S03E19: Strategic LSP Marketing

Natalie Ayers 

Thank you, Sultan. I’m happy to be here.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Well, we finally made it happen. I know we’ve been going back and forth for a while, but let’s get started. Please introduce yourself and tell us what you do. I know a lot of people know you in the community and they love you, but for those that are listening to you for the first time, can you just tell them what you do and about your background?

 

Natalie Ayers 

Sure. Thanks. Yeah, so my name is Natalie Ayers. I am the director of marketing for United Language Group. I’ve been with United Language Group for a little over a year. ULG is one of the leading LSPs in the industry. We serve a variety of organizations around the world in manufacturing, healthcare, life sciences, government, legal, a lot of different industries, and we provide translation, interpretation, and localization for those organizations.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Before ULG, where were you involved, what were you doing? Were you still in marketing or are there other things that you used to do?

 

Natalie Ayers 

Yeah, so I’ve been in marketing my whole career, and this is actually my second time being in the localization space. So, between 2013 – 2017, I was the director of marketing for a boutique translation agency based here in Portland, Oregon, where I live, called VIA. And VIA actually got acquired by United Language Group shortly after I left. So, I took a little break from localization, went to work for a digital marketing agency based here in Portland, and then spent a little bit of time at an ice cream company based here in Oregon. And then when VIA got acquired by ULG and Nic McMahon, who’s our CEO now, took over, he reached out to me because they had an opening for a director of marketing position, and I jumped at the opportunity to come back and work with him.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Fascinating, and how has your experience been so far on and off with localization, especially in the context of marketing?

 

Natalie Ayers 

Yeah, I mean, it’s interesting to me. You’ve obviously been in this industry consistently over time, so I’d be curious to see what you think. But from my perspective, based on when I was with VIA versus where I am now with ULG, there’s been a big shift in the industry. So, when I started at VIA, a lot of the work that we were doing on the marketing side was around creating demand for the need for localization. So really trying to explain to potential buyers why they might need to translate their content or have interpretation to support their diverse audiences. And I think over the last couple of years in particular, there’s been such an emphasis on diversity, equity, and inclusion, and global growth, that those two factors, probably other factors as well, but have flipped from what I see. We don’t have to convince people of the need for our services so much anymore, and it’s more about understanding how we can help them optimize that process or how we can help them get started on that process if they haven’t done it before. That’s been one of the biggest shifts that I’ve seen.

 

I think some of the other things too is when I was at VIA, it was still kind of the beginning of content marketing. And so, writing an e-book or hosting a webinar, those were still kind of new ideas. And now everyone’s doing that, right? So, there’s a lot more content out there, and buyers are bombarded with potential information. So, shifting how we think about connecting with our buyers, we still do create a lot of content, but how can we create content that stands out from what our competitors are talking about?

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Right. And you asked me about my experience. Well, when I joined in 2006, there was still marketing. People would market, but it was more anticipated. Lots of translation companies assumed that anybody who needs translation will come to us, will find us. Everyone was bragging about how great their translation memory system is and how many people they have, how many offices they have. Nobody really at the time marketed to clients’ outcomes, needs basically, in terms of what problem they’re trying to solve and how translation will do that. But now I see that, and particularly with ULG, when marketing has become more professionalized, and things have changed. As you said, now we’re trying to not just educate people because most people know what translation is, but we are trying to tell them how we are the best fit for them.

 

But let’s zoom in on our topic, on today’s topic, which is your area of expertise. And we’ve been talking about it already. Marketing is a critical component of doing business today. But in our industry, it seems to be all over the place, as I was just mentioning, and it’s still not consistent. Can you give me an overview of what is going on with localization marketing in general?

 

Natalie Ayers 

Yeah. I mean, I think part of the reason why you might see that it feels like it’s all over the place is because there are, what, 30,000 localization companies from individual contributors to super agencies, right? So, everybody has different resources. Everybody has different experience. It’s probably part of the reason why you’ve seen the evolution too, right? Because a lot of the smaller founder-started organizations have merged together. And so now they have more resources and they’re able to bring in people with more marketing experience, right? Whereas before, they were doing the translation, they were doing the project management, they were doing all of that themselves. So, bringing in more of that marketing expertise.

