How to create an effective content localization strategy

Content localization is the most effective way to connect with multilingual audiences. Former German Chancellor Willy Brandt explained it well: “If I’m selling to you, I speak your language. If I’m buying, dann müssen Sie Deutsch sprechen (you speak German).” And that statement still holds true today. In fact, more than 76% of online buyers prefer getting information in their native languages, according to CSA Research.

However, translation is only the beginning—and relying on Google Translate isn’t enough. Automated tools like Google Translate may help with basic language conversion but often miss the nuances that make a message truly compelling. To connect with customers on a deeper level, you need a content localization strategy that adapts your brand’s voice, tone, and messaging to align with your target audience’s cultural and linguistic expectations.

First, what is content localization?

Content localization means transforming content to feel like it was created specifically for people in a particular region. Translation is the part of the process that renders the text into the target language, but localization goes beyond translation and alters the content to match the linguistic and cultural nuances of the target locale. Localization considers tone, style, images, layout, and user experience features.

So, what is a content localization strategy?

A content localization strategy is a detailed plan that outlines your approach to adapting content for a new market. It includes defining workflows, setting goals, assigning roles, and establishing timelines. A well-crafted strategy covers all the elements of the localization process, from translation and cultural adaptation to SEO optimization and quality assurance.

Why do you need a content localization strategy?

Localization of content and advertising can be costly. To maximize your return on investment (ROI), you need a content localization strategy to guide you through the process. While you may be tempted to rely on an ad hoc initiative, that can result in expensive mistakes and jeopardize future localization initiatives.

Here are the four top benefits of thoughtfully localizing your online marketing content.

Increase sales

Localized content makes buying easy and familiar, which leads to happier customers and better sales. Thanks to your tailored messaging, product descriptions, and promotions, customers feel your brand “gets” them. As a consequence, they’re much more likely to purchase your product and even spend more on it.

Evidence from CSA Research confirms it: Two-thirds (66%) of corporate buyers and one-third (34%) of consumers are willing to pay more for products tailored to their language and market.

Based on a survey of 8,709 global consumers in 29 countries in Europe, Asia, North America, and South America, CSA Research found that 76% of online shoppers prefer to buy products with information in their native language. In addition, 40% will never buy from websites in other languages.

Drive higher traffic and conversions

English speakers represent only 25.9 percent of all internet users. Localizing your website content to other languages will significantly expand your global reach. The additional traffic can help you connect with more customers, drive more sales, and increase revenue in new markets.

Build consumer trust

While 67% of multilingual users may tolerate mixed-language content on your website, this tolerance doesn’t equate to engagement—or sales. In fact, 40% of these users are unlikely to purchase unless information is available in a language they understand.

Providing localized content signals that your product or service is designed with their unique preferences in mind. This approach enhances brand credibility, encourages long-term customer loyalty, and strengthens relationships through culturally relevant messaging.

Enhance global search performance

Not everyone uses the same search terms in every language, so word-to-word translations of keywords will likely miss the mark. The words people use to search often reflect cultural preferences, local expressions, and even unique blends of languages.

For example, Americans typically search for “vacation destinations,” while Brits prefer “holiday destinations.” Although both terms describe the same concept, using the wrong one could limit your visibility in search results.

Similarly, in Italy, travelers don’t commonly search for “voli a basso costo,” the literal Italian translation of “low-cost flights.” Instead, they use the phrase “voli low cost,” blending Italian and English terms. This mix might seem unconventional, but it reflects real search behavior that only localized keyword research can uncover.

When you optimize your localized content for international SEO, you can rank for those market-specific search terms and boost your brand’s visibility where it matters most. This way, you stay relevant and easy to find—no matter where your potential customers live.

Let’s move from here to how to get it done.

Determine your goals

As with any strategy, you should always start by setting goals. This will help you outline the next steps and gain the support of stakeholders. We recommend using company and/or industry data to set realistic expectations.

These goals will guide your next steps and help you gain the support of key stakeholders. Use relevant company and industry data as a benchmark to define successful localization and set realistic targets.

