Thinking Locally as a Global B2B Brand
Local companies might have the most straight-forward means of achieving smart localized campaigns that show excellent results, but they’re not the only ones who can benefit. Global brands—even global B2B enterprises—really should consider the big results they can achieve and even bigger risks they can avoid.
The Need for Localization—B2B versus B2C
With few studies that really test improvements based on localization in B2B versus B2C companies, this particular study from CSA Research tested product localization. In it, B2B companies showed significantly more likelihood to purchase a localized product that was more expensive than a similar product in a foreign language:
In the study, only 4% of B2C consumers were very likely to pay for the more expensive local product compared to 22% of B2B buyers.
And only 30% B2C respondents were likely to versus 44% of B2B respondents. This factored in that all respondents said they had high-levels of proficiency to understand written English.
So why the big discrepancy? The study points to three factors which make localization more important to B2B.
Long-term usage and value for B2B buyers: Buyers are factoring in long-term usage and downstream impact of any barrier of engagement.
Risk management: Even if most of the time a small language barrier is fine… when it isn’t, there could be big risk.
Uncertainty: Localized interfaces, product documentation, customer support could help with the higher learning curve that might come with B2B products.
These are pretty good justifications and they all could apply not just to localized products but to localized marketing. The more B2B buyers understand the value, the offering, and the ins and outs of the product or service they’re considering, the more likely they will be to engage in a campaign.
Aside from language localization, many B2B enterprises do little no nothing regarding localization in terms of their digital presence. And you’d be surprised how many global brands have little to no language localization!
Localization Considerations for B2B Enterprises
Since smart localization strategies can substantially improve marketing results and lead generation, how can B2B companies ensure they’re getting localization right? Let’s hit a few highlights of localization options and strategies.
Language translation: This isn’t the end all/be all of localization, but it is critical, especially for companies with regional offices around the world. Of course, communicating in a local language is always preferred, and even people with high proficiency in English say that trust is higher and misunderstandings happen less with information in their local language. Bluntly, your audience just gets substantially bigger and customer experience goes up if you have a multi-language approach. Also, remember it’s not just different languages that can be included but variations within a given language. Written languages still showcase accents, spelling changes, and word choice divergence.
Unfortunately, having multi-language websites and campaigns is not an easy, inexpensive process. One of the biggest strategies for helping make the process smoother is solution selection and architecture. Some CMS platforms provide robust functionality for multi-language management. For most enterprises, the two leading options are Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) and Sitecore. We tend to lean toward AEM due to their translation workflow and multi-site manager features.
Local SEO: Language translation is a big step towards improving organic presence and rankings for additional regions. But that’s not the only consideration. Companies also need to tackle local SEO keyword research. Different regions use substantially different language and care about different topics. It’s important to optimize for what people search for in different areas.
There could also be local intent-based keywords “near me” or “in [insert city]” or similar phrases when people want to ensure they’re working with a company that has a presence nearby. This doesn’t pop up quite as much in B2B land versus B2C land, but it’s definitely still there. Lastly, content popularity might change dramatically by region.
Content considerations: Following on content for SEO, content consideration goes far beyond ranking well on search engines. Your content should really align your value props to the unique demands of different audiences: their needs, their customs, their context. This means thinking through content on so much more than your website. It’s critical to also look at email content, paid ads, social media, and downloadable assets. You also need to think about launch and timing—including seasonality, holidays, and time of day.
Martech tools can also help here. Audience segmentation and automation with your CRM and marketing automation can help. Adobe Target is built to provide lots of options for personalization. ABM platforms can be critical for paid campaigns, robust social media tools can help with workflow, and data visualization can help you use actionable data for your different segmentations and regions. So many tools, so little budget.
Persona differences: Another common infrastructure element that marketing teams can overlook is developing different localized personas. They might be substantially different depending on the working region. Decision makers might be different, job roles might have little overlap, and at minimum… their challenges, tasks, goals, and environment are likely to be distinct.
Regulation, compliance, and expertise adjustments: Thanks to regulatory and legal departments, this might be one area that global enterprises are fairly on top of—whether it’s marketing compliance, specific industry-related compliance, website compliance, or financial compliance. Regulatory bodies and compliance needs are substantially different for many industries based on countries and regions. But, are you thinking through everything?
If compliance is critical to your industry, do you have localized content discussing topics related to the different regulatory bodies and regulations? Do you have the appropriate compliance certifications showcased in the right areas? Are you referring to the right experts and up-to-date news related to regulatory compliance?
Cultural norms and values: This can be one of the more sensitive and trickier areas. Many companies have run afoul with non-localized content because they didn’t localize and a region outside their main region had substantially different perspective than was expected. But companies have also run afoul with localized content that what approached poorly.
We’re looking at you, Coors… you probably should have realized that the word-for-word Spanish translation of “Get loose with Coors” colloquially translates to “Get diarrhea with Coors.” And that’s a simple example of just word-for-word translation versus oblique, semantic, or communicative translations. You also need to consider cultural values and pain points. For example, maybe reconsider referring to “diarrhea” in a marketing article?
Our biggest two overall recommendations are:
Ensure you have the right tools to help you do localization smoothly. Your tech stack can really make or break you in terms of localization cost, efficiency, and workflow.
Do your research. If you don’t, your localization efforts have a larger chance of failing or hurting your brand.
If your enterprise is looking for help with localization strategies, launching localization campaigns, or analyzing how to improve your tech stack to help with localization, reach out to us. We’re experts and can help.