It’s a great big world out there, and businesses are harnessing technology to attract customers from all over the globe. Even so, the importance of maintaining that local, personal touch cannot be overstated. As you look to optimize the effectiveness of your international marketing campaigns, take some time to investigate the advantages of meeting potential buyers where they are by providing them with the pricing, language, and currency to which they are accustomed.

Why localization is vital.

Widening the scope of your products to include international buyers is terrific, but it will all come to nothing if the people you want to reach have difficulty understanding or relating to what you are trying to sell. More than just offering items for sale, your localization strategy should take into consideration crucial factors such as culture, language translation, image appropriateness, pricing differences, and regulatory compliance.

Why offering local pricing makes sense.

When you specify what your customers will pay in the monetary denominations they understand, you are making a clear statement that you are putting their needs first. This will serve to place you at a significant advantage when compared to some of your competition. Additionally, it leads to greater transparency and clarity of understanding, particularly if you are detailing shipping costs as well.

Once a customer is armed with information that makes sense to them, they can more easily weigh your offer against other options. As a result of providing pricing in local currencies, you will realize the following benefits.

• Invoicing will be easier for the customer.
• You will be given the chance to include bank or exchange fees in the price.
• The currency risk will be mitigated.

As a smart business owner looking to build trust, offering localized pricing lets you arm your customer with all the facts about your products that they need to know in order to make an informed buying decision, and localized pricing will help you to achieve that goal.

The importance of language localization.

As a consumer, you most likely prefer to be able to read content about products or services in order to grasp the many nuances of a piece of merchandise. This process is a huge part of what goes into your ultimate decision to click on the “buy now” button in a merchant’s online payment processing shopping cart. It probably comes as no surprise to learn that your own customers have this exact preference as well.

Did you know that only 5.4% of the world’s population speaks English as their native language? What’s more, only 25.3% of internet users prefer to use English when they shop online. Especially if you are marketing to consumers in places such as India and China, you should seriously consider how you can maximize their shopping experience by featuring their languages of choice.

The local currency advantage.

In addition to letting people know exactly what they will pay for an item, it is equally important that the amount is reflected in a monetary denomination that buyers understand. Here are just a few of the most compelling reasons to accept international payments in your customers’ currency of choice.

• You can avoid surprise exchange rate fees.
• You could get better rates from local suppliers. This might amount to a discount of anywhere from one to five percent.
• Enhanced brand loyalty from customers who are pleased with your consideration of their payment preferences.
• Payments can be received faster. This is because the currency exchange process is eliminated and there are fewer players in the process.

Putting these practices into place for your international clients helps to cement that all-important buyer-seller relationship and bridge the leap of faith that every consumer must make when exchanging their hard-earned dollars, yen, or euros for products or services.

Why should you make localization a priority?

It’s hard work to customize your pricing, language, and currencies to suit your customers’ preferences. Nevertheless, the effort will be worth its weight in gold once you accomplish it. Here are just a few of the reasons.

• More seamless interaction with your brand. When information and pricing about products are readily available in a user’s preferred format, people are much more likely to return to your site and to recommend it to others. Every time someone clicks on your home page, you have another chance to make a sale and begin a relationship with someone who might just end up to be one of your must zealous brand ambassadors.
• Local SEO campaigns can receive a major boost in their effectiveness. Once your images, social media content, dynamic keywords, metadata and dynamic PDFs are available in local formats, the country’s search engines will register your company’s existence, making it more likely that you will receive extra targeted traffic.
• All of your content can be uniform across your brand. When it comes to your foreign sites, you can control every variable to ensure that the information is culturally relevant and attractive to the specific needs and priorities of each subset of your customers.
• Your local sites can function as an important resource for your sales teams and staff in each country. Additionally, you can use them to ensure that you are in compliance with nation-specific laws and regulations.

In a commercial milieu of stiff competition and an ever more customer-focused approach that concentrates on the individualized buying experience, the need for localization has never been more pressing. In fact, you cannot afford to segregate your international business from the very customers who have the potential to be its lifeblood. If you want to succeed in this challenging environment, your first priority should be to ensure that you literally are speaking your buyers’ language.