Ben Ard00:00 — Welcome back to another episode of Content Amplified. Today I'm joined by Lina. Lina, welcome to the show.
Lina Tonk00:05 — Thank you for having me, Ben. Glad to be here.
Ben Ard00:07 — Lina, I'm excited. The conversation before we clicked record was great. Getting to know you, this is a ton of fun. But before we dive into the subject, Lina, let's let the audience get to know you a little bit. If you don't mind sharing your background, work history, all that kind of fun stuff. It'd be great for the audience to get to know who you are.
Lina Tonk00:24 — It was so good to get to know you, and we realized we have so many things in common. Well, look, I've been in B2B and SaaS and, crazy thing, PE since the early beginnings of my career. So most will find me crazy for that. But I have been in the SaaS industry ever since my career started. I'll share a little bit of that with you in the funniest way. You know, I started as a graphic designer thinking that I was gonna be really good at it. And then I learned quickly that that was definitely not the path, and that I was more of a marketer, a storyteller, a visual learner, but I was definitely not the one that was gonna put things on paper visually. But it's been fascinating. I've been now three times CMO for three different SaaS companies, and it's a ride. In PE we move fast with urgency, and I kind of love that. I feel like that's kind of the base of who I am. I like to move fast but with a lot of energy, and PE kind of has that. It has that opportunity to give you back the fast pace and reward you as well. Building teams, I've built so many different teams from very small. I mean, I was a team of one, became a team of seventy, over seventy marketers, and I've done that time and time again. But you know, if I was to think of legacy at all these companies, it's building the people. We were just talking about that with my CRO yesterday, about how it feels so good when you hear your people grow and they're buying their first house and their second house and their big car, because they're able to do all this because of their careers. And that to me is a big part of my reward. But marketer through and through, to be honest. I absolutely love marketing. I love how marketing connects with people. I think a lot of people see marketing as, yeah, so you're a marketer or a salesperson, and I just like to storytell. But at the end of the day, whatever software or service I'm serving, are we able to provide value to that customer? I'm fascinated by it. So yeah, that's a little bit about me. And I have two kids, and I hate to age myself, but one graduated from the University of Georgia, recently married, and my younger one is at the University of Miami. So still on college days.
Ben Ard03:02 — Yeah.
Lina Tonk03:02 — I'm trying to enjoy some of those college football days with them, which I absolutely love. But yeah, that's a little bit about me.
Ben Ard03:09 — That's amazing. I love it. This is so cool. Your experience is so awesome. Growing teams, seeing them build, seeing them have those experiences. I love the perspective of how you care about seeing people grow, and things of that nature. It's the right way to build a team. It's the right way to be a leader. I love that. Well, Lina, what we talked about is really discussing on this episode localized content. Now, before we dive into some of the specifics, typically what that means for a lot of people is just translation. Okay, we're just gonna take our content, translate it into a million different languages, call it good. It doesn't feel like that's enough, you know, and that's not really what we should look at. So from your perspective, what does it really mean to localize content? And maybe let's walk through some of the nuances outside of just translation. Also, I'd love to dive into the translation side, because I feel like that piece is often like, hey, great, I have a plugin, we just did it and then we're done. And I don't feel like that's probably a great idea. But what does it really mean to have localized content, in your opinion?
