Speaker 1: This is OnBase, your one-stop shop for solving your most pressing B2B go-to-market challenges. Each week, host Chris Moody and Paul Gibson talk to sales and marketing leaders to get you in-depth insights and creative strategies to set your revenue teams up for success.

Speaker 2: Hey everyone, welcome back to OnBase. I'm your host, Chris Moody, and today I'm very excited to talk to Manuela Furtado on Going Global, Marketing Across Borders, Languages, and Cultures. Manuela has 25 years of experience in the localization industry, driving innovative processes and technologies. With a strong background in languages and communication, she expertly guides clients through best practices, whether they're new to localization or looking to expand their global reach to maximize impact. As a leader in sales and account management, she excels in building meaningful relationships across the globalization ecosystem and adeptly matches client goals with the most targeted services, technologies, and expertise, ensuring optimal results, which that's something we all care about. So Manuela, excited to have you on the show. Thanks for joining.

Speaker 3: Thank you for having me. I'm very excited to be here as well and share a little bit of my experience and knowledge, you know, anything that can be, you know, helpful as people navigate this global new scene, right?

Speaker 2: Yes. And I think it's such a timely topic. I mean, we all talk about growing globally and scale and expanding into new markets. It comes up in every conversation you and I both have probably. And, you know, one of the things I'm curious as a starting point is what do you think about some of the key cultural considerations that we should all keep in mind when we think about scaling marketing globally?

Speaker 3: Absolutely. And I think I'll start with some important data because I think it's always important to understand why we're doing what we're doing. And you know, the globalization expansion has been going on and it reached its peak. The digital revolution has made the reach even wider. Everybody has a smartphone. Everybody is doing things online. It's no longer the industry professional. So reaching everybody has become a little bit different and has a different meaning. Pulling some data, I think at the base of this is 60% of consumers prefer to buy their product in their native language. From another source, 40% of online shoppers worldwide will not buy a product unless it's in their native language. So this is a reality to start with. On top of that, and I will use a quote that we have on our website from Nelson Mandela, that says, if you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart. And then brings us to the next step that not only you want to reach and therefore you translate or do whatever you think you have to do, but in order to really make this experience meaningful, it has to resonate for the people in the country that you're trying to reach. So what are we trying to do? From a technical point of view, you're going to have legal requirements. And that could be starting even with your domain name. There might be regulation. There might be linguistic odd things. Some name had to be adapted because it didn't sound right. So from that to general legal regulations, you're in Quebec, you're supposed to have both the products listed in both languages, these type of things to internationalize your product. You know, there's text expansions, languages or restriction if you're going to Asian markets. So you're designing things so that you're allowed for this space. But then the most interesting part is the cultural aspect. And what does that mean? It doesn't mean translating in words. It means the references that you have need to be meaningful. They need to keep into consideration the cultural sensitivities from the design. Colors have different references from the language you're using. Marketing in the United States is very flowery, is very rich. Everything is the best. Everything is the greatest. Well, this doesn't always resonate in the same way. So there's market research, competitor market analysis, interview service. You're trying to define what that market is in the country that you're going to. The same thing you're doing for your source one. You're looking at who is the persona that you're trying to reach. What are the buying styles? And then what are the cultural references? Calendar of events, holidays, humor, sense of humor. What are the references things? What is the climate? What is anything that you do this? So these are the important key aspects that you're going to take into consideration, as well as content mapping. Not every content has the same value. So there's technical content that you can do a very beautiful rendition. It's informative. You know, the cultural aspect might not be as deep. There is marketing campaign. There are blogs. There's all of this. This is impactful content. You want to make sure that your message is actually creating a reaction. For that to be true, it has to be true. It has to be genuine. So designing that, maybe transcreating the content, or writing a campaign completely differently, that's what we're looking at. So these are kind of the points that you want to think about, you know? And I think they resonate. You know, once you say them, they're very logical, right?

Speaker 2: Totally, totally. And, you know, one thing, when you and I talked before, we talked about consistent brand messages and a consistent experience. How could or how should companies balance localization with making sure that they do have a consistent voice and message in every market they go and target?

