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Put Video to Work for Your Company

Adam Groff

January 26, 2015

Video is a great way to market your small business not only locally but globally, but only if the content easily translates to its intended audience.

If you want to ensure your point it getting across with each video you create, then video localization is a must.

Here are just a few benefits of video localization as well as tips for creating great content:

Localization Advantage

Whether your small business is globalizing or simply trying to reach a particular niche audience, video localization can help.

From training videos to marketing campaigns to product instructions and tutorials, localization can turn any video into instantly accessible and translatable content.

Because video localization translates audio and text into the language of your target audience, your business can truly promote and distribute on a global level. As you can imagine, reaching a global audience with your small business's marketing and distribution content involves some extra video preparation steps.

Make Content as Universal as Possible

Making sure your content is universal to begin will help you achieve a faster content turnaround.

Video localization makes your business's video content translatable, but making your message relatable is still important.

As the following article shows, in terms of best practice approaches to video localization, content that's too specific makes it difficult for your target audience to understand.

Whether you're sending marketing materials to another country or creating a worldwide video tutorial for your products, stick to the universal basics and make it as relatable as possible.

Leave Room for Translations

If you're localizing your English-speaking video for a European or Asian audience, you need to leave plenty of room for translation lag time.

Whether you choose an audio sync voice over or subtitles, translating your content can add a considerable amount of time to your video.

This means you should have extra footage and longer soundtracks to cover the extra spoken or subtitled languages. Preparing for this ahead of time will help your business avoid backtracking to find/rerecord filler content.

Finalize Content Ahead of Time

When making a marketing or instructional video for English-speaking audiences, the final product is pretty straightforward.

However, localizing isn't always a "what you see is what you get" process. Because of this, it's important to finalize each video project before you actually begin the steps to localization.

Is your content appropriate for the culture at hand? Do you have plenty of content to cover multiple language gaps? Is your content as universal as possible? Once localization takes place and your video is translated, reworking any mistakes is a costly and time-consuming endeavor.

Make Sure the Accompanying Music Matches

A little music makes a big difference in you global marketing and instructional videos, so make sure you choose wisely. Music changes drastically from one culture to the next and choosing a soundtrack that fits your targeted audience is key.

When creating your localized video, it's important to research the culture and its musical influences.

Adding the wrong soundtrack or music with lyrics from a different culture could end up distracting viewers. If you're unsure of the appropriate music to use, choose universal melodies and tunes that have no spoken lyrics.

If you're ready to take your small business's videos to a global level, keep in mind the video localization pointers above.

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