Four sources of potential direct clients

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This week, let’s talk about a basic concept of direct client marketing: determining who might need your services. I started thinking about this because, when I teach direct client marketing classes, it’s not unusual for people to say, “I understand how to do this, but I get stuck before I even start, because I don’t know what types of clients might need me.”

Let’s take a look at four main sources of potential direct clients:

1. Clients similar to your agencies’ end clients. Never, never, ever (did I mention never??) market to your agency clients’ actual end clients. That’s a complete violation of your contract with the agency, and also totally unethical, because the agency did the work to land and retain that client. But, analyzing who is buying the translations you’re doing for agencies can be a good springboard. That’s how I got started with international development translation. I had no idea that it was even its own specialization, until one of my good agency clients (back in 2005 or so) offered me some NGO work. In turn, that made me think, this can’t be the only NGO or development entity on earth with the need and budget for professional translation services. I then did a marketing campaign that resulted in a couple of excellent direct clients.
2. Professional organizations for your specializations. These can be really valuable, both in terms of potential clients and in terms of continuing education and networking opportunities. There is literally a professional association for every industry or sector on earth. Immigration lawyers, museums, clinical trial organizations, private investigators. They all have associations! Maybe those associations have membership directories that you can use to find names of potential clients. Maybe they have a continuing education series that you could participate in, to learn more about that sector or industry. Maybe you could write an article for their journal or magazine on best practices for working with a translator or interpreter. Maybe you could attend their conference.
3. Job search sites. Even though we’re not looking for in-house jobs, job search sites can give us a lot of direct client leads. Let’s say that you went on Devex, “the media platform for the global development community.” And on there, you clicked Jobs, and let’s say you found a posting for an NGO that’s hiring a financial analyst who has to speak French. If you’re a French-English or English-French translator, that tells you that this NGO may need your services, because they work in English and French. You could then find some of their employees on LinkedIn and reference this ad: “I noticed that you’re hiring for a French-speaking financial analyst, and I can imagine that you might need a French to English translator as part of this project.” You can also do this with mainstream job search sites like LinkedIn or Indeed, it’s just easier if you find a job search site for your specialization.
4. Agencies for your specializations, but not translation agencies. When we say, “agency,” we tend to think exclusively of translation and interpreting agencies. But lots of industries have agencies. There are legal services agencies that provide freelance professionals for depositions: mainly court reporters, but they are often asked to secure an interpreter if one is needed. There are content marketing agencies that help companies create marketing-optimized blog posts and newsletters; maybe some of their clients work in multiple languages, or should be working in multiple languages? There are credentials evaluation agencies that help international professionals transfer their credentials to another country…and all of that has to be translated! There are international relocation agencies, who are often asked for referrals to translators: “We’re moving to Brazil, now we need our kids’ school records translated into Portuguese.”

Particularly if you’ve never worked with direct clients, it can be intimidating to think about who might need you, but I hope these quick ideas are helpful!

Corinne McKay (classes@trainingfortranslators.com) is the founder of Training for Translators, and has been a full-time freelancer since 2002. She holds a Master of Conference Interpreting from Glendon College, is an ATA-certified French to English translator, and is Colorado court-certified for French interpreting. If you enjoy her posts, consider joining the Training for Translators mailing list!