Speaker 3: Absolutely. And I think it comes back to consistency. You don't have to trade off your brand in order to be locally relevant. So there is the branding, and it's a kind of a collaboration between your core headquarter marketing and your field. In a way, it's a similar report. What you're thinking is you be consistent with what you're doing. So, for example, key search, SEO optimization, you do this multilingually. You don't just do it in your basic source language. And then you'll be consistent throughout the message. So once you have determined that this terminology works and it's used, then you make sure it's done across your website, across your product, across everything. What you localize is everything that goes around that. You know, you localize the word to make sure that it's meaningful. But this is how you manage. So the important thing, and I'll give you an example. Let's say you're doing a campaign. You put the same effort you put in English. So at this point, what do you share? You share the goal, the ultimate purpose of why you're doing the campaign. And so then we're looking at, is this relevant? What is the message? That's what you keep consistent and you adapt it so that it refers and it makes sense. You know, if you are in a completely different hemisphere, you know, if the, you know, the cultural habits are very different. This is how you manage both. Because at the end of the day, you want to represent your brand exactly in terms of its essence. And you want that to resonate so that it's relatable to what the country's actually, the local people are actually doing. Does it make sense?

Speaker 2: Yes, that makes perfect sense. I think that's great feedback and a great way to think about it. I'm curious, you talked about some of the tapping into the culture and not just a translation, which many folks are used to just a translation. But do you have any favorite examples that come to mind of going beyond localization into really tapping into the Nelson Mandela quote that you mentioned?

Speaker 3: Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. We have helped a person, I said, I'm speaking from my point of view. You can look at this in many directions. So in our role, we're really supporting clients with their content, with the design, with this aspect. And it's very relevant. I'll have a couple of examples that can help you with that. We had helped a high street, the British retail company going global in this respect. They had already created a very beautiful website with all their catalogs. The company was selling clothes, men, women, kids and some accessories and had created a beautiful online store, had stores all around the world. What they did, they created a basic homepage message, was a weekly message of anything that was on sales, the new things. And the email campaign that went with that. Beautiful. Perfect. But it was the same across for everyone. They translated the pages, but the impact wasn't there. And they did not do that out of not knowing. But just because they didn't have the resources, the expertise. And here again is just a hint. It depends on how big your company is. What resources do you have? You might have an entire globalization team. You might have a lot of in-country resources. So you pair yourself, you know, with the agencies, localization agencies, marketing, depending on what you can do. But bottom line, what we ended up doing for the client is putting together a market research team, a specialist team in country, copywriters, designers, editors to do that research of what needs to be done in each of them. And so the result is pages that are customized every week. It's not the same. What is the message? What is the campaign? Now, let's take a look at what can and cannot work in these countries. And we modify that page. For example, one target country was the United Emirates, Arabic, you know, and two different ethnic groups, the expatriates and the local community, local community, Arab speaking of different culture. So different calendar, a calendar of events that rotates around the religious calendar. So we took this beautiful collection of clothing and picked and choose what were culturally adapted and sensitive for this particular campaign in respect of the local hemisphere. That is very different than when we started in respect of their around. So the promotions don't go out the same day. Maybe hit a different time. These are the changes that you do. Then we did and multilingual SEO keyword research, got the new terminologies and then reinserted into these pages across the block. So even the search, even the experience of navigating that page became relevant. So this is an example of how you go about it in order to make that a significant experience. It doesn't work everywhere. And there you start seeing the feedback, which you measure at that point. The same thing is you measure impact here. Clicks, the response is common, and you use that to feed it back and continue to massage your content. So it's not an impossible story. You just need to know why you're doing it and who are you going to use? You know, you need experts in your field, in the country.

Speaker 2: I love that example. I think that's a perfect way to describe it, too. When we think about sales and marketing alignment, which comes up a lot, what guidance do you have to make sure that companies are effectively aligning around the different cultural and linguistic needs of their target audiences?

Speaker 3: Absolutely. And each company has a different global strategies, you know, and so you depend on that. You know, so some are very attuned and depending on the sales. So I think that aligning the central market with the in-country market, with the sales is really important. This is a channel that we use ourselves. Even us who are the experts in this field do work at the end of the day with in-country representatives from our clients, because aside from the industry, whether it is fashion, whether it is software, whether it is AV, media, then there is the specific lingo of each company, of each product. So working together as a team there, that's where you get the most results. And I'll bring you another example, because, for example, we have helped one client with their sales team in one particular Spanish territory where it was a partnership program. So they were training the trainers, you know, for their sales event. So and they were used to doing that in English and they didn't understand a lot of the content. So we worked with actually their sales team there to create a program that was meaningful. So I think that when it comes to sales, they are the people that are in contact with the client so they can bring back the local, the feel there. And then you can realign what is global and can stay global. What needs to be localized? And then again, I mentioned this earlier. It also depends on the commercial the product is. Who is the audience? Is this a professional audience? Do they understand some of the English lingo? Sometimes you keep it not. And one last important thing is that this is your globalization process. Is a key from end to end. It's part of your marketing strategies. It's part of your sales strategy. If you want to go global.

