Does your marketing budget speak your language?

Alexander Brooke Alexander Brooke Language Services Consultant 20 May 2025 6 mins 6 mins
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Global marketing can be costly. Poor translation makes it costlier. If your brand, products and services get lost in localization, miscommunications can result in a messy brand message, low engagement, and ultimately, wasted budgets. Despite companies allocating a significant portion of their revenue to marketing – on average 7-10% – the share of marketing within overall budgets has been shrinking, decreasing from 12% to 8% between 2016 and 2024. This increasing pressure on marketing ROI makes every penny count, making efficient and effective localization a key strategy for protecting and maximizing that marketing spend.
 
It’s important to note that localization differs from basic translation. It’s about adapting tone, messaging and content to meet the different languages, cultures, and contexts of different countries and regions. By going beyond simple translations, you strike a contextual chord with your audience, earning their trust, engagement, and revenue.
 
Unfortunately, localization can go wrong. If it does, the likelihood of your efforts being put to work – content, creative, ad spend and so on – decreases. Content can end up never being used. Thankfully, the best AI translation platforms that join together AI and human cultural experts can mitigate these risks while increasing the speed and scale of global marketing campaigns. Read on to learn more about marketing budget drain and how RWS's digital translation platform can help.

The marketing budget drain no one talks about

Chances are, a large portion of your marketing budget is going to waste – and it’s likely much bigger than you think.
 
According to a 2024 study by CreativeX, the typical Fortune 500 company wastes at least $25 million a year on unused creative assets – over 50% of all content produced. Analysis by the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising in the same year found that 90% of global campaign toolkits are never used by teams in local markets, and 45% of core global assets simply gather dust.
 
Internally, too, poorly localized content can be wasted on the people who move the needle in the right direction. One study found that 65% of marketing content is never used by salespeople.

Why does your budget go to waste?

The reasons behind all this wasted budget are varied and complex. Local teams might lack budget to put campaigns into action. They might already have assets they know perform perfectly well. They may be wary of how effective the content will be. They might not even be able to access it due to archaic systems or siloes.
 
However, if content isn’t tailored to each locale, the likelihood of it going to waste will only increase. The assets might not be fit for the region, be produced in the wrong language, with incorrect wording, or poorly chosen imagery that doesn’t resonate with audiences or represent them.

The clear benefits for your bottom line

Statistics show translation increases the likelihood of higher revenues in Fortune 500 companies by up to 267%.
 
Greater efficiency means you can spend time on other critical aspects of your campaign, like targeting, briefing and comms. A recent study found that 65% of media spend on location-based ads went to waste because of poor-quality, poorly directed targeting, while 33% of your budget may be being wasted on bad briefs and misdirected tasks.
 
You need tools and best practices which help you overcome the sluggishness of manual translations and the poor quality of verbatim translation. That way, you can move localization from afterthought to mission-critical.

How RWS's digital translation platform helps you maximize marketing budget efficiency

We’ve built our digital self service platform from the ground up to solve the inefficiencies experienced by businesses that, up until now, have had to rely on free or feature-lacking translation software. Here’s how it can help you get the most from your budgets.
 
Brand-specific tone of voice at scale
One of the biggest challenges in global marketing is maintaining a consistent tone of voice across multiple regions and languages. If your brand has a strong personality (think Gymshark’s energetic voice or Innocent Drinks’ quirky tone) a literal translation will never be fit for purpose.
 
The AI-powered engine within our online solution is trained on your brand’s unique style. Generated using custom glossaries, tone guides, and a translation memory that learns from previous translations, content is then refined by a human expert in order to introduce and preserve much-needed nuance.
 
This blend of machine speed and human creativity ensures that:
  • Your brand voice sounds authentic, not robotic.
  • Every slogan, caption and call-to-action resonates with your local audiences.
  • You don’t lose what makes your brand unique.
Speed without sacrificing quality
Timing is critical in global marketing. Your brand must react to trends, launch multiple campaigns, and keep product and service information up to date in a constantly shifting landscape. Free software for translators simply won’t cut it.
 
This technology dramatically reduces your turnaround times through:
  • Real-time machine translation, guided by brand-trained AI
  • Human-in-the-loop editing for high-visibility or high-risk content
  • Automated quality assurance checks for terminology, tone, and compliance
You need translations that move at the speed of your market, and that means localizing much faster than the time current agency approaches require – something our digital platform is adept at doing.
 
Reducing internal friction and resource burn
Managing translation internally often means leaning on regional teams or external partners, but this can slow down your workflows, eat up bandwidth, and don’t mention the version control chaos.
 
RWS's digital translation platform streamlines this by centralizing your entire localization process into one simple source:
  • Translation memory ensures you're never translating the same thing twice.
  • Style and terminology guides are stored and applied consistently.
  • Collaboration tools reduce email chains, briefings, and duplicated efforts.
Our platform not only reduces operational costs and improves time-to-market, but brings clarity and consistency across every campaign and touchpoint, reducing siloing. Learn more about global enterprise localization strategies.
 
AI that learns your brand DNA
Unlike generic document translator software, our solution evolves. The more you use it, the smarter it becomes, continually adapting to your brand’s evolving tone, preferred phrases, and regional variations. This is all thanks to a nuanced mix of machine translation and generative AI.
 
Your brand and teams can benefit from:
  • Machine learning trained on your historical content
  • AI-driven suggestions for phrasing, tone, and terminology
  • Automated compliance checks to flag off-brand language or stylistic mismatches
It’s like having a localization expert embedded in every team, but one that gets faster, more accurate, and more aligned the longer it works with your content. 

How RWS's digital translation platform compares to free translation tools

Tools like Google Translate might be tempting if you're looking for free software for translators. But when building global campaigns, you need more than “good enough” – you need the best AI translation available.
 
Free platforms may help you translate documents in English, but they lack:
  • Tone calibration
  • Contextual accuracy
  • Brand-specific memory and reuse
  • Post-editing by native-speaking experts
  • A centralized live project dashboard to manage workflows
Our digital platform combines all the best language translation features and more, so you can enjoy consistency, scalability, and confidence in your translation and localization.
 

Feature

Free Software

RWS Translation Platform

Brand tone adaptation

Translation memory

Human post-editing

Consistency across regions

AI that learns brand preferences

Getting started: How to build a budget-conscious localization workflow with RWS's digital translation platform

Our platform is designed to simplify your workflows so you can focus your time on other priorities. The process is simple:
  • Centralize assets into the platform's dashboard
  • Define your brand style, tone, and terminology within the system
  • Generate draft translations using AI
  • Apply human QA and post-editing for high-impact content
  • Store everything in Translation Memory for fast reuse
  • Track performance, engagement, and refine over time
Ready to see how the best language translation tools can unlock growth in every market? Learn how to unlock global growth with human-AI translation.
 
Don’t mismanage your marketing budgets – use RWS's digital translation platform instead
If your messaging doesn’t speak your audience’s language both literally and culturally, you're wasting budget. Our online platform changes that. It’s more than document translator software – it’s a brand-accurate, scalable, AI-human solution built to boost your global impact.
 
Great localization isn’t a cost centre. It’s a revenue multiplier.
 
Alexander Brooke
Author

Alexander Brooke

Language Services Consultant
Alex is a Language Services Consultant at RWS, where he helps clients find the perfect solution for their unique requirements. With a strong background in project management, particularly in onboarding new business, Alex brings a wealth of experience and expertise to every client interaction. Passionate about building relationships and solving client problems, he is committed to delivering tailored solutions and ensuring client satisfaction.
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