All the large global brands started small once upon a time in their home markets. But today, they’re earning half or more of their multi-billion-dollar revenues internationally. If you’ve already expanded into new global markets, you might be encountering some common early-stage frustrations in global growth. Sales or satisfaction aren’t as high as expected, your site traffic bounce rates are too high, your translation review process is messy, or maybe you’ve noticed the same content keeps getting translated again and again. So how do you double, triple or quadruple your revenues internationally? What best practices can you implement now? What costly missteps can you bypass on the road to globalization?

1. How Localization Can
Double Your Revenues

2. The world’s
your oyster.

3. The world’s
your market.

4. Let’s face it:
You won’t get there in Year 1. You cannot build first-class
localization infrastructure overnight.*
* Rome wasn’t built in a day either

5. On the flip side:
You CAN still compete effectively with entrenched local
competitors, and global brands even without their major
local presence, or their budgets.
You can leapfrog many of them with the right approach
taken from the start — no extra baggage.

6. How?
• Take a staggered approach
• Invest smartly
• Avoid unnecessary mistakes
in the early stages
• Get the basics right, and
grow from there

7. Building a Business Case for
Localization1

8. Top Companies Grow Globally
Among S&P500 companies, an average of
46.6% of all sales are generated outside the
United States.
The largest sector is Information Technology,
with more than 56% of its declared sales
crossing international boundaries.
28 of Germany’s top 30 companies on the
German stock index (DAX) generate 75% of
their sales outside the country.

9. • The value of communicating in
your prospect’s local language
begins at the first encounter
and gets more pronounced
throughout the sales cycle.
• Conversions are more likely in
the prospect’s local language.
People don’t buy what they
don’t understand.
• Start by localizing pre-sale
information. Quality of after-
sale support will not close the
sale.
Can’t Read,
Won’t Buy

10. Case Study: Rocket Internet
• Rocket Internet has replicated the
strategies of successful
ecommerce businesses in start-ups
launched around the world, in
niches ranging from mobile
payment to food delivery.
• Goal is to make Rocket the biggest
internet group outside the US and
China. It operates in more than
100 countries using proprietary
technology.
“We are focused on markets
outside the US and China
because these are
underserved.”
Source: FT.com

11. Example: Indonesia
“Facebook, Twitter and Uber are all opening offices in Jakarta, but
only a handful of international companies have made sizeable
investments in the Indonesian tech sector. These include Japan’s
Rakuten and Sumitomo, and German ecommerce conglomerate Rocket
Internet.” (FT.com)

12. Money, Money, Money
2

13. How Do You Compare?

14. Understand Locale Specifics
3

15. Your Audience
Tips for a market-specific buyer profile:
• Research market demographics and your industry
• Identify your local competition and its strategies
• Learn local purchasing behavior
• Identify the tools and channels that your buyers are using to get
product information & support

16. • Conduct focus groups
in-country to understand
local preferences and
sentiments
• Create locale-specific
customer profiles
• Shape local brand and
positioning

17. Evaluate Languages & Markets and
Prioritize Content for Localization4

18. Key Considerations
• What is the number of languages that you target?
• Are they among the world’s top common languages or rare ones?
• How large is the project’s volume?
• Does your company’s industry involve such specialized terminology
that it calls for industry subject matter experts?
• Do you have tight time-to-market requirements that require
around-the-clock localization teams?
• Does the content call for regulatory review and approval?

19. • Focus on the major markets
• Hand-pick promising, ripe, high-growth markets where you can
build competitive advantage
• Keep full long-tail languages for later
• Attractive markets for entry
– Hard and soft data on potential markets
– Language preferences — must vs. customer delight, segmentation
Prioritize Your Geographies

20. Marketing and
demand
generation Sales tools and
collateral
Public
relations
Local social
media
Product
User Interface
User
Assistance
Website and
online
presence
Multilingual
SEO
Customer and
product
support
Training
Legal

21. Set Your International Brand &
Content Strategy Right5

22. Set your brand, style and
terminology carefully from
the start…
…because changing this later
is going to be like trying to
turn an oil tanker.

23. Your Content Choices
Translation
Transcreation
Copywriting

24. Where to Invest and How to
Build and Grow Your Team6

25. • Get executive buy-in
• Establish cross-functional
visibility & approach to
localization
• Be strategic
• Staff
• Educate
• Engage your in-country staff, if
they exist, in a managed way
• Work to establish a clear budget
(ideally centralized) and tracking
Take It Step by Step

26. Translation Technologies You Need
— and Don’t Need — Early On7

27. Tools & Technologies Are NOT the Solution
• Establish your core workflows first
• Start by using essential tools
• Add more advanced technology and automation over time
• Integrate with upstream processes
• Don’t reinvent the wheel
• Involve hands-on localization staff and use their experience

28. Sequence of Implementing Translation-
Related Technologies (Simplified)
Translation & localization tools
Translation Memory (TM)
Terminology Management System
Content Management System (CMS, WCMS)
Content Authoring System
Translation Management System (TMS) & Workflow automation
Content Optimization
Machine Translation
Community translation platform
Quality Assurance checking tools

29. Key Process Considerations
8

30. • Document and implement
core processes
– As company-wide business
processes
• Inventory your content. Look
for building a centralized
content repository
• Learn to analyze root causes
of issues
• Establish a way of collecting
and analyzing local market
feedback
Key Process
Considerations

31. • Localization workflow for
individual content types
• Terminology management
• Query management
• Style guide development
• Quality metrics
• Linguistic quality review,
including arbitration
Essential Processes
to Get Right

32. Set Metrics and Start Tracking
Actual Performance Early On9

33. You can’t measure
everything in the early
stages of your
localization program…
…but if you don’t start
measuring the right KPIs,
you can’t improve over
time.

34. • On-time deliveries
• Project extension requests
• Average turnaround time
Project Management
Metrics

35. • Trending volumes (recycling
effectivity)
• Average cost per word
• Localization budget and your
contribution to new language-
related revenue
Financial Metrics

36. Downstream
• Satisfaction & user experience
of your in-country users
Upstream
• Language quality passes/fails
• Review rejection rates &
arbitrations raised
• Terminology queries
Quality Metrics

37. • Bugs by category & product
language
• Bug turnaround time
• Reactivated bugs
• Technical accuracy of
deliveries
Engineering Metrics

38. • Net Promoter Score (NPS) with
your key internal customers
– Product development
– Marketing & demand generation
– Sales
– Local offices
– Support
– Executive sponsor
Internal Satisfaction

39. Final Recommendations
10

40. • Think long-term
• Get the essentials right
• Move from operational to
strategic
• Think upstream
• Think new markets
• Treat localization as the engine
of your growth
• Make yourself indispensable