Lina Tonk04:14 — Yeah, so look, let me go back a little bit. Actually, when I started looking at Smartling, it came about because I was looking into local expansion. Now that I'm in a bunch of CMO groups and I've been testing a lot of our localization content and our understanding as CMOs of localization, I realized that it is very rare that we actually know the right answer on localization. Not that there's a right or wrong answer. So I think the simplest way, before we get deep into it, the simplest way that I explain it to people is translation is getting the words right. To just literally translate it from one language to another language. Where localization is where you make the culture fit. You localize the content that you've translated to deliver to that specific culture. I shared early that I am from Colombia, South America. The Spanish that I read or listen to is completely different from the Spanish from Spain. Same thing in Portuguese, where you see Brazil versus Portugal. Like US English from UK English in Dublin. So what's really interesting is that everybody calls it translation to me. And that's what I learned really early on looking at Smartling. I'm like, we're a translation software. And then they took me into localization, and I got deep into the product, to be honest, and I was fascinated by it. From a marketing perspective, because the connection that you make when you localize content is transformational. And what I've learned with marketers too, with CMOs specifically, and I've been speaking to so many for a reason, and I'll tell you why, is that early on you can ask me, well, I want to expand EMEA or APAC, LATAM, wherever you're gonna expand globally. And so what is my strategy to go expand? And a lot of commercial teams, whether it's the CRO or CMO doing this, they'll say, yeah, you just put boots on the ground in EMEA and APAC and whatnot, then we just translate our website. And then you start backing up and you're saying, okay, well, let's talk about your website for a second. How many words does your website have, and how many countries are you actually going after globally? What are you doing there? And when you go into those questions, most CMOs, including me, we don't know the answer to that. We know the regions we want to go after. We know our plan when it comes to pipeline, bookings, and conversions. But we don't really know what's gonna get us there from that website perspective, from a localization perspective. So the opportunity is incredible. And the reason I've been connecting with as many CMOs as I have is because localization, like anything else with AI coming in, has completely transformed in the last year. So localization teams have moved, and they continue to move, into different C level pockets. And what we're seeing is a big part of them end up within the product side, because localization has so much to do with your product. You're translating your content from a marketing perspective, but also your product and everything you're doing within your product. Or, in most cases, we're seeing they're landing under marketing. And localization leaders and groups are having a really hard time translating to that CMO language.
Ben Ard08:02 — Mm-hmm.
Lina Tonk08:03 — What can we really achieve? One of our sales leaders was asking me, so Lina, if I'm gonna talk to you, how do I get your attention without going into localization? Just talk to me about conversions, or global expansion, but specifically how do I land in those regions? And then you have my attention a hundred percent. So that is the difference that I see between translation and localization, and the amount of opportunity once you double click into it is tremendous as a marketer. And I think a lot of CMOs are today seeing that. The ones that we meet with, a bunch of heads of marketing, and a lot of them at really large companies. We have big, big logos under our brand. I mean, we have massive logos that have offices all over the world. So most times their digital teams are running localization now, but that digital team belongs under marketing. And they have to be proving that the work that they're doing is actually transforming into bookings eventually. So it's fascinating to me. The opportunity there is tremendous. I know a lot of people say, well, why don't you just translate with AI? I'm like, yeah, you definitely are not gonna do a good enough job doing that. We work with OpenAI, they're one of our customers, and they're fantastic, and they've had great success with what they've done with us. And I'll share a little bit about our story with them too, if we wanna double click into that.
Ben Ard09:41 — I love it. I love it. So I would love to dive into this, because I love the difference between translation and localization. And I love how you said the word culture. And I think that there is more to culture than just the words on a page. And I mean, you talked about the languages, the differences between those. It's very true. For anyone listening, you probably speak English, and if you're looking at American English versus European English, you can tell pretty quickly if someone is writing for you versus someone else. It's weird nuances, it's spelling, it can even be grammatical, things of that nature. How do you really dive into the culture, understand that, and how do you translate it to the content? Because I'm fascinated, because 100% that sounds correct, but as a marketer being like, whoo, I got 15 different regions to get into, how do you actually start to pull that off and actually make sure it fits the culture?
Lina Tonk10:37 — Yeah, you know what one of the biggest mistakes that I've seen made is, including me, because a couple of years ago I did this, and I think we all start there: we actually build our campaigns, for example. So let's say we're going after one market. We build our campaigns, we do all the early work, and then we translate it into the region that we're going after. So I'm gonna give you a perfect example, and then two failed examples, by the way. The one was me specifically, expanding into EMEA. I had arrived at this new company, there was a big push to expand in EMEA. My first thing is, I have to be with the EMEA team. I have to be boots on the ground with them, understand the team. I've been in the EMEA region a lot. I know the people, I know the cultures. But then I remember arriving at that first meeting, and I was just watching, right? I was new and I'm just watching, and the team is presenting at this customer event, and this is a couple of years ago. And the spelling on the deck was US spelling, and you know how we spell organizations in
Ben Ard11:45 — Mm-hmm.
