Which marketing tool has brought you the most clients? Email marketing, social media marketing, promotion at trade fairs, cold calling, word of mouth? As the statistic shows in one poll, 50% of people voted for word of mouth. They regarded word of mouth as the most effective way in promoting translation services. 35% of people worked well in email marketing.

Social medial marketing as a new tool in recent years, about 10% of people have received good results in this method. Only 5% of people would like to promote translation business at trade fairs. And no one voted for cold calling.

It seems that word of mouth trumps all other marketing methods. Word of mouth just letting people knows you are the specialist in translation business. Actually it should be always a combination of hard work, quality of service, innovative approach in finding clients.

This is really an effective one as satisfied clients who spread the word about quality service will bring new ones continuously. Like planting seeds, they will grow; spread and finally you will get some rewards. The influence of recommendation cannot be ignored.

As long as your service is stratifying, word of mouth works well all the time. Email marketing as the cheapest way in spreading services in global market. Generally the method is to send promotional letters and company brochure to target customers (or to send all the cultural organizations who likely to be interested in your services).

Then put strength to optimize emails and try to catch the eyes of potential customer in three seconds when he/she read the email. Like that way the client-base is slowly building itself. And to build a customer base that will regularly supply you with jobs enough for your capacity. It is also a task which in itself requires hard work.

Moreover, it’s important that you should be professional all the time and Provoke Interests for potential customers. Don’t limit your customer base to only a few customers, but saddle up for at least 500-1000 with a solid global spread.

That way you will have the possibility to receive job offers from all regions of the world. Even if our planet is pretty globalized now, we can often experience that some regions are more prosperous than others.

One more thing; deliver good quality on time and adapt to the price levels for your language pairs is the key to success. As for social media marketing, most people who applied this method said they have already got a great deal of jobs from direct clients, they use social media to build and start their own public relations campaign to inform potential clients of their existence and create or enhance company professional image, participate in meaningful ways in discussions and activities, offer up the expertise and skills, start the marketing campaign.

Read Also: Marketing Translation and the Advent of Transcreation

Concerned about promotion at trade fairs, this method is not widely applied in translation industry. Marketing people are likely to join local chamber of commerce and some translator’s association, attend meetings and conferences, and get a feel for their membership which will bring some potential clients for them.

But everything has it pros and cons. One of SNS members said, “A word of mouth brings you the best works, but a constant tailor-made marketing according to the actual situation is giving for best results. Self-promotion and getting business is a skill you have to learn if you want success. I didn’t fill the test, because I strongly disagree with most of the options.

You have to shop-around to search for the needs of your services instead of just advertise yourself. Don’t be lazy, invest your time in Direct Marketing, your spare time brings better results than paid adverts, or bothering people, companies with services they do not need at the moment.

E-mail is spam, and everyone know how cheap is to spam, telephone is deep intrusion into someone’s privacy. Social media? It depends what you do and how you do it.”

I think the most effective way is to combine things whenever possible. Each marketing tool will complement each other. All in all, more effective tools in translation businesses still need us to find out.