Marketing a service
As a professional, how can you explain the value of what
you do to a potential client? Holly Behl investigates
H
Holly Behl is a
Spanish>English
translator and
interpreter
based in Dallas,
Texas. Comments
welcome:
contact@hollybehl.
com.
ow do you tell a prospective
client about the intangible
benefit you will provide as a
translator? Marketing a service
presents specific challenges that are
quite different from those associated
with marketing a product, but here
are a few keys for success. If we
accept our role as service providers
and concentrate our business
strategies accordingly, as freelancers,
translation companies or cooperatives,
we will be better equipped to improve
our client base.
We are engaged in the part of the
economy known as the tertiary sector
(the primary sector being related to
extraction of prime materials from the
earth, the secondary sector being
manufacture of finished goods). In
the US approximately 80% of the
population is employed in service
industries; in the UK it is about 76%.
At a restaurant, for example, you
don’t pay the cost of the food but
rather the cost of contracting other
people to source ingredients, prepare
the food, and clean up after you.
Likewise, your clients are paying you,
the expert, to use the methods
you’ve developed in research, reading
and writing, to find a personalised
solution that will allow them to meet
their goals for the text concerned.
Yet language service providers
can feel unsure of their position in
the equation, and this puts us at a
disadvantage. While we understand
that translation is not a commodity,
we sometimes manage our business
as if we were providing a product.
It doesn’t help that the industry
standard is to price estimates and
invoices according to a count of
physical words, lines, or pages, and
that we turn over a ‘final product’ at
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the end of the process. It’s easy to
make the mistake of marketing
translation as if it were a product,
since people understand products
more easily. You can discuss the
features of a product and show how
it’s worked for others. The buyer can
try out the product before they buy it,
examine its quality, and feel confident
in the decision to purchase knowing
they can return it if they don’t like it.
But this tendency also contributes to
the culture of handing translation
projects to the lowest bidder. For the
same reason, clients sometimes ask
for a document to be ‘converted’ to
another language, as if it were simply
a matter of knowing the equivalent of
each word in the second language.
A translation is much more than an
end-product, and it is essential to
communicate this to our potential
clients so they feel assured of the
value we provide.
Combating uncertainty
The first key to marketing a service is
to know that your prospective client
feels very uncertain. If she’s done her
homework, she’s read three or four
websites of freelancers and agencies,
all claiming to be the leader in
translations, to provide services by
native speakers, possess a variety of
unintelligible acronyms representing
qualifications, and emphasise on-time
‘It’s easy to make the
mistake of marketing
translation as if it were
a product, since people
understand products
more easily’
delivery and accuracy. Marcela Jenney
writes in her blog that ‘translation is
seen by many as a commodity for
the simple reason that everybody is
focusing on the same “attributes”.’1
If your potential client doesn’t know
to ask for some other specific
information, her only comparison
point will be price. If she hasn’t done
her homework, she has selected you
at random and dialled you for an
estimate, and her only comparison
point will be price. Faced with buying
a mystery service from a stranger for
the first time, your client wants to
minimise her risk. She doesn’t know
you, she doesn’t know if you will do
a good job for her, she doesn’t know
if you will do anything at all. You might
even make her look bad by returning
an inadequate or late translation. So,
all else being equal, she looks at
prices and minimises her risk.
The only way to pull your way out
of the price pit is to concentrate on
easing your client’s apprehension.
The most important aspect of the
sale is the relationship she feels with
you. In Korean business culture, the
word for this is kibun (KEE-boon),
loosely translated as a general
positive feeling (along the lines of
other-facedness). Koreans emphasise
the importance of attending to the
kibun of clients or business partners
before attempting to make any
deals. More than knowing that you
accumulate hundreds of continuing
education credits a year or that
you’ve presented at industry
conferences, your client needs to
trust you. The same rules apply to
client-provider trust as to any other
relationship, so listen actively to
identify and address specific needs.
Speak in a way that makes you seem
open and accessible. Be honest
when you see something that would
keep you from meeting expectations.
Be helpful in providing the information
she needs in order to make the best
decision. Make her laugh and feel
relaxed. Even if it turns out you are
not a good fit for this particular
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30/4/10 5:48:31 pm
marketing
project, your potential client is sure to
remember the positive emotions
associated with your conversation
when another project comes along or
when her colleague asks for a referral.
Make her feel at ease, and you’ve
done 90% of the work.