Lina Tonk11:45 — EMEA. And it just immediately threw me off. I was turned off by the rest of the presentation, because I knew this was not a presentation that was built for that region or the people that were there. So I think it all connects. Localization, translation, anything, it connects all the way to connection with people. If you have that in mind, then you know that you are going to be able to convert. So that was fail number one that I've experienced. And it was the number one thing. I was like, shoot, we have work to do. We literally are going after EMEA as if we were selling in the US region, which is completely different. So then let me take you a step further on another one, and this will click a little bit more, because I have a bunch of German friends who I absolutely love. I love Germany. I think culturally they're a really, really cool country in the way that you live.
Ben Ard12:47 — It's actually where I lived for two years. I told you that before, that's where I lived in Europe, Germany and Austria. So I love this story. I'm already excited for it.
Lina Tonk12:55 — Amazing. So you know they work different, and my son just came back from a semester in Berlin. When you think of a campaign, whether I'm doing it, for example, for Europe specifically, or for the UK, and then I go and translate that, the whole workflow of the campaign, I'm going to go translate it, localize it into German, into the Germany region, they do not behave the same way. Germans will take different steps to get to the click. And whether you want to call it trust or not, there is a lot of that there. In the US region, there's this independent behavior today that we have. We want to not talk to anybody. If I can do it online and you can just help me book the demo, but if you give me the demo digital, I mean, I'm in, right? I am all the way in, you save me the meeting. Great. If I go do that in some of these regions, that's not gonna work. So think about those two components there for a second. I think of them all the time. Okay, so I have been able to localize it. So the German language itself is localized, but the steps that we're taking to take people through, or what we're telling them to do, is not clicking. OpenAI is a great story. I just recently spent time with Kathy, who runs their localization there. She's brilliant, absolutely brilliant, so open minded, so conversion driven. And she gave me an example of that. She was sharing with me how they changed the click-through conversion by just literally having a review of their buttons and what it was saying for each one of their regions. Because if you're simply saying book a demo and then translating it over, that's not localization, and that's not the journey per region. So I think it's a two piece kind of thing, and I think that's what I find probably most fascinating about marketing being within localization, is because we can truly make a difference. At the end of the day, if you're German, if you took the workflow and you were able to click all the way, and let's say you sign up and you buy, right? How was your experience with us? Did you feel connected? As a German, did you feel connected, as someone from EMEA, from the US? That experience is the first feeling you have about Smartling. And from then on, whatever else we serve or do for you, you are already gonna have that. So I'm just big on the human connection, on what that does for humans. And we have, like any company, a big AI strategy that goes through our product and beyond. But Smartling, when I looked at them, I'm like, we're not new to AI. AI has been here for a long time. And they have a great balance on this is what we need to do, that AI will make us better, make things faster and more productive. But this is where we need to make human connection, because that's what's gonna keep customers with us longer. And so it's fascinating, all of it.
Ben Ard16:28 — I love it. All right, Lina, we're almost out of time, so I want to ask one other question, because I have a million questions and these things go by so fast. So we talked about true localization, culturally, language, things of that nature. I want to take it a step further, because I'm kind of curious how this happens. Every country or region has even subcultures, you know. So in the United States, you have the West Coast, you have the Midwest, you have the East Coast, you have the South. You have different areas. Like I said, living in Germany, there are different dialects, there are different ways of thinking and talking and histories, even inside those countries, even all the way down to a neighborhood or a per person level. I know with AI, that's the dream, right? I can get down and personalize, localize to an individual. Sometimes that's creepy, sometimes it's not helpful.
