Advertising Your Translation Business: A Guide

Advertising your translation business

Working towards becoming a professional translator takes an incredible amount of skill and determination. You train for years when you first start out and continue maintaining and developing your linguistic and translation skills throughout your working life.

But for many of us, freelance translation is as much about running and marketing a business as actual translation is. In this short guide, you’ll learn how you can best share your translation business across the world, therefore increasing business for you and your company.

Digital Marketing Is Key

There’s no doubt that the best place to start advertising your translation business is in the digital world. With the low price of digital marketing being a real incentive for smaller businesses without a large budget, this is a great place to plant your flag, and to try to use alternative marketing techniques in order to attract different customers to your brand. Of course, it’s important that you advertise and market yourself in different languages to reach a wider audience, so make sure you translate your website and social media pages. Consider using digital marketing services to help you share content on the internet and garner more interest in your brand.

Get Networking

When you and your band of translators are ready and waiting to take business, whether that’s translating business documents, working alongside an embassy, or translating legal contracts, you need to get your company seen and heard. Get networking at industry events related to your specialisms, or languages and cultures in general.

These events might include:

  • Conferences and industry fairs
  • International festivals and sports events
  • International political and diplomatic meetings
  • Meetings that include stakeholders from different countries
  • Meetings with charities that deal with overseas aid or refugees

Calculate which of these events best align with your target clients and invest time in making your presence felt.

Prioritize Sending Direct Emails

Another way to infiltrate the minds and the mailboxes of those most in the need of translation services is to draw up a shortlist of those individuals and companies in your area that may require a translator in the short term. Spend some time working on this, use your creativity to imagine circumstances in which many people around you may require a translator.

Appropriate clients could range from estate agents to adult training centers; the possibilities are endless. Once you have your list, send out a personalized email to each business—you may find that many come back to you with interest.

Client Testimonials Are Worth a Lot

Your satisfied clients can become a great way of advertising your translation business. If they are happy with your service, they will tell others, helping your business to grow through word of mouth. But you can’t just sit there and expect the customers to come to you; you have to take action.

Once you have completed a job to a high standard and have formed a good relationship with your client, ask them to write a short testimonial. These are positive reviews of your services and are really useful for you to put on your website and social media platforms to show potential new customers that you have a proven record of producing high-quality translation. It’s also a good idea to periodically check in with past customers to remind them of your business and hopefully nudge them into hiring you for another project.

We hope these tips have been useful and will help you to formulate ways to grow your translation business over the weeks and months ahead. Good luck!

Want to get reach more clients by having your website translated? Or perhaps you need a reliable translation service to translate your marketing material? BeTranslated is here for you. Get in touch today for more information or a free, no-obligation quote.