Training for Translators

Classes for translators and interpreters

Marketing


Corinne McKay

Using job sites to tell who might need a freelancer

One of my favorite ways to identify potential new direct clients is by using job search websites, and it’s an especially helpful tool in the age of COVID-19 when it’s hard to tell if a company or entity is surviving, much less hiring. This technique applies even though a) these entities are unlikely to be looking for a full-time in-house translator, and b) you’re not looking for a full-time in-house job anyway. Let’s dig in.

Let’s say I translate for the travel and tourism industries–a particularly dicey sector right now. So I want to make sure that the companies I’m targeting are solvent. If they’ve recently posted full-time jobs on job search sites, that’s a good bet that they’re on solid financial footing.

I start by going to the Jobs search section of LinkedIn. By searching terms like “travel,” “resorts,” “hotels,” (etc.) I can see which companies have recently posted ads for full-time employees in that sector. The key here is recent postings–you want to look for companies that have posted jobs in the past couple of weeks, because their financial situation may be changing quickly.

Once I know that those companies are hiring, that gives me a “hook” to contact them, with a quick pitch such as, “I noticed on LinkedIn that you’re hiring staff for your location in Miami. In browsing your website, I noticed that you don’t currently have a Spanish-language version. As a professional English to Spanish translator specializing in the travel and tourism sector, I wonder if there might be a need for someone to provide English to Spanish translations of your marketing materials? Would you be the correct person to speak with about offering my freelance services.”

An even better way to do this is via specialized job search sites like Devex (NGOs/international development), BioSpace (biotech, pharmaceuticals, and life sciences), FinanceJobs (you can probably guess the sector), Patently, Museum Jobs, and…I could go on and on, but you get the idea. If an NGO, pharma company, bank, patent law firm, or museum is hiring for a position with an international component, that’s a good sign that they might need freelance translators as well.

If you’ve tried this technique or have other ideas of how to implement it, let’s hear about it in the comments!


Corinne McKay

How do you nudge a dormant client?

A reader asks: “How do you nudge a dormant client? How can I get back in touch with a client who’s gone totally silent?”

Why nudge dormant clients?

In my experience and opinion, nudging dormant clients–rekindling the flame with a client you worked with in the past–is one of the most successful and most overlooked marketing strategies that freelance translators can implement. Why? Because:

  • It’s much less onerous than starting from scratch with a completely new potential client. Think, “Just wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed working on X project last year; haven’t heard from you in a while and would love to work together again,” rather than, “I’m a freelance English to German translator specializing in your industry and wondering if you might need my services.”
  • You already know that this client needs (or at least needed) your services and enjoyed working with you, assuming that you worked with them multiple times.
  • In your mind (or at least in mine!), the client has probably gone dormant for some deep, dark reason: like an egregious error in a translation that they were never willing to tell you about and that you never found. In reality, 99% of clients go dormant for completely benign reasons. They’ve simply forgotten about you, or the person you worked with left and didn’t give your contact information to the new person, or they honestly haven’t had any work that fits with what you do. But don’t use fear as an excuse for not nudging a dormant client: at least give them one nudge and see where it goes.

How do you nudge a dormant client?

Answer: as simply and directly as possible. This is not the time to air your paranoid fantasies about why the client hasn’t contacted you. If they really don’t want to work with you again, they’ll either tell you that or they won’t respond at all. Don’t borrow trouble here. Just send a quick, friendly e-mail that refreshes the client’s memory, something like:

“Dear Melissa, I hope that all is well with you. I’m just checking in with you, as I really enjoyed working on the German to English translation of your annual report last year. If you have additional translation needs, I’d love to work together again. Thank you and have a great day.”

Or…

“Dear Robert, I hope you’re doing well. In looking over my project records, I noticed that we haven’t worked together in a few months. I always look forward to projects from your agency, and I wondered if you might have anything in the pipeline that would be a good fit for my skills (Japanese to English financial translation). Thank you and have a good day.”

Or…

“Dear Melissa, I hope you’re doing well. I noticed that it’s been about eight months since I did the German to English translation of your annual report. I really enjoyed working on that project, and just wanted to check in and see whether you’ll be needing me for this year’s report? If so, I’m available and I’d be happy to speak with you further about it.”

