Marketing

If you’re interested in building up your base of direct clients, keeping up with your local business news is an essential part of the equation. In this economy, I think it’s easy to cross the business news off your list as “all doom and gloom” and therefore not worth reading. However, as today’s post in The Wealthy Freelancer points out, freelancers who want to do well in a down economy have to become adept at finding clients that are doing well despite or even because of the slow economy. Although my own work volume has been quite high in the past few months, I’m making a concerted effort to market my services to more direct clients, so I’ve delved into the world of local business news media.

Wherever you live, you’re nearly guaranteed to find at least one publication devoted to local business news. Here in the Denver metro area we have three such publications: the Northern Colorado Business Report, the Boulder County Business Report and the Denver Business Journal. All of these publications have a variety of free content on their websites, and at least one even offers a free daily e-newsletter with local business headlines. In just a few weeks of browsing these news sources, I’ve seen a few items that piqued my curiosity. In some cases, the news briefs highlighted companies that may or may not need translators, but that clearly work in my areas of specialization and are thriving, i.e. “Law firm growing while others shed staff.” This seemed like a good opening for a “Congratulations on your success! Just wanted to pass along my contact information in case you have a need for French to English legal translation services”-type e-mail.

In other cases, the business news got me thinking about broader marketing possibilities. For example, a recent feature story chronicled a German solar power company’s selection of Fort Collins, CO as the new base of its U.S. operations. Although I don’t translate German, I thought that the solar company might be worth a contact anyway, if only to let them know that they can hire highly-skilled translators and interpreters right here in Colorado. But I was actually more interested in the story of how Fort Collins “rolled out the red carpet” (as described by the city’s CFO) to recruit this German company. It had never occurred to me to market translation services to city finance/business development people, but this article made me realize that when overseas companies think about branching out in the U.S., city government employees are often their major points of contact.

In other cases, I think that the local business news can reveal the little-known international affiliations of some seemingly local companies. I recently learned that a “local” company that manufactures turboprop aircraft is actually the North American branch of a Swiss company, so I put them on my list of potential contacts too. So, whether you live in a major metro area or a rural hamlet, take a look at your local business publications if you’re looking for some new prospective clients!

Thoughts on Translation will be running some guest posts over the next few months; to inaugurate the series we’ll hear from Marianne Reiner, an English>French legal translator based in California. I first met Marianne when she was a student in my online course for freelance translators, and with her French and U.S. law degrees, she immediately struck me as someone with a bright future in the industry.

Recently, Marianne has been expanding into the direct client market, and her guest post is on using your university alumni network for direct client marketing. Enjoy!

Marianne says:

I am stating nothing new when I say that I would like to work less and earn more money! While thinking of original marketing strategies to grow my base of direct clients, I received an offer from my Alma Mater to purchase their recently released Alumni Directory.

I attended the University Of Connecticut Law School. I specialize in legal translations from English into French. So I thought, why not market myself to my fellow U-Conn grads! In France (where I come from) there is no such collegial feeling towards the school you attended. (I am still waiting to hear of an Alumni Directory issued by the University of Paris XI Law School!) So the strategy and use of my Alumni network was all new to me!

After an investment of about $90.00, I received a hard cover directory along with a CD-ROM. The task was immense and the font really small! But I strategized and familiarized myself with the different categories used in the directory. The Alumni are organized by geographical region and by area of practice. I started with the regions, and first contacted via email my fellow Alumni in my area (I remembered a great advice from Corinne’s class: the chance for a face-to-face meeting could always go a long way).

I then tackled the list by area of expertise. I selected the area of practice where my experience can be used: contract law, environmental law, European Union law, foreign investments, human rights, immigration law, intellectual property law, international law, mergers and acquisitions, securities.
For each attorney I am contacting, I have researched the firm they work at, any law journal article they may have written or their list of past clients.

The task is daunting but I am confident it will yield the results I am hoping for. Although I have not yet had a new direct client, I am confident that this strategy will eventually pay off. The feedback I have already received is very positive and promising.

And one last note on using your Alma Mater network: do not forget those academics whose classes you enjoyed. They publish articles which may need to be translated to be published in international journals. Or in the case of a law school like mine, the various legal clinics are also a good place to sell your translation services.
Good luck!

Marianne Reiner

Translation client rating services such as Payment Practices are an indispensable way to check out your prospective clients’ creditworthiness before you work for them. Over at About Translation, Riccardo Schiaffino wrote a whole post about client rating services that gives a good overview of the larger lists.

Recently, a colleague and I were discussing the merits of using Payment Practices (which I’m using as an example because I’m familiar with its features, TCR and the Blue Board may have something similar) as a marketing tool, particularly for agencies outside the U.S. whose reputations you may not be familiar with. This technique comes with a few caveats, the main one being that you should never, ever contact the agency’s employees directly by using the contact information that appears on Payment Practices or any other list. Simply go to the agency’s website and follow the application information (look in the “employment,” “freelancers,” “join us” or similar sections) that appears there. Using the agency’s direct contact information (i.e. employee e-mail addresses, basically any information that does not appear on the agency’s public website) is a) highly annoying to the agency and b) a violation of Payment Practice’s terms of service.

That being said, let’s say that you want to start working with agencies in Austria. Log on to Payment Practices (it’s $19.99 a year; I think it’s a bargain and no, I don’t have an affiliate deal with them!) and click Search. Payment Practices gives agencies two ratings, one for Payment Reliability (i.e. does the agency pay on time) and Translator Approval (i.e. do translators who have worked with the agency want to work with them again). The search form allows you to set maximum and minimum values for each of those scores; let’s say you set the PPR and TA scores to be greater than or equal to four (the highest score being five). And look at that; Payment Practices has just displayed 17 potential clients in Austria that are rated 4.0/5.0 or higher.

Again, do not then contact the potential client using the detailed contact information listed on the Payment Practices entry. Go to the potential client’s website, see if they are taking applications from freelancers, and follow the application process that they list. Payment Practices’ form can also sort by city; so if you’re planning to be, say, in Paris, you can sort out the highly-rated agencies in Paris and contact them (again, using the contact information on the agency’s site, not the information on Payment Practices) to ask for an informational interview since you’ll be in the neighborhood.