saving you time and money, while the translated copy is automatically
populated on your language sites directly from your CMS.
Integration
of your translation
management tool and
web content management
system can dramatically
speed up the time it
takes to publish new
content

26
Use machine translation to
your advantage
Machine translation often gets
a bad rap owing to the various
free, yet rough translation tools
available online. But machine
translation can be more
sophisticated than you think. With
trained translation engines tailored
to specific industries, you can get
a match that meets your time,
cost and quality requirements.
Here’s how you can use it to your
advantage:
Translate user-generated
content
Equip your customers to talk to one another
about the products and services you’re
offering. Delivering customer reviews, social
posts and forums across languages is a
great way to engage global audiences. But
the vast quantities of content created and
its relatively short shelf life makes human
translation costly and frankly infeasible.
By integrating customized machine
translation into your online and social
platforms, you can ensure your relevancy
across markets, serve up a broader range
of credible content and provide a better
customer experience for all.
Adopt truly-multilingual chat
In today’s digital world, your customers
demand instant feedback from your
organization. But providing such a high level
of engagement in multiple languages can be
a challenge.
By integrating machine translation
functionality into your instant chat tools,
you can provide the real-time, two-way
communication your customers expect.
Your employees don’t even have to speak
multiple languages, yet they can still support
customers throughout their buying journey.

27
Let’s look at this example of a Spanish customer who wants help with one of your products:
They type their question into the
online chat box in Spanish.
Involve marketing in the CMS decision-making process early on.
Content creators should be brought up to speed, invited to provide
feedback on usability and should be given the right technology and
processes in order to fully support multilingual web publishing.
TOP TIP
This is automatically translated and
delivered to the help agent in their
native language, let’s say English.
The English-speaking agent types
their reply in English.
This response is automatically
translated and delivered back to
the consumer in Spanish.

SDL (LSE: SDL) allows companies to optimize their customers’ experience across the entire
buyer journey. Through its web content management, analytics, social intelligence, campaign
management and translation services, SDL helps organizations leverage data-driven insights to
understand what their customers want, orchestrate relevant content and communications, and
deliver engaging and contextual experiences across languages, cultures, channels and devices.
SDL has over 1,500 enterprise customers, over 400 partners and a global infrastructure of 70
offices in 38 countries. We also work with 72 of the top 100 global brands.
For more information, visit www.sdl.com
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In summary
Global marketers who are able to successfully navigate the maze
that is localization and translation, will ultimately succeed in winning
the hearts and minds of their international customers. And with the
right partner, you can overcome time, cost and technical barriers to
connect with your customers in new, meaningful ways.
To learn more about how we can help you to become a master
global marketer, visit: www.sdl.com/modernglobalmarketing
“If you talk to a
man in a language he
understands, that goes to
his head. If you talk to him in
his language, that goes to
his heart.”
Nelson Mandela
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