Methods of Prospecting in the Translation Industry
As the world economy has been hit very hard and is still recovering very slowly, it is important to not only look into the future, but to also analyze the current situation: How new clients can be found and retained; in other words, Prospecting.
Global recession has become reality and so it has become very important for each business to have a very-well thought out strategy with different plans for finding new clients.
A good way of increasing your market share is to offer your website into several languages. This will automatically lead to an increase in visits to your website as it becomes more appealing to more people from different market segments. The higher your market mix, the better off you are, as your business will not only depend on one market but on several ones. This means that, if there is a stubborn crisis in Europe, your sales from European clients might be quite affected by this; however, your sales numbers might still be strong, as you have gained a new client segment from China, just by offering your website in Chinese.
Another interesting method is to invest in AdWords in order to increase your website traffic. However, please keep in mind that this method is only a short-term solution and the impact is only very slim. AdWords can get quite expensive, as you have to pay by the amount of clicks, and no lead information is guaranteed unless you pair it with a good tracking and marketing system.
Another method for prospecting would be to obtein Company Information Lists for E-mail Campaigns or Cold-Calls. The idea here is to obtain a list by narrowing down a huge database based on different criteria of your own choice. These criteria range from: Sectors (such as Manufacturing Goods and Manuals, Pharmaceutical, Medical/Health Sciences, Chemical and Nuclear, Utilities, Printing and Edition, Banking/Insurance, etc.). Turnover (such as “from 2 million to 1 billion dollars”), Share of Export Sales (such as minimum 500K dollars in revenue outside their home country) and Number of Employees. Each business can assess their own criteria to obtain their desired information about their prospect clients. This enables you to filter out the prospects you think do not suit your business profile from the ones you think can be “Stars”.
All the best of luck to increase your business!
This is the time to really get creative and think outside the box. Offering Spanish translation, or another language, is a great way to increase your customer base.