How culture plays a part in Brand localization

Undoubtedly, when a company or an individual thinks about a brand and considers the task of creating the website that will give it a boost and make it known; it generally falls into the error of focusing its ideas on the company, leaving aside the customer experience, which, in short, will be the source that will help it to project and maintain itself over time.

Today, the fundamental role played by users has been proven by many success stories. An example of this is Netflix as a long-established company that, thanks to its connection with customers, has been able to respond effectively and reinvent itself in an intercultural market to remain in the limelight.

The importance of user interaction with your brand

A company's website is the "active" presence of the brand in front of its audience. Although its construction starts from the content and graphic design elements previously defined to reflect its essence; it must also integrate elements that facilitate the observation and collection of customer experience.

This is the best way to measure the acceptance of the strategies implemented and to identify the changes deemed necessary for brand positioning. Companies are increasingly interested in learning from the behavior of their audiences because these are often an unequivocal guide for market positioning.

Large companies have been able to transform their services based on this experience, which has allowed them to stand up to significant structural changes in economic dynamics. Their flexibility has allowed them to come out of what would have meant, for anyone else, a sure failure.

The weight of culture in the marketplace

It is no secret that culture is currently playing a major role, especially as a guarantor of success in international business.  It is not for nothing that authors such as Steers, Sanchez-Runde, and Nardon state that culture not only influences the way people perceive the world and how they act in it; but that it will also be reflected in the way they do business.

Faced with this reality, many business schools are choosing to develop programs dedicated to cross-cultural management. A company that is considering the possibility of making its way into another territory outside its own;  must be very aware that in the process even the smallest details count for the brand positioning.

You should be careful about aspects such as language, for example; the way you dress and even the way you greet each other. You should not lose sight of the fact that when you are outside your "territory", differences concerning the beliefs and values of other countries will become more evident.

Culture plays such a fundamental role in international negotiations since it is through culture that trust is generated both; for partnerships and for potential customers to take your brand seriously. Communication in this sense becomes one of the main elements. How to avoid falling into an inefficient localization of the brand?

Researching the market in which you intend to introduce your brand is an effective way to ensure a clear message. At this point, localization plays an important role in brand building; your image must be consistent everywhere you go.

There are thousands of references in the world, companies that have succeeded through the construction of a unique image and concept in different markets around the world.

Brand localization

Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online and offline can make all the difference.

Localization allows companies to ensure their brand manages to "fit" in any market in a natural process of adaptation; where its proposal is introduced without altering its essence. There are thousands of existing cases, such as Coca-Cola or its mega-rival Pepsi.

Through brand localization, the consolidation of any business at an international level becomes feasible, if it manages adequate strategies so that its proposal and the message associated with its business have a place in different countries and their cultures. Brand localization facilitates the means for a company to reach a larger number of consumers in a new market.

Among the activities this process may include, we mention the translation of the content of a website and the transcreation of commercial texts for advertisements, to make them suitable for the new market, among others.

Nowadays, many companies are aware of the great opportunity their websites offer them to project their services to other scales.  However, the great challenge in this process is to translate the information contained in the website into another language, without altering the meaning of the message.

Do not forget that the main objective behind all this is the brand can keep its identity, regardless of the country where it arrives; being consistent with the culture of each new market. In this sense, the translation of the website does not work against its identity.

A multilingual website with a unique identity

Nothing could be more frustrating than the partial or total loss of a website's content as a result of an incorrect interpretation of the message. Fortunately, nowadays there are different translation software that can help companies to have a multilingual website.

Some of them even offer excellent options, such as the automatic detection of each word in the contents; even allowing the possibility of a combined work on automatic translations and manual translations.

However, despite the great advantages of automatic translations in terms of saving money and time, there comes a point when you will need the help of a professional translator.  Especially when you want to have a quality multilingual website that is both effective and functional in terms of brand localization.

Although there is no denying the great advantages that technology puts at our disposal, excellence requires meticulous work to guarantee the effectiveness of the message with accuracy, coherence, fluency and adjusted to the nuances of the language; something that only a native translator can guarantee.

In short, localization offers great opportunities for the expansion of companies within an international market. It is an open door to the transition of an intercultural market, through which millions of companies have decided to go through to ensure success in previous years would have meant greater sacrifices.

Need some help with branding? Be sure to contact us for a quotation.