Lina Tonk17:22 — Yeah.
Ben Ard17:23 — How do you look at the localization, but down to even smaller categories? Is the technology even there? How should you think about it? What's your thought process there? Because I'm really curious. And I know a lot of people are like, well, perfect marketing would be every single person gets a completely different experience. What does that actually look like and mean to you?
Lina Tonk17:42 — Yeah, that question has legs to it, but that is to me true localization. That is true localization. You are localizing your content for the individual level, not necessarily to the region level. It is our goal as marketers to provide value. That is the ultimate goal. Value comes to that person signing up and getting something out of it. So I signed up, I had a need, and you gave it to me. To get that person there, that experience, kind of like what we were talking about, has to be so deeply lifecycle. So localization has the ability to do that. Your website has the ability to do that as a person. And I know you're calling it creepy, but it is fast, because
Ben Ard18:34 — If done wrong, don't get me wrong.
Lina Tonk18:37 — I think we all do, right? It's like, is everybody listening to me? Yes, they are, your phones. But it is the greatest opportunity of our time. If we don't allow AI workflows to be used in technology to get us there, to connect us more as humans, to provide that value, then we're just not getting anywhere. So yes, the technology can do it. It is a fascinating part of our technology and of localization. We were just talking about an LQA agent yesterday. There's a big part of localization where, if you're doing it automatically, how am I making sure that it's done right? And the biggest question I think for anybody, not uniquely to localization, is how do I know that the AI work that I'm doing is quality driven, not what people call AI quality, right? And there's also that line where you say, this is good for what I need, and perfect I don't need. So this is good for the bigger region, but I don't need it on the individual basis. And I think as a marketer and as a localization leader, you can make some of those decisions and allow AI to come in to drive you there much faster than you would have, and have that experience that felt more connected and more human. That's how I see AI. A year ago I used to say, if you don't give room to AI, it's just gonna push you out of the room that you're in. But if you give it room and you live it every day and you lead by example. I mean, I'm building freaking agents. I never thought that I would be coding. You and I talked, I can't design, I can't code. I can do a freaking spreadsheet, that I can do. But code, and building agents, is fascinating. It's doing half of my analysis for me, which, you know, why not? So yeah, I think you have the ability to do that through AI, but you also have the ability to make those decisions on what areas you will go down deeper. And even on localization and translation, we find companies, and that's the cool part about our company, is that we have also the services side, where a company decides, you know what, in this area specifically, I want human review. Yeah, we do all this with the product, but at the end, give me a human review. Fine, let's go. We'll do it. And we do it too. So I love that option.
Ben Ard21:15 — Well, and that's a whole different category, the services side of businesses.
Lina Tonk21:18 — Right.
Ben Ard21:19 — I think that is something that businesses need to start incorporating more, the idea that my software is good enough and people are just gonna pay for it. Really with AI, we've kind of trained ourselves now to say, well, I just want something to be done for me and AI can do it, or if it can't be done through AI, I need someone else to do it for me. So I think the services side makes a ton of sense. I think that's super cool. Lina, we have run out of time. And this has been fascinating. I have loved every minute of this. Thank you, thank you, thank you. For anyone who's listening today that would like to reach out and connect with you online, how and where can they find you?
Lina Tonk21:56 — LinkedIn. It's the best way. So I'm on LinkedIn in and out, always giving my likes and my kudos to all my people that I worked with in the past and I work with today. It's kind of my community there. So yeah, I'd love to connect with anyone. And no, thank you so much for having me. And I love that we have such a connection from back in the day. We thought we would be designers, and look at us being storytellers.
Ben Ard22:22 — I love it. That's so cool. Lina, this has been great. For anyone listening, scroll down to the show notes, regardless of what platform you're on. We will link directly to Lina's LinkedIn profile. Click on the link, say hello, connect with Lina, all that fun stuff. Say you came from the podcast. Lina, again, thank you, thank you, thank you. Really do appreciate the time.
Lina Tonk22:40 — Thank you so much.
