Should You Outsource Your Localization?

Expanding your business into new global markets is an exciting endeavor, but it comes with the challenge of effectively managing the localization of your product for your target audiences.

You have two options: hastily assemble an in-house team to provide translations, or outsource to a partner who specializes in providing high-quality translations.

More and more businesses are discovering that the latter approach - outsourcing localization and translation - is a highly efficient approach, benefiting both their finances and their time.

Localization plays a critical role for global businesses looking to expand their operations to other countries, whether they are brick-and-mortar establishments or e-commerce enterprises.

Even software and app companies prioritize localization, given that the majority of iOS and Google Play downloads come from non-native English-speaking markets. It is essential to recognize that 52 percent of the world's internet users (2.5 billion people) reside in Asia, compared to North America's 330 million users.

5 Reasons the Outsourcing of Localization is Essential

1. Improve Customer Communication and Satisfaction: Content serves as the medium that connects businesses with their target audiences. Customers prefer engaging with brands that communicate in their native language. By translating all your content, including blog posts, articles, web pages, downloads, ads, and videos, you can effectively reach your core audience and enhance customer satisfaction.
2. Promote Brand Loyalty: Building a loyal customer base is vital for sustaining and growing your business. Brand loyalty not only saves you money but also boosts your revenue. Studies show that 80 percent of consumers prefer brands that offer personalized content and experiences. However, providing personalized content becomes challenging when you're not translating it for each target group. By outsourcing localization services, you can deliver tailored content to different markets, fostering brand loyalty.
3. Improve Visibility and Expand Your Customer Base: The more languages and cultures you cater to, the greater your visibility becomes. Localized ads outperform English campaigns in terms of click-through rates and conversions. Customers appreciate the effort you put into personalizing your content to resonate with them. By going the extra mile in localization, you can continue growing your market share, especially if your competitors are not prioritizing localization.
4. Enter New Markets Efficiently: Expanding into new markets brings language and cultural barriers that must be overcome. Without proper preparation to tackle communication challenges, legal issues, and logistical hurdles, your entry into a new market can be slowed down or deterred. Localization removes these roadblocks and mishaps, safeguarding your brand image and facilitating a successful market entry.
5. Gain a Competitive Edge: Expanding into new locales means you'll face competition on a global scale, including local companies in each new region. Customers in these new markets may already have established trust in local brands. However, by speaking their language and understanding their way of life, you can level the playing field. Localization services provide you with an advantage over global competitors who have not localized their products. Multiple studies confirm that approximately 60% of global consumers rarely or never make purchases from English-only websites, emphasizing the importance of localization.

Benefits of Partnering with a Language Services Provider Like LanguageLine

1. Save on Localization Costs: Outsourcing translation and localization allows you to avoid the upfront costs associated with building an entire team, processes, and technology infrastructure. By paying as you go with an established localization company, you can reduce costs. Additionally, you won't have to worry about hiring employees, paying salaries, providing benefits, or dealing with turnover-related expenses.
2. Maintain Project Schedules: Time is of the essence when entering new markets. While handling things in-house may provide a sense of control, training staff and executing a localization strategy quickly enough to meet deadlines can be challenging. By outsourcing your localization efforts, you gain an accountability partner who ensures everything stays on track and your project schedules are met.
3. Increase the Breadth and Scale of Localization: When you outsource localization, you're not merely obtaining assistance with individual files and tasks. You're partnering with a company that manages the entire localization project for you. Most localization providers support a wider range of localization activities, including additional languages, specializations, and translation formats. This level of scalability and breadth is more challenging to achieve with an internal team. It also allows you to easily scale your localization program up or down based on seasonal needs.
4. Improve Quality Control: Delivering poor-quality translations or cultural mishaps can harm your brand's reputation. Outsourcing localization ensures superior work due to additional layers of quality control that are challenging to support with a small internal team. With a trusted partner, you can maintain the quality and integrity of your localized content.
5. Increase Agility and Innovation: While there may be concerns about becoming dependent on a localization partner and sharing confidential materials, the opposite is often true. Localization companies continuously innovate their technologies and workflows to enhance processes. Keeping up with these innovations can be difficult and costly for internal teams. By outsourcing localization, you can benefit from your vendor's innovations, saving time and money. You also share the cost of these innovations with the vendor and their other clients, rather than shouldering the entire research and development cost.

Factors to Consider

1. Good value for your investment: Outsourcing allows you to focus on running your business while your localization partner handles the heavy lifting.
2. Meeting translation deadlines: You won't have to worry about training staff to handle growing workloads; your partner will ensure deadlines are met.
3. Maintaining your brand's reputation: By working with experts, you can avoid cultural mishaps and protect your brand's reputation.
4. Avoiding tech headaches: Partnering with an agile and forward-thinking company that invests in innovation saves you time and money compared to dealing with slow-to-change behemoths.
5. Ensuring data security: Localization companies use secure platforms and adhere to regulations such as GDPR.
6. Simplifying localization: Hiring and training staff can be challenging and time-consuming. By choosing the right localization partner, you can alleviate these concerns and focus on core business activities.

 When selecting a localization partner, assess the specializations offered by the provider, ensuring they can cater to your specific needs beyond translation. Look for a partner that is enthusiastic about becoming an extension of your team and willing to offer additional support as you grow. 

By partnering with LanguageLine, you gain more than just assistance with translation and localization tasks. You acquire a comprehensive partner who manages all aspects of the localization process, saving you time, money, and resources and making it as easy as possible for you to complete your projects. Furthermore, this partnership helps you expand your customer reach and enhance your reputation, ultimately driving revenue growth.