A few examples:

• Expand market reach: Boost market penetration by 10%
• Increase revenue: Generate $XXX in revenue within the first 12 months
• Boost engagement: Raise localized content engagement by X%
• Drive traffic: Grow web traffic in specific markets by X%

When you know what you need to achieve, you can choose the best KPIs to measure the success of your content localization strategy. Consider tracking:

• Customer acquisition costs – How much it costs to acquire new customers in every target market
• Localization ROI: Total localization costs compared to revenue generated
• Content quality: Ratings and feedback from users on localized content
• Lead generation: Number of leads generated through localized campaigns

Once you’ve outlined your goals, determine which technology solutions will help you reach them. This will also help you develop a scalable localization growth strategy for additional markets.

Defining your content localization strategy

Now that you know more about the benefits of content localization, let’s examine ten tactics for refining your strategy and determining how to localize your content.

1. Determine your highest priority target markets and languages

The first step of any content localization strategy is deciding which countries to target first. Start in markets with the highest demand for your product or service, as this will increase your chances of success and help you demonstrate the importance of localization for future market expansion.

How do you determine which markets should be your highest priority for content localization? Here are a few tips to help you decide:

• Evaluate current customer data to see where your most loyal and profitable customers come from. If certain countries consistently generate high-value sales, they could be prime candidates for more intentional and strategic localization efforts.
• Analyze your web analytics to see where traffic is coming from. A significant portion of traffic from a particular country is usually a strong signal that there’s demand for your product or service. The one thing to pay attention to is engagement. The number of visitors tells you just one part of the story. Check engagement metrics like time on site, bounce rate, and conversion rates by region to see where your offering resonates most.
• Research local search engines—and don’t overlook AI tools like ChatGPT. While Google dominates in many parts of the world, some countries rely heavily on local search engines that can provide valuable insights into customer behavior. For example, Yandex is the preferred search engine in Russia, Baidu leads in China, and Naver is popular in South Korea. Meanwhile, AI-driven tools like ChatGPT are gaining traction as search alternatives, especially in countries like the US, India, and Brazil.
• Research market reports and industry insights to identify emerging markets or regions where competitors are gaining traction. A competitor investing heavily in a particular market could indicate untapped potential worth exploring.

2. Conduct market research

Market research is the process of gathering and analyzing data about your target audience to understand their preferences, behaviors, and expectations. It is crucial to know how to adapt your messaging and content to align with your audience and generate monetizable engagement.

• Focus groups and customer interviews can help you complete your market analysis with deeper, qualitative insights.
• You can also run surveys and polls through social media, email campaigns, or survey tools to gather direct customer feedback.
• Tracking search engine and social media behavior can also uncover valuable trends about how people engage with brands in different markets. For example, localizing your app should be a top priority if you’re launching a product in Asia, where mobile apps are widely used.
• There are broadly published guides, such as those by country created by Imminent Research.

You can even use AI. When guided by a human who can effectively prompt, AI can gather insights to support culturally relevant communication and compelling hyper-local experiences.

3. Define quality tiers

Not all content requires the same level of quality in localization. Some content, like reviews, user-generated content, and some product support content, does not need to be perfect: a gist translation will suffice. Other types, like ad copy, require significant adaptation to be persuasive. Also, terms and conditions and compliance guidelines demand the highest accuracy and precision due to their legal and financial implications.

Defining quality tiers means categorizing your content based on its intended use, level of visibility, and importance and matching each category with the most suitable translation process—machine translation (MT), human translation, or transcreation. For example, product descriptions on ecommerce websites might need high-quality translations to ensure clarity. Still, they may not require the same creative adaptation as a global ad campaign. In contrast, marketing slogans and brand stories are best adapted through transcreation to capture emotional appeal and cultural relevance.

4. Evaluate your content tech stack for ease of localization

Before you can start localizing content, you need to make sure your content tech stack is localization-ready. Ensure that your website, app, and/or software has the architecture to render content in any language and operate in different markets.

