In the aftermath of the global pandemic, organizations today are now competing across the globe to maintain a loyal consumer base.

As a result, brands now rely on personalized and localized content to remain relevant and provide a more pleasant consumer experience against their competitors.

Today’s global brands and MNCs would often customize their digital assets like their websites, social media posts, and videos.

Based on geographic regions, digital content varies, and some even go so far as modifying everything from language to design.

Companies today have access to a large number of data about their target audience. These include their hobbies, interests, locations, products they purchased, and even the topics and keywords they have recently searched.

Brands that have access to these vast amounts of data are making it easier to create a personalized and localized online experience for their consumers, offering significant gains and benefits for both the brand and consumers.

Personalization and Localization: What’s the difference?

For brands today, personalization and localization may mean many things. Some brands view it as a business strategy that will increase their sustained growth.

For others, it’s a set of tactics used to boost website traffic and email response rates. Some may even see the two as just a buzzword.

Simply put, localization groups consumers according to their demographic characteristics such as age, geography, or gender. While personalization optimizes the experiences and messages to individuals, not the group they belong to.

But what do these terms really mean, and why do they matter for brands today?

Personalization uses specific data about a particular consumer to help brands customize the messages they send to them. This data can include their name, when they last visited the website, their abandoned carts, or even specific actions they did to your website like saving coupons or discount codes.

On the other hand, localization involves sending the right message to the right consumer, at the right place, and at the right time. It uses real-time data about specific demographics to create unique hyper-specific content.

So, how do they differ from each other? Personalization involves looking at specific users, while localization involves segmenting consumer demographics as a whole. As such, personalization may use a specific consumer’s name, while localization would use the local language and images specific to their geographic location.

Why should brands invest in personalization and localization?

Brands may use personalization and localization tactics for various reasons. It can promise immediate results like short-term revenue growth. However, investing in these tactics can also reflect the brand’s commitment to future market opportunities.

The main goal would be to establish a memorable entry to the market to gain a specific advantage to consumers over its competitors. Shakr Local at Scale provides effective location-based personalization creatives for brands that need geographic relevance to increase the results of their video ad campaigns.

Here are several reasons why brands use personalization and localization:

·   To increase a brand’s revenue.

A brand’s immediate goal is to increase revenue by venturing into new markets by entering new geographical locations or sectorial consumer-based areas. Additionally, brands will see increased revenue from their localization and personalization efforts by gaining more local engagement from their international audience, ultimately seeing improved purchase conversion rates.

·   To drive market awareness for brands.

While the ultimate goal for brands would be to increase revenue for the long term, a brand’s immediate goal is to first gain a strategic market entry advantage over its competitors. Consumers generally appreciate brands that are in tune with their specific needs. Localization and personalization are effective for showing consumers in new markets that the brand is involved in the local community.

·   To build brand relationships and loyalty to consumers.

Personalization and localization help forward-thinking companies transform their message, product, and marketing communications to sync on a local level. Brands invest in these strategies to allow them to adapt to the ever-changing local business landscape. By complementing localization efforts with continuous personalization, brands will gain the advantage of strengthening their consumer relationships and building brand loyalty.

Are personalization and localization the future of marketing?

Marketing gimmicks tend to be hyped over certain periods of time. However, it is entirely possible that personalization and localization are more than just a passing marketing hype.

While some marketers tend to dismiss these strategies as just a fleeting gimmick, several shifts in the industry have proven that personalization and localization are more than just buzzwords. Perhaps they may even signify a paradigm shift in the way brands market their products in the coming years.

Here are several reasons why personalization and localization are the gateways to the future of marketing:

·   Technology Growth

The past decade has given brands access to information and big data more than ever before. The growth of technology has also prompted the rise of automation and machine learning. These innovations take over labor-intensive tasks such as content translation, data collection, and even the scaling of video content creation.

As technology continues to evolve, it will become easier for brands to provide localized and personalized content for consumers. Location-based creative personalization with Shakr Local can help brands create hyper-localized ads in specific areas. With its easy-to-use video creation platform, Shakr empowers brands to produce high-quality videos instantly.

·   Steady Rise of Mobile

According to Statista, mobile traffic accounted for more than half of the Internet traffic in 2019. The priority of Google’s mobile-first SEO indexing is also an indication that the growing power of mobile is here to stay. As such, mobile-driven commerce is expected to grow in the coming years. This is why brands need to effectively deliver mobile content that is both personalized and localized on their devices.

