You’ve done the research and know which markets are right for your brand. You’ve localized and optimized the content you think is most relevant. And you’ve gotten in front of your international audience on the channels and platforms most relevant to them. Now it’s time to evaluate what worked and what didn’t – and refine your strategy to maximize marketing ROI in localization.

Traditional localization providers often talk about ROI in terms of content reuse, quality, and other savings-based activities. But, since marketing is an investment in the growth of your business, measuring marketing ROI in localization is really about in-market performance against key business indicators: engagement, conversions, and sales. Understanding the effectiveness of each marketing channel can give marketers the insight they need to gain even more traction in your target locales.

These local market insights can help you expand your localization strategy in iterative steps that meet your business goals without breaking your budget. Here’s what to keep in mind.

LOOK AT AUDIENCE TRENDS

A regular, cross-tactic reporting cadence for each of your markets is key to understanding what’s resonating with your international audiences. Which pages, ads, and content do they engage with the most? Did you see significant engagement, but a consistent point where they dropped off before converting?

Examining data about your audience will help you discover how they relate to your brand. For example, some markets may prefer people-focused content while others value data and stats. A/B testing will help you determine what content resonates. And then you can continue building meaningful, relevant content that converts.

LEVERAGE INSIGHTS ACROSS TACTICS TO ACHIEVE MARKETING ROI IN LOCALIZATION

It’s important to examine trends across all marketing tactics. Many companies manage SEO, PPC, and social strategies separately. But they often fail to see the connection points to determine, as a whole, how they’re performing against established marketing goals. By leveraging insights across platforms and avoiding tactical silos, you’ll see quicker results and more opportunities for international growth.

For example, it takes time to see results in organic search efforts. However, paid search pays off relatively quickly because the data produces immediate, measurable insights. If companies plan their PPC and SEO strategy together, performance will improve for both tactics at a faster rate.

Look at your key performance takeaways from each of your channels and compare them. Do you see similar insights across channels? Where do they differ? Strong engagement indicators in one channel can uncover opportunities for quick wins in another.

EXPAND YOUR LOCALIZATION EFFORTS

Once you have solid data to determine what’s working and what’s not, you can expand your marketing localization activities and budget in the markets that show the most promise. This could mean allocating more resources to channels that are performing best, or expanding localized content for local audiences. You may want to increase translation efforts, refine UX and design, or create original, in-language content to leverage unique in-market trends.

At this point, you may want to invest in a more robust, ongoing SEO strategy. This could include a localization-friendly site structure, a blog strategy informed by in-market search trends, or a broadened social presence for your brand via locally relevant, market-specific platforms.

Companies that take a phased, iterative approach to their marketing localization strategy can see 4x increase in conversion rates without the extensive upfront time and budget overhead in localizing everything. Allowing market insights to inform localization needs, and making the case for expansion of market-specific efforts, is the smart way to maximize budget.

The marketing localization roadmap is more of a circle than a straight line. Understanding your in-market audiences will grow with every cycle. Taking this iterative approach will help you continually refine and expand your efforts – at lower cost and lower risk – to drive business results in your key markets.

FINAL THOUGHT

This final stage of the marketing localization roadmap is all about having solid goals, measurement, and reporting in place to help you make the case for expanding marketing activities and localized content. Through regular review and iteration, you can evolve your strategy based on in-market performance data. And you can refine your locale-specific strategy while also determining which markets make the most sense for expansion.

EXPLORE THE OTHER STEPS IN OUR ROADMAP TO SUCCESS

Step 1: Know Your Markets

Step 2: Localize + Optimize

Step 3: Promote Your Content