Managing your online image
The apprehension is especially acute
when a prospective client hears about
you online instead of in person. The
websites of translators and agencies
are frighteningly similar, so anything
that arouses suspicion will have him
clicking back to peruse the search
results further. Fortunately, there are
several tactics that can help allay his
doubts. First, consider how you come
across on your site. Especially if you
write your own content, your text
will express your personality and any
lack of enthusiasm towards the tasks
involved in maintaining an online
presence. If hiring a copywriter to
write your content from scratch is not
possible, consider hiring one to review
your content and offer advice to make
it sound more inviting. And hire a
professional translator for any material
you want to publish in your non-native
source languages. Another tool that
online buyers rely on when making
decisions is reviews from other
buyers, but the glowing testimonials
on websites are suspected of rigging.
To assuage the client’s fears, consider
including testimonials that talk about
how well you understand your
limitations or how you resolved a
problem. I have a hard time believing
that none of a company’s clients have
ever had a problem; I am much more
likely to trust a company when the
clients mention a problem that came
up and how happy they were with
the company’s speedy and gracious
resolution. Add your business to review
sites like Google Local Business,
tipped.co.uk, or Yelp, and encourage
your clients to leave reviews. You may
even want to provide a loosely
controlled online review page on
your own website, where clients
can rate you on different aspects of
your service and leave feedback.2
Finding your USP
The second key to successfully
marketing a service is differentiating
your business from competitors.
How will a prospective client ever
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differentiate between you and the
competition if you don’t clearly
express what makes you unique?
Do you even know what makes you
unique? It’s nearly impossible to be
more highly specialised than all of
your competitors, or more highly
educated, or offer the very fastest
turnaround times or the most
competitive rates. So selling based
on these attributes is a cheap solution
with a low return on investment. As
Seth Godin puts it, ‘there’s a lot of
pressure for freelancers to fit in,
conform and comply. It seems easier
to generate new business that way.
That’s not really true. It’s easier to
become an easily-described
commodity that way.’3 Instead, figure
out why your current clients choose
you. Are you ‘a London-based
freelance translator’ or are you ‘a
fourth-generation London translator’?
‘Don’t try to hide your
size; it won’t take your
prospective client long to
notice that the “CEO” he
met in a café is also
answering phones and
providing estimates’
Although these statements offer no
real qualifications, at first glance the
second statement causes a much
more positive impact. The reader
instantly feels the second statement
refers to a translator who is deeply
rooted both in the London area and
in translation, while the first statement
still leaves a fog in the mind’s eye.
Translation companies offer one
set of benefits to clients, while
freelancers offer a different set. Maybe
your translation company can offer
the multiple target languages and
management expertise for large
projects, while maintaining a close
relationship between each client and
his or her contact in the company.
Advertise that, and be that. Maybe
as a freelancer you’ve partnered with
a desktop publishing professional to
offer a bundled service. Isolate the
ways that you add value for your
clients, and flaunt them. Interestingly,
gender may also affect how you
should slant your sales pitch.
According to a recent study, men
feel more loyalty to an establishment
or company, while women feel more
loyalty towards the relationship
established with a contact at the
company.4 Either way, few people
will remember all your qualifications or
the details of your scrupulous editing
process, so offer something to hold
onto that’s meaningful to them. Your
prospective clients will notice and your
current client base will remember.
One important distinguishing factor
among language service providers
is size. According to polls published
by ITI, most members are either
freelancers or involved in small
companies. Don’t try to hide your
size; it won’t take your prospective
client long to notice that the ‘CEO’
he met in a café is also answering
phones and providing estimates. Be
real, and de-emphasise your size by
emphasising other things. I’ve seen
so many websites for freelancers
and small companies with large text
proclaiming themselves as the
‘industry leader’ in their type of service
that it’s actually illogical to believe that
all of them are telling the truth. Unless
you have some specific revenue
figures to show your leadership
position in the market or some
evidence that all your clients are A-list
companies that everyone knows
about, few people will buy the inflated
position you’re trying to sell. Besides,
if you were really the premier translation
company, shouldn’t your prospective
client have already heard about you?
Essentially, marketing your service
is all about positioning yourself in a
way that is convincing. Don’t make
your client suspicious or insecure.
Instead, make him feel that he quite
brilliantly discovered a gem of a
company. Then all that’s left is to
provide your services in a way that
convinces him he was correct.
Jenney, Marcela. ‘Are you a professional
translator? If so, do not lower your rates.’
Marcela Jenney’s Blog. 3/7/2010. Web.
15/3/2010.
2
Jeremiah Owyang. ‘How To Evolve Your
Irrelevant Corporate Website.’ 29/5/2007.
Web Strategy. 20/3/2010.
3
Godin, Seth. ‘When a Freelancer Changes
the Game.’ 20/3/2010. Seth’s Blog. 21/3/2010.
4
Bhargava, Rohit. ‘The Surprising Gender
Difference in Customer Loyalty.’ 12/3/2010.
Influential Marketing. 12/3/2010.
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