A Step by Step Guide for Brand Localization

Branding is a significant aspect of business strategy and provides a competitive advantage in the world of fierce competition. It helps to differentiate your products and services from competitors. The globalized and digitized economy has made it easier for small businesses to go for brand localization systematically.

What is a Branding Strategy

Before knowing the importance of brand localization, one must understand branding. In easy words, branding is the manner of quantifying the value and reality of an organization, product, and service. It is a specific set of benefits that defines a particular brand. People get confused about branding and marketing. Branding initiates marketing. Branding is strategic and marketing is tactical. In addition, brand strategy defines the guidelines on how, when, where, and to whom you communicate your brand message. A clearly-defined and properly executed brand strategy leads to an accurate and precise brand message and a long-lasting relationship with the customers.

Why You Require a Brand Strategy 

Today, the world is driven by perception and brands depict the customer’s opinion about the company’s reputation, credibility, products, and customer experience. A brand strategy is important because it provides clarity about the competition in the market, positioning of the product in the market, and customers’ expectations. It helps in devising marketing strategies and upgrading marketing messages to compete in the global world for building strong brands. Branding helps in enhancing market performance and profitability by building trust and credibility through effective advertising. 

Localizing the Brand

Localization is the mantra in the marketing world. It resonates the brand to the new market. It has a wider concept and comprises several processes and strategies. Any execution that you do to enter a foreign market is called localization. It may include a translation of web copy or making your advertisement culturally sensitive. Other methods included in localization are transcreation and transliteration. Transcreation is the process of recreating an ad or any promotional material that resonates with the target market. Transliteration is the process of transcribing the content into other alphabets. 

Why Brand Localization is Important for Global Success

In global marketing, there is no one-size-fits-all approach. No matter which type of niche or the markets you operate in, you are required to localize your business to expand. You can’t get the same results of an ad campaign in the USA which you got in the UK. Every country has a distinct culture though if they speak the same language. 

Brand localization is one step ahead of translation. It enables the translated websites and slogans to enter the brains of the target market. Moreover, it helps in keeping the marketing message consistent across all the markets. 

The translation of ads is different. What about the translation of the brand name? The brand name depicts your company. Here the question comes whether you should change the brand name or not. There is no valid answer to this question. Initially, you need to check whether your name already exists in the target market or not. If the name is already available then you need to investigate how that name is pronounced in your new market and what it means. Sometimes it happens that the meaning you find resonates with your brand. In this case, you can keep the same name.

On the other hand, if your name is associated with negative meanings then you need to change its scripts. For example, Coca Cola has transcribed its logo as per different target markets, and Volkswagen decided to keep its script the same despite the different target markets. You need to decide, whether you want to keep your brand name consistent around the world or you want to resonate with every new market, you want to target. The brand is more than just a name. If you want to expand your business in new potential markets then you should analyze all elements of the brand and devise a strategy that should suit the market in which you are moving.

How to Localize Your Brand  

While going for a brand localization project, you should consider the following things: 

1. What action does your brand provoke?

2. Is your brand name associated with negative connotations?

3. Does it have more than one meaning?

4. Do other products and brands have the same name?

5. How is the sound of your brand name, and is it similar to other sounds?

Wrapping Up 

Brand localization seems a tedious task as compared to building a brand name. If you don’t consider global market culture before entering or if you execute inaccurate brand localization, then it will result in erroneous translation and havoc performance of your brand and services. Moreover, it will damage your global reputation. So, it is recommended to consult a reliable translation company. CCJK is here for you. It has a team of native translators that provides you with robust brand localization services in fast turnaround time and economical rates.  

（from CCJK Blog）