·   Omnichannel Domination

Before the rise of Google and the Internet, consumers accessed information in various ways, primarily through newspapers or while watching TV. Now, the rise of second screens indicates that consumers are interacting with brands on their mobile devices while watching TV, online shopping, or even while browsing social media. Personalizing and localizing content for these online channels will show that brands pay attention to where consumers are as they try to understand their wants and needs. This keen attention to detail will help build trust and brand loyalty.

Hyper-Personalization with Localization

There’s no doubt about it. Personalization and localization will indeed bring growth and revenue for brands in the years to come. While brands are looking for ways to implement these strategies effectively, there would often be a disconnect between the two strategies. The truth is, personalization and localization will work best if these tactics are combined.

Here are several reasons why brands will get the most out of personalization and localization when they go hand-in-hand:

·   Smart Translation

As e-commerce continues to dominate the global market, it is no longer enough for businesses to use a single language website. Smart content translation allows brands to build trust with their shoppers that literally speak their language. However, it should not stop with language. Brands also need to update other location-based aspects of their website, such as the price listings in local currency. Studies have shown that online shoppers tend to abandon a purchase when prices only appear in USD. 

·   Multilingual Bots

Chatbots are proving to be very useful for businesses. Brands that use chatbots in their websites have been shown to significantly save up to 30% in customer service costs by providing customers with information and answering repetitive questions. Making chatbots multilingual will also help consumers answer questions quickly. As they navigate the Internet using their native language, multilingual chatbots are a natural extension of this seamless user experience.

·   Predictive Analytics

As consumers use your app, website, chatbots, and other digital assets, they give brands information about their personal preferences. This information will provide brands with information about the products they are interested in, their preferred customer support channels, and even when they are more likely to check your app or website.

·   The Allure of Video Localization

Video localization is a relatively new tactic in digital marketing. It delivers an experience that connects the customer to the brand through localized elements in the content. Video localization and personalization should provide a deeper understanding of the context, culture, customs, and characteristics of the target demographics. This is why it is essential to plan ahead to create videos that can be localized.

With Shakr Local, brands can create hyper-localized creatives with video automation tools that automatically create hundreds of personalized videos to provide consumers with memorable and custom-made brand experiences.

Personalization and Localization Best Practices

Airbnb

The vacation rental marketplace has grown exponentially over the past few years. By building a presence in almost 200 countries globally, Airbnb does not just need to translate the platform into multiple languages; it also needs to create localized marketing content to target specific demographics. The brand created targeted social campaigns with robust city guidebooks and localized experiences for tourists to target its growing base of hosts and travelers. Airbnb also uses voiceovers in localized videos to ensure that nothing gets lost in translation.

Uniqlo

Minimalist fast-fashion brand Uniqlo has been opening stores around the globe over the past few years. Alongside its fast expansion, it takes a strategic approach to create social media for its various markets worldwide. Uniqlo localizes its social media content by country to make it simpler to create customized content for promotions by region.

Netflix

Video streaming service Netflix is now operating in more than 190 countries across the globe. Due to its ambitious rapid global expansion, Netflix has to push for a localization program to create curated content for subscribers in each country. More recently, their content strategy expanded to creating Netflix Originals content for various markets. This is the kind of content that Netflix promotes to local consumers and attracts new audiences with new monthly curated content across its global platform. 

Coca-Cola

Coca-Cola is already a household name across the globe. With its prevalence in the markets across the world, one of Coca-Cola’s branding concerns is on localizing its products and packaging. To ensure that the brand resonates with consumers everywhere, Coca-Cola creates localized campaigns for its major markets. For example, its “Share a Coke” campaign features localized packaging and product copies to add a more personalized touch and catch consumers’ eyes.

Make your marketing campaigns future-proof with Shakr’s personalized and localized videos.

Customers today expect more from brands. They expect brands to know their needs and not just their demographics. And what better way to do that with Shakr’s localized videos at scale. Want to learn more? Discover a call with us now.

References:

Customer Segmentation vs. Personalization Marketing | Sailthru. (2021). Retrieved 29 July 2021, from https://www.sailthru.com/marketing-blog/personalization-vs-segmentation-real-difference-matters/

Localization and Personalization at Scale. (2021). Retrieved 29 July 2021, from https://www.contentstack.com/blog/all-about-headless/localization-and-personalization/

Peacock, L. (2019). 5 Brands Who Killed It with Localized Content Strategies. Retrieved 29 July 2021, from https://www.shutterstock.com/blog/5-brands-localized-content

Video Localization in the Digital Era. (n.d.). SPi Global Data Intelligence & Content Technology. https://www.spi-global.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Video-Localization-in-the-Digital-Era-Whitepaper.pdf