Marketing

We translators spend a lot of time strategizing about how to cold contact potential clients. But what happens when a potential client cold contacts us? Especially if you have a well-written profile in your local/national translators association directory, or you have a professional-looking website, or you do a reasonable amount of networking, this is bound to happen; you get an “out of the blue” e-mail or phone call from someone who needs a quote for a translation. What are some basic steps to take in order to set this interaction up for success?

• Establish who the client is. This sounds laughably basic, but it isn’t. Is the client an individual or a company? How did the client get your name? Is the client based in your country or somewhere else? Is the client a startup or an established going concern? All of these factors will weigh into your decision as to whether to work with this client and at what rate. Always do your own research on the client, either by searching them on Payment Practices, getting references from other freelancers who work with them, searching them online, or preferably all three.
• Determine if the client needs some basic information about your services, a quote for a specific project, or both. I think it’s useful to have a nice-looking one or two page document about you and your services that you can send out to anyone who requests it. Personally I would not mention rates on this profile document, but I would include information about the services you do and do not offer, your specializations, some recent projects, etc.
• Ask questions. I think that many translators make the error of giving too much information while asking for too little information from the client. For example, is the document you will be translating already written, or is the client still writing it? What is the deadline? How many words or pages is the document? Is the document for internal use or for publication? Does the client have a glossary and/or reference materials? While you don’t want to bombard the client with complicated requests or make them feel that they have to jump through all sorts of hoops to work with you, you also don’t want to fall into the trap of agreeing to something you can’t deliver.
• Always, always (did I mention always?) insist on seeing the document before committing to a rate and turnaround time. Offer to sign an NDA in advance if you need to, but realize that you are setting yourself up for failure if you do not see the actual material before the ink is on the contract.
• Give the client your terms of service. Whether this is an extensive document or just an e-mail that the client needs to reply to, make sure that you have something in writing where the client confirms your rate, deadline, payment terms and any other policies (i.e. dispute resolution procedure, confidentiality agreement, etc.)
• If the project doesn’t happen, be gracious and stay in touch. I think anyone who has been in business for a reasonable amount of time has been contacted by numerous potential clients whose projects don’t work out. Don’t get bitter; thank the client for contacting you and ask them to keep you in mind in the future!

One of my main business goals for this year is to work with more direct clients. Although I have a number of agency clients who pay well, have interesting projects and are very easy to work with, I find that I really enjoy the greater degree of autonomy and higher income that direct clients usually offer.

So far, most of my direct clients have found me through word of mouth; one was a hand-me-down from a friend who closed her freelance business, another found me through the Colorado Translators Association directory, another came through a friend who now works in-house for the client. Now, I’d like to expand my marketing efforts to clients in Europe and specifically in Paris, partially because a colleague and I are planning a marketing trip there at some point this winter.

The marketing technique I’m considering is the sample translation/free trial offer (as described by Chris Durban and other translators who work exclusively with direct clients), whereby you find either a poorly done translation or something that isn’t translated at all (i.e. a page from the potential client’s website, their brochure, advertisement, etc.), translate or improve it, and send it to the client along with an offer of your services and some other informational material such as a copy of ATA’s brochure Getting it Right.

I’ve found that it’s not at all difficult to find potential targets for the free trial offer. Many high-level entities in France have beautifully designed, splashy websites with a much-promoted English version that reads like a machine translation post-edited by someone who took about two weeks of high school English. It seems to me that the key issue is how to draft a successful letter pitching your translation services. My sense is that it’s best to start with a compliment (“Congratulations on reaching out to potential visitors/clients/residents who don’t speak French…”) and then cut to the chase (“During a recent visit to your website, we noted that the English version of your website does not convey the quality of your products and services as well as it could…”). I think it can also be helpful to include some statistics that show how a good translation can benefit the potential client’s bottom line; for example the fact that France is the world’s number one international tourism destination.

Readers, any ideas on this? Has anyone else used the sample/free trial offer with success?

Earlier this week, NPR ran a very interesting segment (reported by Yuki Noguchi) entitled Job Seekers Find New Rules of Recruitment, which focused largely on the role of new technology and social media in the job search process. Many of the points in the segment (have a LinkedIn profile, don’t use an AOL e-mail address or an e-mail address that you share with your spouse) were helpful but not earth-shaking. However, several of the interviewees also went into vivid detail about their hatred of paper resumés, which they described as “passé.”  While I agree with this concept in general (I think that the only time I use paper resumés is at conferences), I wonder if the same is true of other marketing materials such as postcards and brochures.

At various marketing seminars that I’ve attended, the presenters have often advocated *for* sending paper marketing materials as an alternative to electronic ones. I’ve often heard the argument that while most people delete unsolicited e-mails even before reading them, most people will at least glance over a nicely designed postcard, or will take the time to skim a sales pitch letter. Any thoughts on this? Personally I’m a fan of inexpensive business postcards from places like VistaPrint and Overnight Prints. We use these for our local translators association with a great deal of success, and I think that in the flood of bills and ads that most people receive, a nice-looking paper marketing piece or a custom-tailored letter is a nice touch. Readers, any experiences using e-mail or paper materials for your marketing campaigns?