Today, there are numerous businesses which are simply born into the global market as soon as they open their doors. This is in part due to the incredible reach offered by the internet and digital technology. There are around 3.5 billion daily internet users globally and it is growing all the time so there is no better time than now to go offshore with your business.

Challenges for businesses today

The estimates for the value of global trade by 2025 is expected to reach in excess of $85 trillion and with the global flow of goods and services expected to amount to upwards of $85 trillion by 2025. This sounds encouraging for new and old businesses but getting a business to set the pace is not necessarily as simple as it may sound.

The opportunities may be there, but it means a change in the way businesses match different consumer habits and behaviour. One size does not fit all when marketing to different customers around the world. Businesses cannot use the same tactics and they are under pressure to adopt this new and unfamiliar global mindset.  Two key tactics to becoming an important global are:

• Maintaining brand consistency globally;
• Engaging with local customers.

Overall, businesses have used traditional localisation to market their brands but increasingly they are adopting transcreation. Typically, when developing and mobilising a global campaign, the standard approach has been to design only a single model that is appealing universally and has the capability of being scaled so that it can get out to a much wider audience at both the domestic and international levels.

This may help to maintain a consistent brand image when accessing and communicating with customers globally but the fact of the matter customers are not homogeneous. Delivering what could be termed a 1 size fits all strategy does not address the cultural differences and local idiosyncrasies of consumers worldwide. This is where localization becomes a key, but it is not necessarily the solution and many businesses are going one step further and using transcreation to help in the competitive business environment.

How transcreation produces a win-win situation for businesses today

The identity of a brand is a mixture of features and the more concrete they are the simpler it is to communicate and transcreation takes on a more creative approach. It focuses more on the concept of a marketing campaign that takes into account the cultural context.

Localization tends to focus more on communicating a culturally appropriate message, while transcreation is based on creating and adapting a message to the message about the product is conveyed in another language to suit another culture. Its main aim is to maximize its cultural relevance and resonance. Localization offers value while transcreation offers an experience beyond just communicating with customers in their own language.

Transcreation is one step ahead helping to ensure that the customer is reached by conveying a message and that will resonate with them. If a business’s customers are able to relate to its message, it’s far more likely to receive a response. Transcreation helps to enhance a customer’s experience.

Global marketing needs to maintain brand consistency so that it can attract and engage customers. Transcreation does this by outdoing the traditional practices of localisation by adding that creative dimension that is essential to ensuring the business’s message will resonate well with its audience. While the message may not be identical for the different targeted communities its tone and voice will remain consistent with the brand’s identity. For example, a well-known product like Pepsi cannot use the same message it may use to English speakers because the message may become distorted.

Conclusion

There are several key principles for any marketing campaign that need to be emphasised and these are:

• Understanding your customers through understanding their cultural values and needs and communicating in their language in a culturally relevant manner;
• Adapting the businesses message to the market taking into consideration the new global-local market;
• Maximizing the cultural relevance through adapting the marketing campaign and its  message so it will resonate with the local markets within a new overseas country;
• Connecting and engaging by speaking to potential customers in their own language. This means getting personal and taking the business’s brand from a global perspective right down to the local level in a new overseas market through transcreation.
• Transcreation can only be undertaken successfully by translators who specialise in translating from their own language to the targeted language. They need to able to thoroughly research the cultural idiosyncrasies of the speakers of that targeted language.