Tough Decision

With many years of marketing under your belt, you’ve essentially become an expert in your field. You understand the importance of data behind decision making and realize that details do really matter for any marketing campaign, big or small. Take for example, forgetting to assign target time slots for paid ads. This can be all the difference between gaining many hot leads and quickly burning through your ad spend for only a few leads. You’ve also faced many difficult marketing decisions with a lot of uncertainty and have had to pull the trigger on a number of them.

One of those many decisions is whether you should be venturing into new markets and if so, which markets? The issues that you’ll face are if the timing is right and if you have the capabilities on your team to even execute. Also, you’ll probably have a hard time justifying the spend without seeing those dollar bills at the end of the tunnel.

Ask Yourself Three Things:

When faced with this dilemma, try asking yourself three questions to see if entering new markets should be considered:

• Are you facing stiff competition? If you’ve been competing with the same players day in and day out, you may need to try something new. They know what you’ve been up to and can quickly pivot to defend against your marketing efforts. It’s almost a zero sum gain as you pivot against their pivot to regain what you’ve lost. And it just keeps going and going. This is an unfortunate outcome when you’ve been focused on one market for quite some time. Maybe consider expanding into a different market! The nice thing about new markets is that the barrier to entry can be high and being a first mover has a huge advantage.
• Are there opportunities to market your product or service in another market? This sounds like a no brainer, but it’s a rather complex question. You’ve got to understand your audience before you can confidently say yes. And even then, you’ve got to execute properly for someone to understand your product or service. Not every market behaves like the one you’re currently in and culture heavily influences market decisions. Knowing the culture and customer habits is a must. However, knowing who to trust for execution is where you need to start.
• Is demand for your product and service growing on a global scale? If so, you’re in the right market, but as you’ve already figured out, certain English phrases, idioms, and assets do not convert in other markets. That’s why you’ll need a native approach, whether that’s transcration or localization, to ensure that your intent is not lost and is understood by your target audience.

The Final Verdict

If you’ve answered yes to the above questions, then localization is up your alley! Localization enables you to penetrate new markets and to align your messaging and product with your end users. Communication is key and by localizing your product in a new market, you’ll get the most out of important KPIs, such as customer acquisition, customer engagement, and ROAs. Use Uplancer Agency’s transcreation to get the most out of your buck as we take your intent, tone, and messaging to create the best approach for any market.