Best Practices for Establishing a Global Readiness Workflow: Balancing Global Digital Localization and Local / Customized Digital Localization Approaches

This is a paper presented by Krystelle Daboval, a graduate of the Global Digital Marketing and Localization (GDMLC) program. This paper presents the work being produced by students of The Localization Institute’s programs. The contents of this Paper are presented to create discussion in the global marketing industry on this topic; the contents of this paper are not to be considered an adopted standard of any kind. This does not represent the official position of The Localization Institute, or the author’s organization.
“Marketing’s role is to put the soul for the brand”, says Kinjil Mathur, CEO at Squarespace [1]. It is finding purpose in a capitalistic world with the ultimate goal of growing the business through brand awareness. Marketing is about understanding consumers and making sure you are creating dialogue with them to inspire and motivate them fall for your products and services. With the advent of digital marketing only a couple of decades ago, the playground has become wider: more players, more rules, more fun and more challenges. In this game, marketers can use every touchpoint they have with their customers to tell their company’s stories and win their hearts. The good news is that many levers are free, and finding opportunities to create emotional connections with a brand has never been so easy. So, would having a global presence on day one be the key to success? How do we ensure “global readiness” before operating or expanding on a market? How do we find the right balance between a global and a tailored approach? Do not count your chickens before they are hatched, confident player, and let’s examine the key aspects to fine tune a localized digital strategy in partnership with the localization experts.
The global audience: a polymorphous persona
Marketers, content creators and localizers of the digital world all share a common dream: understanding the minds and the hearts of their audiences to offer the best user experience worldwide, or at least an optimized one. There are many ways and tools to segment markets and to draw the portraits of the ideal personas, also known as the ideal buyers. But whichever product or service needs to resonate with them, it seems almost impossible to factor in all the parameters that keep on shaping the audience preferences on a global level: diversity and inclusion, Corporate Social Responsibility, generation specificities, but above all culture and personal preferences. The pace of change is unprecedented, and the platforms available to welcome localized digital content are as numerous and vast as the social media themselves. A lot of digital media are built around market segments, and they are all competing for attention. Segmenting an audience based on demographics, psychology, and behavior has become a more complex challenge.
If we examine the digital user needs for customized content under the light of the pyramid of needs from Maslow’s [2], we realize that in this classification, social relationships are ranked number three, with selfactualization at the top. In 2022, Simon Sinek offered a new insight on Maslow’s theory: “As a member of a group, I need friends, I need love, and self-actualization is not what I need, it is shared actualization that I am looking for.” [3]. The world has evolved massively since the pandemic, and the digital world is all about co-construction, it is highly interactive and interconnected. Considering this interconnectedness of the digital era, rather than a pyramid, we could state that the triggers which motivate potential buyers are a blend of different flavors that have to be considered a whole:
Another key aspect of digital content is the heavy use of visuals and imagery. From a psychological perspective, the law of proximity plays a big role in influencing the audience’s perception. In Gestalt psychology, this principle describes how the human eye perceives elements that are close together as more related than elements that are further apart: “Marketers and advertisers can also use the Law of Proximity to deliver a memorable and eye-catching visual message” [4]. As a result, one could argue that to influence the buying behaviors, digital content creation, including localization should be based on hyperlocalization, a very tempting user-centric approach. We observe an increased demand for personalized content in the newer generations, and digital marketing allows exactly for hyperlocalization because one can use different platforms for local reach. The limits of this approach have already been studied and are associated with several risks (Singh, N., Keating, B.M., 2020) [5]: “[…] companies run the risk of sabotaging good customer sentiment by overreaching to the micro-segments they have targeted.”
As the EMEA Asistant Localization Manager at an international insurance company, I work in partnership with our internal Corporate Marketing team based in the United States. For this article, I interviewed William Maxwell, our Digital Marketing Manager on the topic of balancing localization approaches when it comes to digital marketing, and he shared the following input: “It all comes back to the person and to the individual indeed. But how you engage in the world depends on where you are in the world. We will never be able to anticipate what each person is expecting because they belong to several groups. The question is, what is the acceptable variance?”. In this context, identifying the expectations of multilingual and multicultural users in their geographical markets almost seems like a non-ending, Sisyphean task that requires a high resource consumption. Very often, even large companies do not have the luxury of spending time and resources on being hyper consumer specific at a large scale. To find the ingredients of the magic blend, we need to look further.
