Language services are more in demand than ever, which is a logical consequence of our increasingly globalized world. Current reports suggest the worldwide language services market will be worth nearly $60 billion in 2024, with a projected annual growth rate of around 7% by 2030.
Yet, when marketers want to promote language services, they come across myriad challenges. Here’s a breakdown of those hurdles and how to jump through the challenges of marketing language services and lead your language service business towards a sweet success in this growing – but certainly not easy to market – industry.
Know Your Markets
Niches and Customers
Language service providers operate in a variety of markets and cover numerous specializations. Global enterprises, media outlets, law firms, hospitals, software startups, private customers – you name it – all need language services. Each of these markets comes with its own needs and preferences. For example, an 8-figure multinational may need full-scale localization of its website in multiple languages, whereas a law firm may require a 1-page court-ready legal translation.
Local vs. International
There is a sea of differences between the language service needs of international companies and those of local businesses. Global businesses require language services that enable them to spread their message in a uniform brand voice, while local businesses need services that help them better reach their local community. You have to fully understand these differences to tailor your marketing efforts accordingly.
Cultural Considerations
When it comes to cultural nuances in the LSP industry, the saying what’s good for the goose is good for the gander seldom works. What applies to one country or region doesn’t necessarily apply to another – and this adds a layer of complexity to the already difficult task of marketing language services. Cultural nuances affect every facet of your marketing strategy and must be properly addressed to ensure high-quality, professional services.
The Biggest Obstacles to Marketing Language Services
Awareness and Understanding
Lack of awareness and understanding among potential customers can seriously impede marketing language services. For example, many people fail to understand the difference between translation and localization, or the importance of hiring human translators (whose work can now be AI-enhanced) instead of using just machine translation tools, without human post-editing and verification of MT outputs.
Solution: The best way to overcome this is through educational content. Consistently produce and share informative blogs, infographics, newsletters, white papers, and webinars that offer an in-depth look at your different services and demonstrate the perks of working with professional LSPs. Show how subpar language can negatively affect businesses and how hiring professional linguists works wonders for customer satisfaction, market reach and other measurable business goals.
Standing Out from the Crowd
There’s fierce competition in the language services industry, to say the least. The majority of LSPs offer similar, if not the same services, so distinguishing your business in such a thick market is as difficult as it gets.
Solution: Take some time to brainstorm and craft a unique selling proposition (USP) that differentiates your business from the rest. Perhaps you have established subject matter expertise in a specific industry, have a rigorous, foolproof quality assurance process, or use state-of-the-art tech solutions. Whatever the USP, make sure to underscore it in your marketing collateral.
Quality Assessment
A great many of your potential customers can perceive hiring professional linguists to be a tricky business. They might be concerned about translation accuracy and even question the overall usefulness of this type of service, particularly when it comes to sensitive content.
Solution: Establish trust by providing client testimonials and case studies that prove your success working with other clients in the field. Also, make sure you get relevant certifications and prominently display them on your website, social media, marketing materials, and business email signatures.
Adoption of New Technologies
Language services is one of the fastest-growing industries today, with new technological developments happening as we speak (AI, NLP, machine learning, etc.). Following (and understanding!) all these developments is often overwhelming, but only by doing so can LSPs stay ahead of the curve.
Solution: Always be on the lookout for cutting-edge tech relevant to your industry, and invest in solutions that will scale your work. Explain their benefits to your clients, letting them know how new tools will allow you to provide better, more efficient services. An accurate online translation tool, translation device, translation project management software, interpreting app, and sales automation tool, can all show your commitment to leveraging technology to deliver service excellence.
Pricing
Many translation companies struggle to find the right balance between competitive pricing and maintaining quality standards. More often than not, clients fall into the trap of choosing the cheapest per-word rate, which, in most cases, leads to poor quality.
Solution: Implement tiered pricing structures that appeal to different customer segments and budget ranges. Justify the value of your services and present your clients with a cost-benefit analysis to demonstrate the importance of investing in professional language services. Naturally, if you have integrated AI into your services (for instance, human post-editing of AI-generated translations), make that clear to your customers and offer lower prices for this type of service than for a fully human one.
Streamline Your Efforts for Marketing Language Services
Content Marketing
Consistently develop valuable, well-researched and properly optimized content (following the best SEO practices) that addresses the concerns and misgivings of your clients and establishes your company as an authority in the LSP field. Attract potential clients by publishing blogs, infographics, white papers, eBooks, and videos that explain how your services can make their lives easier.
Technical SEO
Make sure that your website is technically healthy to improve search rankings of your target keywords (i.e. your primary services) and attract more organic traffic, as this leads to increased quotes and conversions. When done right, technical SEO ensures proper indexing of your pages, making them easier to find for the people searching for language services. It involves optimizing site architecture, speed, images, title tags, meta descriptions, URLs, and mobile-friendliness. Also, performing regular SEO audits allows you to promptly address all issues as they appear (broken links, redirects, crawl errors,…).
Offsite Brand Building
Search for link placement opportunities on high-quality, relevant sites to further boost your organic traffic and search rankings. Offsite SEO allows you to disseminate your content extensively, and the backlinks that you build can be seen as a vote of confidence, increasing the visibility and searchability of your important pages and the entire website. Mind you, avoid getting links from LQ or irrelevant websites as this can result in your website being penalized and deindexed from search results.
Social Media
Actively engage on social media with industry influencers and potential clients alike. Share quality content as blog entries and webinars and comment on relevant posts to showcase your expertise. Create polls and use captivating visuals to enhance engagement and organic impressions. You can also consider social media advertising to raise brand awareness.
Networking
Showcase your services at industry events and conferences and use these opportunities to network with both other LSPs and potential clients. Fostering relationships with them can result in new partnerships and referrals.
PPC
Use targeted PPC ads to expand your reach to new audiences. This type of digital advertising can be effective for immediate conversions from audiences who are actively searching for your target keywords. Unlike SEO, which yields more sustainable results, especially in the long run, PPC can only be effective when you’re paying for it. As soon as you stop, your sponsored ads will stop showing. For this reason, you’d be best advised to use the mighty combo of SEO+PPC – if your budget allows it, naturally.
Social Proof
Use social proof as a powerful tool for building credibility and trust with your (potential) clients. You can collect client reviews and testimonials and create case studies and use them in your promo materials. In addition, promote successful partnerships with renowned clients and industry leaders.
Client Support
Offer ongoing support to your clients to nurture long-term, meaningful relationships with them. Consider offering free audits and consultations to potential clients to demonstrate your expertise and show how you can address their needs. Also, educational resources such as tutorials, guides and FAQs can all help your clients truly understand and appreciate the value of professional language services.
Put the Wind in Your Marketing Sails
As you can see, marketing language services is certainly not smooth sailing, as it involves different challenges, from standing out in a saturated market to raising awareness among potential clients. There is a lot of go-around in understanding these obstacles and developing sure-fire tactics to overcome them, allowing language businesses to grow and develop. Constantly keeping a close eye on emerging industry trends and adjusting your marketing strategy accordingly is crucial for sustainable success in the long run.
0 Comments