When you nudge a dormant client, do not…

  • Don’t overdo it. The client will be turned off by a long message that dissects all the possible reasons they haven’t contacted you. “I’m not sure if you were dissatisfied with my work last time…” “I’m not sure if one of the other translators on the project talked negatively about me to you…” “I’m not sure if you’ve found someone cheaper and no longer want to work with me…” Of course we all wonder those things from time to time, but keep it to yourself (or vent to a trusted colleague). When you contact the client, keep it short and positive.
  • Don’t go into too much detail: the client doesn’t need to know your exact availability, or what adjustments you’d like to make if you work on another project with them. First, just remind them that you exist.

Now readers, over to you! I’d love to hear your experiences with nudging dormant clients. Better yet, use this post as a motivator to nudge a dormant client right now!


Corinne McKay

Marketing a multi-pronged business

Prongs and how to use them

As entrepreneurs, many of us have multi-pronged businesses. Some of us work both as agencies and as freelancers. Some of us have lots of slashes in our job titles (“translator-slash-copywriter-slash-editor-slash-language teacher”). I know a freelancer who does dog massage and translation (no kidding). Many of us work in disparate specializations.

The hitch is whether we need a multi-pronged marketing approach as well, or whether just one will work. In an age when many of us already have a multi-channel marketing approach–including a website, blog, Twitter, LinkedIn, e-mail list–duplicating that for multiple businesses is a serious undertaking. Yet, the “slash” approach runs the risk of creating the impression that we do anything and everything that generates income. Not the image we want to convey to clients who want a specialist. What to do?

The key question: how many client bases?

Before you run out and create six websites and a million Twitter accounts, ask yourself this: across all of these prongs, do I have one client base, or two (or more)? If you have one client base, you only need one marketing presence. If you have multiple client bases with no crossover between them, then you need some sort of distinct marketing presence for each one.

Examples:
-If you run an agency, but you do some of the translation or interpreting work yourself, I don’t think you need a separate marketing presence. That’s one client base.
-If you work as a translator and as an interpreter, ask yourself whether the same clients need both services. In my experience, many clients are mono-pronged; they need a translator *or* an interpreter, but not both. You may need two marketing presences.
-If you work as a translator and do training for translators, you definitely need two marketing presences. Translation clients don’t want to learn about translation. They want to hire you so that they don’t have to learn about translation.
-If you translate, edit, and copywrite, that could be one marketing presence. Lots of clients need all of those.

You get the picture. Ask yourself: would the same client need all of these services that I provide? If not, you need to address your client bases separately.

Separate but not overwhelming

Next question: do you need a full-fledged suite of marketing channels for each client base, or can something pared-down do the trick? For translation specializations, no matter how disparate, I think separate pages on your website will work. Unscientifically–because Google will never tell you how their algorithm ranks sites–I think that separate pages with distinct keywords have better SEO performance. So if you translate for law firms and museums, just do separate sub-pages for each one, on the same website. Your website can still fall under the umbrella of “freelance translator,” but with different specializations.

When you get further down the multiple client base pipeline, it’s time to think about separate channels. Example: when I redid my websites about three years ago, I decided it was time to completely separate my website for translation clients from my website for other translators (that’s this one!). There really is no overlap between those two client bases, and I felt that it looked a bit diluted to always be saying, “…and I also do this other thing.” I’ve been very happy with the results, and I’m now planning to differentiate my services for other translators even more, with a new domain name and associated social media presence.

What’s the downside of multiple prongs?

Many people rush to create multi-pronged marketing because they want a separate web presence for every type of client. And it’s true that specialization is appealing to most clients. But it’s important to be realistic about the time, energy, and perhaps money that it takes to create and maintain these distinct online presences. Most of us struggle to maintain just one website, LinkedIn profile, association directory profile, and one set of social media profiles. If you need to talk yourself out of multiple prongs, just take a look at all the Twitter accounts and blogs that haven’t seen a post in five or seven years, and you’ll see what I mean.

My advice: create a completely separate marketing presence only when/if necessary, and only if there is no overlap between the clients who need your various services.

Readers, especially those who run multi-pronged businesses, what’s your experience with this? If you have a separate marketing presence, at what point did you create it, and how is it going?


Corinne McKay

March Marketing Madness: it’s on!