For example, platforms like WordPress or Webflow offer multilingual support through built-in features or plugins. Translation Management Systems (TMS) like Smartling or Memsource can automate and streamline translation workflows, as they integrate directly with your CMS for efficient updates.

5. Plan for localizability

Internationalization (i18n) is the process of building a website, app, or software with localizability in mind. It involves designing and coding your product to quickly adapt to different languages, regions, and cultural standards without requiring significant engineering changes later.

Internationalization occurs during the development stage. It includes using Unicode for text encoding, enabling right-to-left (RTL) language support, and creating flexible design layouts to accommodate text expansion. Developers also separate translatable content from the source code to streamline future localization efforts.

You can also review your content to make sure it will be easy to localize: is the content clearly written? Any efforts to clean up the source will save time and money down the line.

6. Identify which content is the highest priority for localization

Not all content is created equal. Some content is essential to the user experience, while others are “nice to have.” Start by identifying which types of content require localization, such as your website, along with top-performing content that gets the most engagement. Now you have identified your highest priority content, and you’ll want to localize it first.

High-priority content typically includes:

• Brand and marketing content: website, email, and social media campaigns and videos
• Product documentation: help sections, FAQs, user manuals, and product tutorials
• Legal content: Terms of Service (ToS) and privacy policies
• eCommerce-specific content: product descriptions, price sheets, and shipping information

This doesn’t mean you’ll never localize other types of content. Localization is often an ongoing process; you can always localize lower-priority content in the future.

7. Leverage international SEO insights for marketing content localization

You’ll miss massive search opportunities if you just translate your home market keywords for your new markets. Instead, run local keyword analysis to find the search terms and queries your target audience types into search engines. Local keywords help your website, blog, videos, and other marketing materials rank higher, making it easier for potential customers to find you.

Treat country-specific keywords as essential terminology to make your translation workflow process smoother. Create a centralized keyword glossary that includes popular search terms for each market you’re targeting. This glossary will keep your messaging consistent across languages and speed up the localization process. The result? Optimized, search-friendly content tailored to every market you enter.

Also, keep in mind that some markets favor regional search engines over Google, which means you may need to optimize for those algorithms as well.

8. Set a budget

To figure out how much localization is going to cost you, figure out things like:

• How many languages do you need to cover?
• What types of content will you be localizing?
• What is the word count per content piece?
• What services will be needed: translation, transcreation, desktop publishing, language quality assurance, and engineering of a website build?
• How often does content need to be updated?

Consider the complexity of the work, too—creative services like transcreation or legal translation can cost more because they require extra cultural insight and precision.

While localization might seem like a significant upfront investment, a well-thought-out budget helps you allocate resources wisely and avoid unexpected costs.

9. Measure the success of your content localization initiatives against your goals

Content localization is a long-term investment, so you need to track the success of your initiatives as you start implementing the content localization strategy. Measure the following:

• User engagement: website traffic, search engine rankings and click-through-rates (CTRs)
• Financial impact: new sales, revenue, and conversions
• Return on investment (ROI)

Such metrics will offer insights into improving your content localization strategy and help you demonstrate the project’s value in financial terms.

10. Choose a trusted localization agency to partner with

All the in-house planning listed above is essential for the success of your go-to-market strategy, but to execute and scale, you need the right localization partner. Choose a team that understands your vision and has the expertise and resources to bring it to life.

As you evaluate potential partners, consider the following:

• Do they specialize in your industry and target market?
• Do they have in-country linguists who can localize your content?
• Do they have samples of similar work in your target languages?
• Do they offer additional services, such as continuous localization?
• What do past and existing customers say about them?

Remember that localization is a collaborative process that requires working closely with a localization team. Even if an agency checks all the right boxes, you should still carefully vet them to ensure they’re the right fit.

Next steps for your content localization strategy

As you can see, a well-developed content localization strategy will help you succeed in new markets. But you don’t have to do it alone. Acclaro offers the localization and global marketing services you need to take your brand anywhere.

Get started today to learn more about how we can customize a localization program for your unique brand.