Localizing quickly and cost-effectively to test market viability
Like many of you, I have had more video conferences this year than ever before. Those of us who work in this industry were undoubtedly used to having a lot of virtual meetings with offices/providers in different cities or with translators working from all over the world. But lately, I've been getting more invitations than I used to talk to people who want to get into the localization industry in one way or another. They contacted me to see if we could chat for a few minutes about Localization. I enjoy these conversations. Talking to outsiders and seeing our Localization industry from their perspective is quite an exciting experience.
That happened to me the other day with a friend of a friend who introduced me via LinkedIn. This friend of my friend doesn't know much about the Localization industry, but he considered that Localization is essential to opening up to global markets (Yay! phew, when I heard that one, I felt so good!)
We were chatting for more than half an hour, and I thought that the question he asked me was pretty interesting, and I thought it would be worth developing it here in a post and giving it visibility in case there is any other entrepreneur in the same situation.
The question was …
How can I test the potential of my product in a market without initially spending a lot of money on Localization?
Good question. A startup, an entrepreneur, when he is opening his way in a market, has a considerable amount of expenses. It is not easy to know right away if the product is going to be successful in Greece (this is the market he was interested in exploring) or if, on the contrary, it is better to focus on other markets.
Greece is one of the countries that fall in the medium-high English level range according to the English Proficiency test ranking; however, as in most countries, if there is a localized version of quality, the Greek consumer prefers to use the localized version.
So how can we launch a Greek version of a product to explore if there is a market there?
Welcome to Minimum Viable Localization (MVL), the way to test if the Greek market can work for my friend's friend's product idea without initially spending a lot of money.
Shaping a startup launching strategy for global markets
The MVL idea is an adaption I have made of Eric Ries' ideas.
In his book The Lean Startup, Eric shares with us different ideas and strategies on how to have certain indicators that allow us to evaluate the viability of a product MVP (Minimum Viable Product) before embarking on having it 100% complete.
This MVP strategy allows companies to integrate user feedback as they use the product or service and make incremental improvements.
“A minimum viable product (MVP) helps entrepreneurs start the process of learning as quickly as possible. It is not necessarily the smallest product imaginable, though; it is simply the fastest way to get through the Build-Measure-Learn feedback loop with the minimum amount of effort.”
Let's take a closer look at what the MVP is before jumping into how we do these from a Localization perspective.
An MVP is a product that has just enough features to add business value.
The High-Level MVP provides users with an overview of the product, giving access to everything they would want to do without perfecting each feature's experience. It provides a comprehensive product experience, but it's important to acknowledge that its features are not as good as they should be.
The key to creating an MVP is deciding what features to put in.
And what are the keys to an MVL?
In the Localization industry, following the Lean Startup analogy to create an MVL and test markets, the key is to decide what content to localize and how to localize it.
Let's start with content selection.
What's Your Minimum Viable Content to Localize?
To determine your MVL content, the first thing to do is list all your content. If you don't know where to start with the categorization, the list below may help you to get some inspiration.
Product content
Marketing content (campaigns)
Keywords
SEO
Legal
Product Brand name
Reference material
Customer support
Graphics
Audio
Blog posts
Social Media
Video tutorials
Local payments
Website
Newsletters
As you can see, the list of different content to localize is quite extensive, but you don't need to localize everything; you simply need to localize the content that will help you evaluate the viability of your product in the market you want to explore.
The following questions can help you define your strategy, which will give you more clarity about the MVL you should carry out.
- What are my objectives for the market I am testing?
- What part of the product do I need to localize to ensure that my potential users have a complete enough user experience to help them decide whether or not to pay for the service?
- What kind of content do I need to localize to attract traffic and create hype towards my product?
- What legal material do I need to localize to ensure I don't violate any legal regulations?
Once we have selected the content we want to localize vs. the content that will be English (or not shown at all), it is time to analyze how we will localize it.
Localizing quickly and cost-effectively to test market viability
If we talk about speed and cost-effectiveness, nothing can compete with the MT+Crowdsourcing combination.
You can start with MT in one of the most popular engines, DeepL, and then use crowdsourcing communities for postedit.
This approach is undoubtedly cheap and fast, but it is not without risk.
Even though MT works very well, it is risky to trust the MVL results in an MT-based solution.
I only recommend this approach if the level of economic resources to invest in the MVL is very low; if not, if you have some budget for your MVL, it seems to be a much better solution to translate with "humans" the most visible content (for example the UI and marketing material) and the rest of the material to do it via MT with "human" post-edit.
As I see it, this strategy is the most effective if we put cost and quality in the balance.
Summary
Going global, whether as a startup or an established company, is tough. It is difficult to break into markets where you are not already present. You can evaluate the viability of your product in many ways, and the MVL concept replicated from Eric Ries' MVP model can be a very powerful strategy to determine market fit without the initial investment in Localization being too costly.
Friend of my friend, I wish you the best in your market exploration!
@yolocalizo
Localization is all about adapting content from one culture to another, from one market to the next. The tricky part is the thin line separating appropriation and appreciation. The challenge is to adapt content respectfully and give proper credit. It's easy to blur the line between appreciation and appropriation. My post this week reflects on that.