Universal values and global standardization as a North Star?
One of the big fears companies experience when they are or go global is to lose their brand consistency and core identity, as well as the trust from their original customers. In the digital era, this risk is bigger due to the lack of control inherent to the multiplicity of data on the Internet, and the multiple points of contact from and with customers who speak a wide variety of languages, in different countries, with different flavors.
One possible strategy to overcome this challenge is to focus on universal values that will resonate with customers across borders. For instance, in 2024, the French brand Decathlon repositioned itself for increased brand awareness and to reach a broader audience worldwide. Their new moto is “Move People Through the Wonders of Sport”, a smart move considering that the Olympics were taking place in France this year, an event that they even sponsored. Barbara Martin Coppola, Decathlon Global CEO, explains the new identity in detail: “The new logo consists of two elements, our wordmark and our new symbol, known as the Orbit. […] Representing a mountain, a sail, a wave, or even a heartbeat, the peak at the end of the Orbit closes the movement towards new heights. A symbol of openness, Decathlon’s new logo lets everyone embrace it for what it means to them: whether it is accessibility, highperformance, innovation, or a positive impact on the environment.” [6]. From a cultural perspective, the blue color of the logo is also a safe choice on a global scale because it is associated with positive symbolism, it is associated with rationality and conservatism across the world [7].
Beyond ensuring a consistent brand image and control, there are many advantages to anchoring a brand identity into strong universal values and into a global standardization approach: economies of scale, simplified operations and cost savings, as explained in-depth in an article from Phrase [8], which also describes the importance to measure the effectiveness of standardized approaches. A company can choose to stay at this level as long as they keep measuring its fallbacks. We could call it “hypolocalization”, i.e. a standard strategy with a global audience at the back of the mind. However, learning the ropes at the local market level takes input from the ground, because the user experience also hides in the details: the Decathlon market selector page of its commercial site does not state clearly the translated languages, but just a list of the links to the local websites, with no explanation. There is a line of flags at the bottom of the page, which is not very intuitive for the user (DZ is Algeria), and it is recommended to stay away from flags for geopolitical reasons:
https://www.decathlon-united.media/en_GB/around-the-world
If choosing to focus on universal values and standardization is never a weak strategy as an initial approach – if unfolded in a meticulous way – content and communication should not be linear across markets to ensure an optimized user experience. Localized content is content after all and should be considered as part of the product or the service being sold. It is part of the business and as such, it should not be an afterthought when trying to fulfill the market needs for customization, but rather an important step that is included at each milestone of a digital strategy roadmap. If a company has chosen to build an internal localization team, then how do we define ownership, responsibilities and steps when it comes to balancing the approach and making sure that content is ready for a global travel? Let’s examine the key elements to take into consideration as good practices.
Localization as a game-changer: the art of relevance and influence
Producing relevant content for each local market may be an overwhelming task for global companies, who have less and less time to prepare and plan for international growth. Even if, to succeed, they have to employ cross-cultural employees to support new branch openings, including digital media experts that lived in several countries for instance and demonstrate cultural sensitivity or knowledge, this is not enough to ensure that content is localized fairly. Culture walks hand in hand with language, and in-house localization teams have an important role to play in helping the business and content creators to avoid the traps of culture. From experience, digital content often lands in the localization queue once it is already created for its original market. At best, it is free from cultural references and biases (“hypolocalized”) or and at worst, it is not localized at all.
To identify regional differences and customer preferences, digital marketing teams can start by using their dedicated tools to conduct thorough market research. But once this step has taken place, even if ownership of the original content belongs the Marketing team, localization teams need to support the key stakeholders throughout the journey of keeping brand authenticity while adapting the content for local markets. This is not an easy task since several digital marketing campaigns are launched simultaneously for both products and services.
Based on several conversations with my localization managers peers at various tech companies (Spotify, Sage, Indeed, Booking, etc.) and reference material quoted below, the major steps of a holistic approach would be the following:
Identify the digital program managers and key stakeholders within the company (including the design team), worldwide, and understand their business goals. In The Localization Strategy Playbook (The Strategic Thinking Group, 2021), a stakeholder is described as follows: “Taking a holistic approach, we consider a Stakeholder to be any party that interacts or should interact with the Globalization team, either routinely or on an ad-hoc basis.” Ask them about how they conduct market research to identify regional differences and customer preferences, and how they segment the various markets.
