How to reach new audiences by localizing your HubSpot content

What is HubSpot localization?

HubSpot localization is the process of localizing all your content in HubSpot. 

That might involve:

• Translating your blogs so they speak your audience’s language
• Updating emails to make sure they’re regionally relevant
• Updating cultural differences, like holidays celebrated in different countries
• Staying consistent with your global voice to build brand trust

When you use Lokalise for your HubSpot localization process, you can seamlessly translate your marketing content into any language with the help of tools like AI translation and built-in quality assurance. Helping to boost traffic, engagement, and conversions.

With HubSpot and Lokalise, you can deliver your content in any language, helping to boost traffic, engagement, and conversions.

What content can you localize?

With Lokalise and HubSpot, you can localize:

• Blogs: optimize blog posts to generate website traffic from searchers in different countries
• Web pages: ensure your offers are clear and compelling to international audiences
• Landing pages: generate leads and drive conversions with global customers
• Emails: nurture new leads in their language to build relationships

A few more reasons to localize your content

As we mentioned earlier, localizing your content can lead to 12 times higher engagement and a better experience for local users. Still need more convincing? Here are a few more reasons why it should be top of your go-to-market strategy.

Expand your global reach and increase traffic

People don’t just search the web in English. With localized content, you’ll be able to rank for relevant keywords in different languages.

This will bring more searchers to your site, giving your SEO a boost. Essentially, every time you translate a piece of content into a new language, you are doubling up your search engine optimization efforts. 

Just imagine what your business could do if you could reach a portion of the French-speaking market with your content? 

Or the 1,118 million Mandarin speakers. 

Or 548+ million Spanish speakers?

Build global brand trust

If you only offer content in your local language, you’re dramatically limiting the potential of your brand. Even if potential customers in other countries are aware of your brand, they’re not going to engage if they can’t understand your content.  

Localizing your HubSpot content will help you increase brand awareness and build trust by showing content in the language your audience understands.

Stand out from your competitors

Between 2021 and 2022, more than 70% of consumers bought from the competitor of their go-to brand. Since consumers aren’t as loyal as they used to be, you need to find new ways to retain customers and attract new buyers. 

By delivering content that engages customers in a highly personalized way – through language – you can stand out as a leader in your industry. You're showing your global markets that you care about their needs and experiences.  

Why use HubSpot with Lokalise?

Aside from the fact that it’s a content manager’s dream come true, and that Lokalise was named an essential app for marketers in 2024 by HubSpot, here are a few more reasons:

Automate the localization process to save time

With Lokalise and HubSpot, you can access Lokalise features directly within HubSpot, so you don’t need to worry about wasting time switching between multiple platforms.

To import and export content automatically, set up automations so HubSpot blogs and pages are pulled into Lokalise as soon as they’re ready to translate and pushed back to HubSpot for publishing. 

Order translations with a few clicks

Order translations inside Lokalise with a few clicks, and have everything, from thought leadership-style blog posts to promotional emails, translated into whatever languages you want. Then review and publish. It’s that simple.

Save time with on-brand AI translations

Through Lokalise, you get access to Lokalise AI which can help speed up localization efforts. What’s great about this AI translation feature is that it uses your style guide and glossary to give you consistent, on-brand, and accurate translations in minutes. 

Keep track of translations

It’s tough working with several platforms at once when you’re crafting content. With HubSpot and Lokalise, you can track the translation status for each piece of content in a single dashboard. 

This means your content and marketing teams are always in control. Having a single source of truth for your content localization also frees up mental space to focus on crafting new content rather than wading knee-deep through a set of processes and tools.

Automated quality assurance

Translating content is crucial to reaching global customers. But, if your translations aren’t accurate, you could be doing more harm than good.

With HubSpot and Lokalise, you get quality assurance checks on autopilot. You can leverage automated quality assurance checks, translation memory, and a glossary to create clear and on-brand messages in every language imaginable.

How to get started with HubSpot localization

Want to start localizing your content with Lokalise and HubSpot?

