You must cast a wide net when marketing your freelance translation business.
You must cast a wide net when marketing
your freelance translation business.
Simply creating a beautiful, professional website is not enough! Building the
website doesn’t mean that potential clients will automatically find you and the
work will start flowing in. So how should you market your website? Should you
be on websites such as UpWork, Craigslist, and Yelp? Let’s have a look at the
pros and cons of these options.
Where
Do Potential Clients Look for Translators?
As translators, it’s important to remember that most people know
absolutely nothing about translation, and of course, this is not their fault.
So, what would a potential client do, and where would they go, when they’re
looking to hire a translator? Well, they’ll probably look in the same places
that they look to hire other types of service providers. It may not be too
appealing thinking that your client found both his gardener and his translator
on Yelp, but the fact is that many translators do advertise on Yelp, and if your client
is looking on Yelp then there’s every possibility that you’ll be the translator
they find - or at the very least, you’ll be one of the translators they find. So, it
doesn’t matter how we feel personally about this type of marketing strategy,
what does matters is this: ‘Where are our potential clients looking for
translators?’
Customer
Reviews Are Important!
Another advantage of advertising on UpWork and Yelp is that they
both allow and encourage customer reviews. Many people searching the Internet
for products and services are looking for websites with customer reviews so
they can determine other people’s thoughts and ideas on specific purchases
they’ve made. Good online reviews inspire trust in potential clients. Most of
us today, when looking for a service provider, regardless of whether it’s a
medical practitioner or a translator, are searching online for user reviews
before we consider employing someone’s services. And it’s true that, when we
read positive reviews, we feel inspired to continue with our purchase.
When it comes to your website, it still a good idea to add
testimonials to your translation website, but all potential clients will know
that these have been placed by you because they are great reviews from your
favorite clients. However, online reviews create a different story: they serve
to provide the reader with a more realistic picture of the product or service
on offer.
These
Sites Have Great Advertising Power
Another advantage of marketing your translation services on these websites is that you can take
advantage of their advertising power and their very high search engine
rankings. It’s for this reason that we also believe that all freelance
translators should have a profile on LinkedIn. It doesn’t cost anything to
create a basic account, and when someone does a Google search for a translator
or interpreter in a specific city in the United States, it’s highly likely that
these sites will rank ahead of any individual freelance translator site.