Tomedes translation services started offering localization for the Polish, German, Spanish, and French markets to help businesses in expanding their business in Europe. As a successful language solutions provider in the industry for 10 years, the company formulated the best strategies in adapting marketing brands and websites to attract European customers.
How Tomedes translation services localize for European audiences
Since 2007, Tomedes have been providing various language services for companies, organizations, and individuals all over the world. To help digital marketers extend their reach in European countries, they also started providing localization services in Polish, German, Spanish, and French. As of now, they’ve already provided localization services for small, medium, and fortune 500 businesses.
“We’ve played a part in internationalization of digital markets one way or another with the diverse language and globalization services we provide for our clients to reach far and distant shores, to broaden their horizons if you will,” shared Ofer Tirosh, CEO of Tomedes translation services. He believes that everyone seeks the same features of products and services. His company aims to provide equal access and opportunity to all people through localizations.
According to him, one of the most important parts of extending your reach to European audiences is the way a website conveys its global marketing message. By localizing and translating the contents of a website or marketing campaign, it would be easier for consumers to understand and trust a company. It was also a part of building a powerful branding to a target market.
Tomedes emphasized the importance of having local or native knowledge about a company’s target audience. It was essential to know the right marketing approach and platform before actually entering a market. Aside from the actual website, targeting users or customers in social media can be a great localization strategy.
“European countries were mainly different in other countries from a linguistic and cultural sense. Most of the burden would fall on the shoulders of your marketing research staff, to determine the unique cultural nuances and how certain aspects of a product or service should be retained or omitted, or completely transformed depending on which region you’re localizing for,” Tirosh explained.
As of now, Facebook (82.25%) owns the highest number of users in Europe followed by Pinterest (6.59%) and Twitter (5.7%). To take advantage of these platforms, Tomedes also was offering video subtitling and captioning which helps in attracting more European audiences.
Tomdedes also prides itself on making their clients the heart of their company’s philosophy. To determine if their work has a positive impact on their clients’ businesses, they were analyzing different marketing metrics and made it a habit to communicate well with them.
“In the context of the localization work we’ve done internally, the metrics we use to measure if the localization is successful are directly aligned to our business goals. We use the same KPIs to measure the growth of the company to measure if the localization work has been a success. Because we firmly believe that connecting to a larger pool of people is the ultimate goal of localization and it directly translates to growth,” Ofer explained.
Why is localization important when marketing in Europe?
To market across Europe, localizing content for 50 different markets and at least some of the widely used languages in the area would be essential. According to Tomedes, a great localization strategy could open up the opportunity to gain over 38% of online shoppers in 743 million internet users across the region.
“The European Commission’s data is interesting. It shows that, within Europe, only a small number of individuals are willing to shop in other languages. If 44% of internet users feel that they are missing out on information due to language barriers, why not reach out to them in their own tongue and stand out from the crowd?” said Tirosh, challenging marketers to expand their business across Europe.
He claims that one of the greatest challenges in digital marketing in Europe was the thin line between Europeans’ needs for global products and services and their preference for local and trusted brands. Even if they were willing to browse in global eCommerce sites, they still couldn’t set aside their trust issues in brands they know nothing about, especially if it was in another language.
The best solution for this, according to Tirosh, is an effective localization strategy that would offer a familiar experience for Europeans. This would include content translation, trendy images, payment method, currency, and proper pricing of the products. It would also help if you would be able to provide them a local number and address that they could reach out to whenever they needed some assistance.
Differences between the big eCommerce countries in EU
When targeting the European market, Tirosh noted that starting at the big eCommerce countries would be ideal. Marketing in countries such as UK, Germany, France, and Poland would promise great outcomes as they have the most numbers of eCommerce turnover across the continent. They also had the leading number of SaaS, software, and services.
However, it would be vital to note that there are several differences between these countries. Tirosh offers some insights into the key differences between these countries.
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom has the most number of online shoppers across Europe. They were always willing to take risks in finding new and cheaper products from other countries which poses a great opportunity for global marketers. Although language would not pose that much of a challenge, localizing the contents and payment methods would still be important for them. UK shoppers would also demand an end-to-end customer service that would cover 14 languages.
Germany
Meanwhile, targeting Germany would need an all-around localization effort for language translation, content, prices, and layout. Germans were keen buyers and they would refuse to avail of a product without enough research. Thus, eCommerce websites would need a proper localization to provide clear information about their products and services.
France
French shoppers would always demand that all contents and communication were in French so it would be important to translate and localize your website for them. They mostly would not care about paying for high import fees as long as a business could offer great products and could communicate well in their own language.
Poland
Lastly, if a marketer was looking for a European country that could promise great opportunities, then Poland would be the best choice. Until now, there were only over 15,00 eCommerce companies in Poland which meant a smaller number of competitors. However, because a lot of Polish consumers were not used to shopping globally, you would need extensive efforts in localizing your website.
Takeaway
The world has come a long way in technological developments and there were currently millions of opportunies in the eCommerce industry. However, localization is an important factor that marketers should consider when extending their market reach in European countries. To help them, Tomedes translation services was lending a hand to language and localization services for global businesses.
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