Reach out to each of them to explain why and how partnering with the localization team can generate better quality and better time to market, and reduced costs. For instance, explain the localization quality steps, the difference between preferential and correct. Explain that linguistic assets are part of the business identity and what you need to optimize the localization steps. Elaborate on how the localization team leverages technology tools for efficient translation, content management, and version control to ensure faster time-to-market.
Foster collaboration and coordination between marketing, product, and localization teams: digital stakeholders can predict campaign launches. Organize frequent meetings to regularly exchange insights and align strategies to ensure seamless execution.
Once trust is built and allies are found, one must be patient because it takes time to change the way people work. The teams will learn by working together as the web and the digital world are very dynamic, and it is a continuous process.
The goal of these steps is to give visibility to geographical borders that seem to have disappeared with the digital era. As Nataly Kelly explains it in her latest book, Take your company global [9], “Globalization tends to be an invisible process, like culture. It will not become a topic unless and until you make it one. You have to think like a marketer: brand it, give it a name, start communicating and repeat your message in many different ways.” Having a proactive approach will take the localization step upwards in the digital marketing workflow: if content is created with a global-ready perspective, issues with culturally nonrelevant content will be solved before it is too late to tackle them (after a product or service launch).
Co-playing for global readiness
When the framework of co-ownership is defined, the localization team can take the lead on creating an interdisciplinary team with experts for each market. There should be touchpoints and a common discussion platform in Slack or Teams to ensure that communication is flowing. Whether this group is called “International Steering Committee”, “Global-first group”, “Global-readiness focus team”, its main objective will be to ensure equilocalization for each market, and it will act as a sound board. I define equilocalization as the effort required to analyze the source content using specific cultural, linguistic and business filters to ensure that the target audience has access to content that is equitably adapted for its market specificities.
Here are the key elements that should be included as part of the journey:
Define the criteria for submitting content to the focus group and share this information with all content creators, via the company’s Intranet for instance.
Encourage content creators to develop modular content that can be easily adapted for different markets. For example, digital content creators should avoid associating graphics and colors with certain words in the source document to factor in text expansion and different word order in the translated documents. Explain that for videos and ads, it is technically more complex to adapt those items for each language, and more time-consuming.
Develop a portfolio of regional references and guidelines, in partnership with the local stakeholders. In these guidelines, provide cultural context, regulatory compliance constraints, and market preferences. For instance, in 2022 in Canada, an Act was passed to amend the Official Languages Act to enact the use of French in Federally Regulated Private Businesses Act. This type of information needs to be part of the guidance.
Share the portfolio in a central repository for assets so that content creators (including vendors) can use it as a reference to integrate global and local perspectives when designing content.
With the focus groups, review global content to ensure it is geography-agnostic, and approve local digital campaign content. Give specific feedback to the content creators to ensure that it is a continuous improvement model. One could imagine a global readiness index that would indicate on a scale of one to ten the level of adjustments required to ensure that the digital content is appropriate for the targeted markets. Some companies like Microsoft have formalized this step and integrate it into the brand review, but a lighter version focused on global readiness can be sufficient, especially for digital marketing assets.
Listen to the customer voices: the focus groups need to understand local user behavior so that digital assets are adapted accordingly. Some markets are more sensitive to having content in their native languages: for instance, Germany, Spain, Italy, France, Portugal, Greece and Englishspeaking countries prefer to have their content dubbed in local languages for videos, while citizens from Northern Europe countries are immersed in English since childhood and are used to watching subtitled videos. Use research and internal knowledge to gather best practices on a regular basis.
Invest in training programs to spread the word across the organization and encourage people to be curious about other cultures.
This journey is based on a continuous improvement model which can only succeed if there is harmony and alignment between the localization team and stakeholders. The digital world is very dynamic and requires an agile approach that allows for quick adjustments based on measured market feedback, which will be explored in the last section of this paper.