I recently floated the idea of a March Marketing Madness challenge group, and it seems like there’s a need for this type of challenge and accountability group, so…it’s on! The group (no limit on the number of people) will run from March 4-29, and by joining, you’re committing to spend 30 minutes on business development for 20 consecutive business days. Each weekday, you’ll receive an e-mail from me with a marketing task, an explanation of how to complete the task, and information about how this task will benefit your business.

We’ll also do a weekly question and answer session (recorded, not live: the group is open to translators in all time zones), and you’ll have a choice of public/group accountability (optional Slack group), or private accountability (a tracking sheet that I’ll send you). The group is for translators who want to:

  • devote 30 minutes a day to business development for 20 consecutive business days
  • make marketing into a consistent and (hopefully!) less painful habit
  • generate new ideas about how to market more effectively
  • find new clients: agencies or direct clients
  • join a group of other translators pursuing similar goals

The cost is $75 and registration is open until 12 midnight NYC time on March 3. Important note: this is a challenge and accountability group, not a marketing instruction course, and it does not include individual feedback on your work. If you’re looking for marketing instruction or individual feedback, take a look at Getting started as a freelance translator (starts April 1) or Marketing to direct clients (starts July 8).


Corinne McKay

How much marketing is enough?

When you’re actively looking for new clients, how much marketing is enough? I hear this question frequently, from beginning and experienced translators alike: beginners need more work, while experienced translators need better work. I’ll admit that I often give subjective answers, such as “Until you have as much work as you want,” or “Until you’re consistently meeting your target income every month.” Those answers aren’t wrong, but they dodge the issue: “enough” marketing is more, or way more, or waaaaaaaay more than most freelancers are doing.

Like many people who give business advice to freelancers, I frequently hear from people who are discouraged that their marketing efforts aren’t yielding better, or faster results. “I’ve contacted so many potential clients, and I still don’t have enough work.” One metric I often give: during my first year of freelancing, I applied to over 400 translation agencies, and it still took 18 months until I was replacing the income from my previous full-time job. Here’s a better answer; I found this in Jennifer Goforth Gregory’s book on business development for content marketing writers (not an affiliate link, I just liked the book!). If you’re having freelance marketer’s block, you should buy the book, and read Jennifer’s blog. Her posts on topics such as what to do when you lose an anchor client combine great advice about the freelance mindset with do-it-now advice on freelance marketing. I implemented a lot of the suggestions in that post when I simply wanted to make more money although I hadn’t lost any clients (it works!).

In her book, Jennifer puts some numbers on “enough” marketing, while commenting that many freelance writers think of 20-30 contacts as “enough,” when that’s actually very few. She recommends:

  • When you are actively looking for new clients, contact at least two new potential clients every business day.
  • After 50 contacts, you should have gotten at least one positive response (“We’ll keep your information on file.”)
  • After 100 contacts, you should have landed a new client
  • If you aren’t seeing results, adjust. Perhaps you’re contacting the wrong kinds of clients, or perhaps your chosen method isn’t working well, or something else. But if you are seeing those results, just keep swimming
  • If you are in urgent need of work–let’s say you’re new to freelancing, got laid off from your in-house job, or lost a client that provided the majority of your income–you should immediately launch a massive-action marketing plan. Jennifer’s blog features a guest post from freelance writer Holly Bowne, who contacted 139 potential clients in five weeks (using individual letters of introduction, not “Dear Sir or Madam”). If you simply don’t have enough work, you should be marketing yourself in every second you’re not generating income.

I really like Jennifer’s advice, because many translators make the mistake of expecting too great a return on too little marketing effort–feeling that after 25 contacts, they’ll surely be overwhelmed with high-paying, interesting work. Compared to when I started freelancing 16 years ago, two things are certainly true:

  • Translators at the low end of the market have a harder time making a living
  • Translators at the high end of the market face more competition

Back in the day (“the day” being the early 2000s; I started freelancing in 2002), things like meeting direct clients on their own turf, writing informational content for direct clients, and joining direct clients’ professional associations were novel concepts. Now, I talk to translators who run into multiple other translators at client-side conferences. It definitely takes more effort to break through the noise in 2018. If you want a definition of “enough” marketing to help you break through, Jennifer’s is a good one!

Readers, over to you: any thoughts on “enough” marketing?