Localization is something commonly talked about when a company seeks to adapt to a new target market. Some companies have the mistaken impression that localization is just translation. But that is inaccurate. Localization is a comprehensive process requiring your company to adapt all marketing material to suit and respect local culture as well as taste. In this article, we’ll take a look at some of the best poker software marketing aspects that need to be focused on when your company localizes its poker marketing.
Table of Contents
- The Importance of Localization
1.1 Matching local preferences
1.2 Leveraging local events
1.3 Avoiding offense - Material to Focus On
- Advertising Copy
- Social Media
- Graphics & Layout
5.1 Layout
5.2 Color Schemes - Page Info
6.1Landing pages
6.2 Info Tables - Text and Context
7.1 Jargon
7.2 SEO - Conclusion
The Importance of Localization
First, let’s take a quick look at some of the reasons why localizing your games and marketing well is so vital.
Matching local preferences: The #1 reason to do so is, of course, making sure your games suit the tastes of the local target market, wherever your company chooses to be. The more a poker game resonates with local audiences, the more likely they are to play and spend money at your online casino. Your company wants to offer its clients only the best poker software games, after all.
Leveraging local events: It’s also important for your company and your games provider (if any) to be aware of significant cultural and religious events, in order to leverage this in your marketing. For example, perhaps a country is celebrating its independence day soon. Your online casino could take advantage of this to offer special promotions on that day. Or maybe a big religious festival is coming, which means your company can perform goodwill gestures like making posters to wish them a happy festival season.
Avoiding offense: At the same time, leveraging local culture also runs the risk of accidentally causing offense, if your company doesn’t do proper research. It’s important to be aware of taboos and prohibitions when localizing your games and marketing, or your company could harm its image in that market.
Material to Focus On
So having explored all that, what marketing material should your company and provider focus on when localizing its games?
Advertising Copy
Ad copy is a major part of any marketing push, and it can have a large reach as well as impact on the local market.
In ad copy, there are many nuanced aspects, from visual assets used, to positioning, to specific words that resonate with local culture. All these can be powerful tools in your company’s hands.
Social Media
Social media is a very, very powerful tool that can easily boost conversion rates and create customer loyalty, provided it is used well. With social media, your company may not even need local teams to reach new markets!
Different social media platforms are popular in different areas. For example, Reddit is very popular in America and many other English-speaking countries. On the other hand, China uses WeChat, and Japan loves X (Twitter). Localizing social media marketing well can also help your company build a robust local community of poker players, which further improves player reach and retention. Online poker software providers you partner with can assist in this aspect.
Graphics & Layout
When localizing your company’s poker marketing material, be sure to pay special attention to the graphics and layout.
Layout: A website or poster’s design can significantly help or hinder user experience. If a poster is hard to read by local cultural standards, you may lose potential customers. For example, some languages like Japanese are written in columns going from top to bottom, and these columns are read from right to left. A poker poster in the Japanese market that is written left-to-right will only cause confusion. The right online poker software providers will be able to assist your company with this.
Localizing the layout of visual elements involves taking a look at elements like how long your content is, how it’s oriented, and also color palettes associated with your brand.
Color Schemes: Colors are very significant across many cultures, and can symbolize many different things depending on the culture.
Take the color red, for example. Chinese culture sees it as the color of fortune, which is why so many casinos in those markets use a lot of red in their marketing. On the other hand, Nigerians see red as bad luck. Conduct thorough research on the market your company is targeting, and localize the color schemes of your product marketing appropriately to avoid negative connotations.
Page Info
On top of graphics, it’s also vital to focus on properly localizing any websites your company has that are purpose-built to target the new market.
Landing pages: Landing pages are the homepages of websites. These are the first things your customer will see. From the landing pages, customers can navigate to your online poker games and other services, like signups, depositing and withdrawing cash, and game tutorials. This means landing pages are the pillars that hold your localized websites up.
If the pages are unintuitive and have a bad layout, players may just click away out of frustration.
Info Tables: Make sure info tables that contain information like poker game payouts and odds are appropriately localized to suit the market.
Text and Context
Jargon: When localizing, pay attention to text content, and don’t just blindly translate it. Try to match local language conventions and tone, while also maintaining your company’s brand voice.
It’s also vital to note that local markets may have unique poker jargon, idioms, and slang, and that general English terms like ‘ante’ and ‘bankroll’ may or may not translate well.
SEO: And of course, multilingual SEO is also vital to improve your site’s ranking and online visibility.
Make sure to properly localize keywords, meta tags, and HTML to match the target market. This not only helps personalize content to suit your audience, but also enables search engines to rank your localized content better.
Conclusion
All these and many more considerations are important to note when localizing your content as well as games for a local market. By partnering with the best poker software providers like Nautilus Games, your company can navigate localization without too much hassle.