Hitting the mark
Balancing global and local approaches is a trial-and-error game. Achieving equilocalization takes time, sometimes years, especially for new markets. There are many ways to measure success and localization teams always need to show how much their work contributes to how the business is perceived. The Globalization Strategy Playbook (The Strategic Thinking Group, 2021) [10] provides great insights on how to collect globalization data for all types of localized content: “Localization data is vast and touches customers, markets, finance, quality, operational efficiency, support, and other business critical metrics. As such, data needs to be prioritized based on the criticality and efforts to collect it. Data has to be meaningful, not just available. The recommendation is to start with a small dataset and build from there.
Note that data points that are critical to some companies may not be as relevant to others.”
But since we are examining digital content and how to balance the localization approach, it makes sense to ask customers for their opinion. After all, this type of content is highly interactive by nature and companies use them to engage more with their customers. In her book Take your company global, Nataly Kelly suggests asking for the customers’ opinion in each country on a yearly basis. We want to know if they are provided with an equitable experience on the priority markets by rating the following criteria on a scale:
- Ask the customer how you are doing on understanding their countries.
- Ask the customer to rate their individual experience with your business locally and your effectiveness at covering language needs.
- Ask them how satisfied they are when visiting their website or LinkedIn page.
It is also possible to use the usual digital marketing KPIs for each language to measure the ROI for paid media such as the click through rate, and then to examine why a piece of localized content performed less for certain markets. All these items can of course be refined and customized based on the type of assets you are localizing. Once you start collecting data year after year, the whole group will become more mature in balancing choices.
Conclusion: A journey towards the North Star
In the digital age, organizations must embrace both global scalability and local relevance, with high visibility on their performances. More than a game, a successfully localized global digital marketing strategy is a journey. One learns by travelling across cultures, with an open mindset. By implementing the above best practices, companies can create a Global Readiness Workflow that harmonizes the power of global digital strategies with the nuances of local markets to achieve digital excellence.
This online course gives access to a wealth of resources, including downloadable materials, case studies, and interviews from major industry players. It deepened my understanding of digital marketing with a focus on localization and equipped me with the skills to refine and localize my marketing efforts for diverse audiences. Marketers entering new markets will also find useful to raise their awareness on cross-cultural specificities.
References
[1] Interview with Kindjil Mathur, CEO at Squarespace, Finding your true belonging, April 15, 2024, https://youtu.be/c2Pi40-RsC8?si=smAJRzWG1huRsvJp
[2] Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs: A Marketing Perspective. Accessed on June 28, 2024 from https://www.onlinevisibilityacademy.com/maslows–hierarchy–of–needs–a–marketing–perspective/
[3] Maslow’s Mistake | Simon Sinek Debunks Maslow’s Hierarchy Theory: Gen Z Insights, Podcast, The diary of a CEO, Accessed June 29, 2024 from https://youtu.be/2un68bLKb7A?si=jJa1CaJpAAqP0Avd
[4] 5 Ways You Can Use Gestalt Principles For Powerful Imagery, by Lucia Z. Wang. Accessed on July 12, 2024 from https://www.neurosciencemarketing.com/blog/articles/gestalt-principles.htm
[5] Taste v. Values: Effective, Authentic, and Nuanced Hyperlocalization in the Digital Marketing Era, an article by Singh, N., Keating, B.M., 2020. Accessed via the Global Digital Marketing and Localization Certification training materials.
[6] Building Decathlon’s Next Frontier. Accessed on July 8, 2024 from https://www.decathlon-united.media/decathlon-new-identity
[7] International Color Symbolism Chart. Accessed on July 7, 2024 from https://www.sixdegrees.com/pdf/International-Color-Symbolism-Chart.pdf
[8] Global Standardization Strategy: Navigating Uniformity and Variation for Business Growth, by Pamela Gossal. Accessed July 14, 2024 from https://phrase.com/blog/posts/global-standardization/
[9] The Globalization Strategy Playbook, by The Strategic Thinking Group, October 15, 2021 (PDF)
[10] Take Your Company Global: The New Rules of International Expansion, by Nataly Kelly, September 23, 2023. Berrett-Koehler Publishers.
Disclaimer: Copyright © 2021 The Localization Institute. All rights reserved. This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published, and distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind, provided that the above copyright notice and this section are included on all such copies and derivative works. However, this document itself may not be modified in any way, including by removing the copyright notice or references to The Localization Institute, without the permission of the copyright owners. This document and the information contained herein is provided on an “AS IS” basis and THE LOCALIZATION INSTITUTE DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE INFORMATION HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY OWNERSHIP RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.