You’re looking to market your translation services. What’s the most important factor to consider?

The most important factor to consider when marketing translation services is understanding the needs and preferences of your target audience. By knowing who your potential clients are, what they value, and where they seek translation services, you can tailor your marketing efforts to effectively reach and resonate with them.

Defining your target group is the first step in any marketing strategy (no matter what product or service you may sell). The easiest way to determine that would be to look at your client base and find the people who hired you most frequently and think about what characteristics they all share. If you still do not have clients, you can start by imagining your perfect customer: nationality, age, income, education, where this person invests money, how he or she spends time etc. For example: my target group are directors of privately owned, SMEs in Italy which produce and export their products abroad. Ideally, they are interested in investing in Serbia and moving one part of their production to Serbia.

Identifying the niche helps to market the translation service. It's not wrong to be a general translator. However, leveraging your areas of specialization and interests, helps you gain in-depth expertise in technical translation. Each type of technical translation requires its style and technique e.g.: medical, legal. Having a niche also narrows down the target industry, to aim for the ideal clients and solve their problems.

Your skill level is measured by standards for translation and how you compare to your competition, not how you view your experience. Your ideal prospective clients are successful in their businesses - these are you want to hire you. They will have learned about the standards for translation skills and credentials required for their work to be translated. They read the CVs of your competition. So, you should know what they know. That way you can be competitive. Be honest about your skills, especially when you set rates. Treat the prospective client with the same respect you want to receive from them.

Trade exhibitions organised by your target clients can be a good place to be both -- in terms of direct recruiting, as well as networking.

A portfolio is very useful to showcase the work and translation competency. It's very effective to show your ability and professionalism. However, be careful if you're using past client's document/information. Make sure you're not revealing sensitive or trade secret information. Check if you're bound to a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA).

I agree with Syahiera. LinkedIn is a great place to start as you can build your online portfolio and CV here. Other websites to consider are Proz, Translators per hour, Translator's Directory etc. However, having your website would be ideal. Why? Remember when certain social media platforms had certain issues and stopped working for a few hours? Or your friends whose profiles got hacked? Of course, this can also happen to your website (God forbids) but still, everything you have on your website is on your 'platform', not somewhere else.

An online presence gives credibility to your professional image. It also gives assurance to the potential client to 'see' the person behind the service. LinkedIn and Twitter (text-heavy social platforms) are useful for showcasing your linguistic ability, building authority in your industry, generating leads and connecting with other professionals.

Creating your online presence is fundamental. It has been mentioned how useful it is to build a network, and this can be made through social media. But think about it as an opportunity you have to speak about whatever you want: showcase your expertise, talk about your passions and professional/personal interests, give recommendations and pieces of advice, what made you choose this path, your objectives. Be creative! After all, when we buy a product, we all love to read about the values and engagement choices of the company we are buying from. The same goes for freelance translators: now more than ever we have to show we are human, and we can do this by creating our online presence.

Do not forget to put your contact details on your LinkedIn profile (email, at least) so that potential client could reach you. And if you prefer to not do so, keep being an active user on the platform so that you could attend to messages in the inbox.

Since science and technology are the foundation of today's world, online self-promotion can bring in a large global clientele.

I am staggered why on earth so many translators fail to mention the languages they work with in their LinkedIn headline. How are you supposed to be found? Sometimes translators include all sorts of abbreviated titles and credentials, but do our clients understand them?

Optimizing SEO is useful, not just to improve website/blog visibility and ranking. We can also leverage SEO when using social platforms e.g.: Linkedin and freelancer platforms e.g.: ProZ.com to increase visibility and generate leads.

Savoir optimiser son propre site web, c'est aussi une compétence à afficher lors de la traduction de sites web. Apprendre pour soi, c'est aussi mettre ce savoir au profit de ses clients.

I am still learning about SEO and considering hiring SEO experts to optimize my website. If you heard of a good SEO expert or an online SEO course, let me know. :)

Do not underestimate word of mouth in getting opportunities. In my experience, I've received translation jobs from my network. The client trusted the referral and trusted me to do the task (without asking for CV, portfolio, etc). In this case, your network can be a great asset.

Ne jamais hésiter à embêter son entourage : parfois, son prochain client, c'est l'ami(e) d'un(e) ami(e). Pour cela, je peux me lancer dans des stories marrantes sur instagram pour inciter mes proches à relayer l'information ("Eh oui, je suis à la recherche de boulot, mes amis !").

Personnellement, je ne peux pas concevoir une vie sans apprentissage. Je ressens toujours le besoin de me former tous les ans, parfois sur des sujets outre que la traduction. Sachant que la traduction humaine vit des temps assez durs, cela peut être bien d'investir dans une formation liant IA et linguistique, par exemple.

Nunca é demais! N?o pare de aprender e crescer profissionalmente! The day you stop learning, you stop growing. Consequently you slowly become obsolete and irrelevante, soon you will be replaced by new technology and rivals whose ears are tuned to current industry trends.

When it comes to marketing your translation services, you need to find your voice, i.e., the way you want to talk about your services and how you present them to your potential clients, as well as know who they are and where they are.

Building your portfolio is an extremely crucial step. This consists of listing up your fields of expertise, making sure to be as specific as possible. For instance, you could have administration, arts, engineering, law, medicine, shipping, etc. Under law, you could have business law, civil, criminal law and humanitarian law, etc. Through this approach, it should be easier to conduct a needs assessment and lay down the industry-specific phraseology, including the key terms and phrases.