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How to localise a brand to fit an audience, not just its language

A team ships its content into a new market. Professionally translated, terminology checked, not a single sentence wrong. It lands with a thud, and nobody can quite say why.

I've been on both sides of this. The translation usually isn't the problem. It's that the content was built for a reader who lives somewhere else, reads on different platforms and worries about different things. And nobody ever tells that reader why this particular brand is relevant to them.

This guide is about closing that gap, using four fintech brands competing in Hong Kong that each solve a different part of it.

The end goal of all localisation

Localisation that stops at accurate translation is only doing half the job. Getting local idioms and expressions right matters. But the more important half is fitting what your local audience actually does and wants. That means running the same context and purpose questions as UX writing generally, applied one market at a time, rather than settling for what the audience would technically understand from a correct translation.

The data backs up why language is the floor rather than the ceiling. Don DePalma's CSA Research has anchored this argument for nearly two decades through its "Can't Read, Won't Buy" study. Their 29-country survey of 8,709 consumers found 76% prefer buying from content in their own language. And 40% say they'll never buy from a site in another language at all. That's the baseline every brand entering a new market has to clear.

But clearing a baseline isn't a strategy. What happens after it is where your differentiation actually sits. I made this point on the TransPerfect NEXT Singapore panel: localisation means moving beyond the words and into what you actually show each market. If a Singaporean fintech expanding into Hong Kong translates its content into Traditional Chinese, or writes an article about investing in Hong Kong in English, and calls it done, that is the bare minimum. Hong Kong audiences read different platforms, care about different parts of financial literacy, and don't have a local equivalent for every Singapore reference point.

What Endowus did, and what was missing

When I worked on Endowus's Hong Kong expansion, our approach centred on localising articles from the existing Singapore library and writing new long-form pieces on the Hong Kong investment market. It worked in a specific sense. We swapped the Central Provident Fund (CPF) for the Mandatory Provident Fund (MPF), and several articles were genuinely aimed at Hong Kong pain points rather than Singapore ones.

What was lacking is just as instructive. Chinese content stayed less prominent than our actual traffic justified, even though most impressions and visitors came from a Cantonese-speaking audience. Articles skewed academic and high-level rather than conversational. Social media was thin next to the long-form content it should have been amplifying. And most articles stayed static, written once and never revisited. The tie-in to why Endowus specifically mattered came right at the end, if at all.

If I led it again, I'd add a clear call to action and state the Endowus-specific relevance much earlier, instead of saving it for a conclusion nobody necessarily reaches. That one change would let the same content work at both the consideration and conversion stages, not just awareness.

What it did achieve is worth stating plainly, because it shows the ceiling of getting language right without the rest. The localised library ran across 8 channels including eDM (electronic direct mail), web pages and SEO blogs. Retirement articles scored 4,000-10,000 impressions each in Google Search Console. Finlit-derived social posts drew 10% more impressions than posts of other kinds. Good numbers. They'd have been better with the relevance stated up front.

What Syfe does differently

Syfe is a Singapore-headquartered robo-advisor that made Hong Kong its first market outside Singapore. It stays tied to the audience throughout a piece rather than pivoting to the pitch at the end. It explains early and concretely why Syfe solves the specific problem the reader came in with, uses worked examples, and keeps tying those back to the Hong Kong user's everyday problems.

How Syfe and StashAway localise on Instagram

Both Syfe and StashAway localise their brand message on Instagram in a way that's genuinely bite-sized for a busy Hong Kong investor. StashAway's Hong Kong campaign ran under the tagline "You Do Life, We Do Investing", built with creative agency Omelette Digital and marketing consultancy EurekaX. Both position around high-yield products with high mobility, and both work with relatable everyday affiliates in quick succession, carrying the brand points from their articles across and converting many of their Chinese pieces into organic Instagram posts. The aim in each case is squarely at Gen Y aspirations around travel and financial freedom rather than generic wealth messaging.

Bowtie: the fully local brand

Bowtie, a fully local Hong Kong virtual insurer, combines that same audience-first instinct with fully SEO-optimised articles and interactive calculators. A reader works out their own numbers on the page instead of reading someone else's hypothetical example and doing the maths themselves.

What a fully localised infrastructure looks like

So what would you actually build? Between them, these four brands demonstrate a three-part infrastructure. Content that's genuinely audience-driven in both language and stated relevance, backed by a consistent social media presence rather than an owned-channel afterthought, and combined with prominently placed interactive elements like calculators that let your user see their own situation.

Here's the build spec I'd suggest:

Disclaimer: these figures are for illustrative purposes only and are not indicative of the actual return likely to be achieved by any product or portfolio.

Here's the checklist version, worth running any new-market content plan against before it ships:

• Audience-driven language and relevance, stated early rather than merely accurate by the end
• A real social media presence, rather than long-form syndicated to social as an afterthought
• Interactive elements, calculators or equivalents, that use the reader's own numbers
• Local terminology swapped correctly and used consistently throughout, past the first mention
• A CTA that ties the content's insight back to why this brand is the one to act with

The pattern across all four brands is easier to see once you stop treating localisation as a language problem. Endowus got the terminology right and still left conversion on the table. Syfe converts because it keeps answering "why does this matter to you, here" throughout the piece. StashAway found a register that fits how Hong Kong Gen Y actually talks about money. Bowtie gives people a calculator instead of an explanation.

None of that is a translation decision. It's a strategy decision that happens to involve two languages. Worth knowing which one you're actually making.

What I'd take into any new market is the sequencing. Get the language right first, because 40% say they'd never buy from a site in another language at all. Then work out what the local audience is actually anxious about, which platforms they're on, and how early you need to say why you're relevant. That last one is usually the cheapest fix and the one most often missed, because a piece can read perfectly well in both languages and still never tell the reader why they should care about the brand behind it.

Fit the audience, not just the language

The brands that win a new market aren't the ones with the most accurate translation. They're the ones whose content reads like it was written for that market from the start: right platforms, right terminology, right pace, and relevance stated up front instead of hoped for at the end.

Sources

• Third Global Survey by CSA Research Finds Language Preference of Consumers in 29 Countries
• Endowus builds a fiduciary wealth model for Hong Kong's structural realities, The Asian Banker
• MPF: Consolidation and TVC, Endowus HK
• Singaporean Robo Advisor Syfe Expands Its Footprint to Hong Kong, Fintech News HK
• StashAway spotlights stress-free investing in latest brand campaign in Hong Kong, MARKETECH APAC
• Fintech in Hong Kong: An overview, Acclime