Here’s a simple five-step process to get started:

1. Sign into HubSpot

2. Go to HubSpot’s App Marketplace and search for “Lokalise” in HubSpot’s App Marketplace.

3. Click on the main Lokalise app.

4. Install Lokalise.

5. Sign up for a 14-day free trial of Lokalise.

Get a free demo of Lokalise and HubSpot.

This will walk you through a demo version of the two products to give you a sample of what it will feel like to use the products in sync.

Once you’ve set up the integrations, follow these four steps:

Localize content in four simple steps with Hubspot and Lokalise

1. Link your content: select the HubSpot content you’d like to translate
2. Translate: choose how you want to translate – with AI, machine translation, or human translators
3. Review: send translations for a review
4. Publish: send content back to HubSpot to publish

6 Localization best practices

New to localization? 

Below are some best practices you should follow to ensure you localize like a pro.

Prioritize, select, and test markets

Localization is an investment so you need to select the right markets to prioritize and target.

One way to understand if the ROI is strong enough to invest in each market is by leveraging a solution like Lokalise to test out new markets in a really cost-effective way. 

You could quickly spin up a Spanish site and test out the Spanish locale to see what kind of engagement you’re getting and what kind of organic traffic you’re getting. 

You should also look at your existing data. 

Maybe there are some early signals you’re seeing from different markets, like high average order values in some countries? Maybe users are already reaching out to customer support in another language?

These key performance indicators (KPIs) will help you understand if the case is strong enough.  

Understand your target markets

With localization, it can be easy to get caught up in the technical steps and systemize the process.

But, the most effective way to localize your content is to stay human-centered. This starts by understanding your target audience and which markets you want to expand into.

There's so much beyond just translating the words on the page and the copy. 

And even within copy, you have to make sure that it's culturally relevant to make sure it's not offensive. If something is humorous, make sure it's actually humorous in Germany in the same way that it is in French. 

Localization is also about creating a user experience that’s adjusted for people in different regions. 

You need to bring the right people along to advise and really understand the audience base. 

For example, in Japan, they’re very sensitive to color and how you depict people on websites. So content needs to be really bespoke. If it's not resonating then people are not going to engage. 

Don’t be afraid to conduct surveys, interviews, and polls to get feedback from different people on your localization to get it right and get a return on your investment.

Create a process to ensure translation accuracy

When Pepsi first began marketing the drink in China, they used the slogan “Pepsi brings you back to life.” But, when this was translated to Mandarin, it directly translated as “Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the grave.”

This was one of the biggest translation flops in marketing history. The fact that a major brand made this kind of mistake means it could happen to anyone.

Thankfully, you can avoid this huge cultural offense by:

• Defining country-specific style guides and glossaries
• Establishing a localization team consisting of local experts and reviewers
• Implementing a proofreading review and linguistic review

All of which can easily be set up when you translate HubSpot content inside Lokalise.

Remember, quality assurance checks are just as important as the translations themselves, so don’t tread lightly on implementing them.

Automate when possible

Localization can help your business tap into new markets and expand your customer base. But, it can be quite the process to localize and translate all of your content into another language, let alone five other languages, or 15. 

This is why you need to focus on automating the localization process wherever possible using integrations like Lokalise and HubSpot, which make it effortless to automatically exchange content.

You can also leverage Lokalise’s translation memory (TM) to show how similar content was translated by you before. 

Analyze performance regularly

How do you know if your localization strategy is working the way it should be?

By conducting regular performance analysis.

Whenever you translate and localize marketing content in HubSpot, you should focus on localization quality assurance (LQA).

LQA includes checking languages, cultural relevance, and technical compatibility between different pieces of content to ensure it’s accurate and up to par.

One way to do this is by leveraging LQA testers. These testers are localization experts and experienced linguists who have a rich understanding of each target audience, their cultures, and languages.

Sign up for Lokalise and start converting audiences worldwide

By localizing your marketing content, you’ll be able to reach international audiences and increase engagement in a big way.

Sign up for Lokalise’s 14-day free trial today and start localizing your HubSpot content today.  

Want more expert advice on planning, launching, and expanding your global marketing strategy with localization?

HubSpot, Lokalise, and Rock Content recently released an in-depth guide with key insights to help you scale and localize your content for global audiences.

Download The Global Marketing Playbook now.