Speaker 2: Perfect. I think that's great advice. And, you know, for those who are just starting and thinking about global expansion, what would be your encouragement and kind of, hey, start here first?

Speaker 3: Yes. The most important thing that I would say overall is do not make this an afterthought. So the moment you're thinking that you might or that you want to go global, include that into your process, because that will save you a lot of time down the line. That the same concept you apply to anything you do for your English, you will apply everywhere else. So that's an initial investment. And then do the market research, pilot things, do A, B testing, work with agencies to figure out, like I said, that your market strategy or global strategy might come from many different points and for many different reasons. But if you're evaluating a market, you can do tests there. You can put out and localize what pages are more critical. What is more important? What is my competition doing? So start at the same thought process that you put in just marketing your product in English. That's the same thing. At the end of the day, there is a user there somewhere that needs to like what you're doing and needs to want to buy it, you know. So that has to come back. So I will say, you know, don't just throw out things and test everything. You know, you can do more language if it's more important with less content, but try to be thoughtful and try to see what comes back from it. And then again, going global is a hand in hand process. Bring it at the source. Bring the localization team in to understand, is this product working with the countries you want to go to? So have these conversations even before you're going. And that's half of the job.

Speaker 2: It's great feedback. Make sure we start first, make it a priority. All the things, never an afterthought. I love that we close out the show. Our time's flying by. We close out the show with a couple of consistent questions. The first, we call it good reads. But is there a book, blog, newsletter, website or video that you'd recommend to our listeners?

Speaker 3: Well, of course, I will say check out our own website as well. You know, AlphaZRC.com. You can sign up to the newsletters. I would say we have case studies there. So if you're looking at something you can want a reference to. Also, our founder, Isabel Weiss, has blogs there on all of these topics. So by all means. Also, I would recommend one book and a website of a fellow localizer. Her name is Natalie Kelly. And the book is called Take Your Company Global. And she was in marketing as well. And it's a beautiful read and it's very concrete, very useful. She has a blog called Born to be Global. And I think it's a beautiful place to to start. There's also four agencies you can want to follow. You know, Nimzy Insights. It's a consulting company. You can look it up on LinkedIn. Slator.com also publishes information regularly, multilingual and also events. There's Lockworld that happens three times or four times a year in the United States. Will come up in the fall here. That's a good event. If you're looking to localize, you know, find other companies, you know, Gala and also a research company is called CSA Research. That's what I was grabbing those, you know, information. These are some good places to start with. Once you're in there, then you'll find more.

Speaker 2: Perfect. Love that. And then are there any inspirational folks in the B2B space that you'd recommend we bring to the show?

Speaker 3: Well, these two people that I mentioned here in this particular field, Natalie Kelly and Renato Benignato, sorry, would be two people. And then I was also thinking there was an event we're doing here in the city. It's called Global Sake and Tarja Baruka is a founder of it. And there's a lot of new companies that are joining it. So she might be an interesting person. She has walked through this product as well.

Speaker 2: Awesome. Outstanding. And then the last and most important question, how can everyone get in touch with you after the podcast?

Speaker 3: Oh, very easy via email or via LinkedIn. So Manuela Furtado on LinkedIn, you can find me easily. And my work email is MFurtado at AlphaCRC.com. Very easy. I'm very responsive, too. It's my job to be responsive.

Speaker 2: That's great. Well, thank you so much for joining. I think this is a great episode to help folks think about scaling globally and all the considerations there. So we're really appreciative of your time.

Speaker 3: Thank you very much. It's been my pleasure. And so I hope that any of these resonates and is actually helpful, at least food for thought, you know, as you go global. It's a beautiful thing to do, by the way.

Speaker 1: Perfect. Well, thank you so much.

Speaker 3: My pleasure.

Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us for On Base. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to share, rate, review and subscribe on Spotify, Apple, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. The show is brought to you by Demandbase, the only account based experience platform built for sales and marketing alignment.