 

I mean, another thing that I think I’m seeing in localization space in particular, Sultan, and I, again, would be curious to hear what you think about this, but especially even just listening to the interview with Thomas, right? Traditionally, I think there were either the organizations who thought, well, people will just find us, right? Because we’re good at what we do. Or most localization companies have been very outbound sales-driven, right? So heavy on prospecting, calling people, sending them emails, trying to find the potential buyers and reach out to them. And what I’m seeing, and this is probably partially because I’m a marketer and so I’m biased, right? But like we were talking about before, people are inundated with content and pitches. I don’t know about you, but I get hit with at least 5, 10, 15 new people trying to connect with me every day on LinkedIn to sell me something that I may or may not want, right? And people are working from home now. So, if they’re getting cold calls, those are coming through on their cell phones. Cell phones are set up to, mine is, mine just automatically silences calls from numbers that it doesn’t recognize, right? So, I’m not answering my phone on a daily basis. And people have gotten smart that when they download an eBook, the next step is someone’s going to call them, right? So, they ignore that call. So, I think a big shift that I’m seeing is that we need to find a way to enable the buyers to find us, right? When they’re looking for us, make it really clear how we can help them and create that opening for dialogue and conversation to have with the sales teams. But it’s shifting from more of that outbound push, push, push to an inbound perspective.

 

I think the other thing that’s really interesting in my mind around marketing in the localization space, there’s a lot of parallels in my mind between marketing and localization, because it’s all about good communication, right? And so, what I was trying to say is that from a marketing perspective, we’re seeing a shift from marketing just being a thing that people kind of understood that you had to pay for, right? You need some collateral, you need a logo, you just got to pay for it, right? To marketing being able to help influence the actual pipeline of the organization, the revenue of the organization, tying back to the organization’s KPIs and objectives at a broader level, and really helping to enable sales in that way. And I’ve seen similar shifts with localization, where it used to be, first we had to convince people that they needed it, and then people kind of got to the point where they’re like, okay, we need it, but we just have to pay for it, so we just have to budget for it. So, we’re going to try and get the cost down as much as possible, right? And now I think what we’re starting to see, and this is a big focus for us at ULG, is that buyers are looking to show the ROI of their localization, just like executives are looking to see the ROI of marketing initiatives.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

So, let’s talk about basics of marketing here, because in this podcast, we’re trying to educate people within the industry, and to them, marketing is many different things. So why don’t you explain to us, Natalie, what is the role of marketing function in LSP? I know it might be different in different sizes of organizations, but in your opinion, your size of organization, what is the marketing function?

 

Natalie Ayers 

Yeah, so I think at a core, the goal is to help create relationships between the potential buyers and the brand, right? And we do that through really understanding who is the target buyer that we’re going after: What do they care about? Where do they get their information? And then providing content that aligns with that. And it’s almost like a Venn diagram, right, where you have, here’s your buyer and their needs and their pain points, like you were talking about before. And here’s what we offer, and how do they intersect, and making sure that that’s super clear and that it’s easy for them to find that information when they’re looking for it and they’re ready for it.

 

In terms of objectives and KPIs, we think about this from a kind of a four-pronged approach, for lack of a better word. So, we think about, okay, brand awareness is really important for us, making sure that we have a clear, cohesive brand identity and that we’re visible in all of those places that our buyers are looking for us, so we’re top of mind. And then lead generation, so driving new potential customers through the website or events or social media that our sales team can then have a one-on-one conversation with. And then sales enablement, so when those leads do come in, making sure our sales team is equipped with the right messaging, the right collateral to facilitate those conversations effectively.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

That’s an interesting way of conducting marketing. I guess that’s a professional way of doing it, but then you see people just post a poster on their website or some social media site, and assume people will read that and call them, and then they don’t see results and they’re upset about that, which is a nice segue to my next question. There is still this belief that LSPs are good at what they do, as I mentioned earlier, and they don’t need marketing. So, it’s more like, you know, inbound. I just got a website and people must find me and contact me. Is that notion still true? Do you still believe that people think in those lines?

 

Natalie Ayers 

It’s interesting. I’m going to pivot this a little bit, and then we can kind of come back to it. But one of the things that you mentioned is this sort of idea of what I refer to as random acts of marketing. We talked a little bit about this before, that my team has grown exponentially over the last year. We went from four people to now 12 people, and we serve a variety of different industries, a variety of different buyers. And so even with that sort of thoughtful approach that we were talking about before, that strategic approach to marketing, we run the risk of getting sucked into random acts of marketing as well, where we’re like, oh, we just need to put up a blog post about this, right? Or we need to put out a social post about this, or we need to create a sell sheet on this particular topic. And that, I mean, that’s going to happen. But without a strategic approach and a thoughtful, deliberate approach, it’s unlikely that people are going to find those one-off items that you’re talking about, right? Even a website, I mean, we have a website with hundreds and hundreds of pages. We have blog content that goes back to like 2016.  And we still are constantly looking at how can we optimize for search engine optimization, right? So, making sure that when people type in translation services, they see ULG in that first page. It requires consistent systems, processes, evaluations. So far, I haven’t seen like you just magically put something up and then people can find you.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Marketing also depends on what you’re selling. In this case, we were selling translation services. Now, as you mentioned, there are 30,000 or so language service providers globally. How do you create differentiation if everyone is selling the same thing?

 

Natalie Ayers 

Yeah, it’s so interesting. And sometimes we’re even working together, right? We were talking about this before. There might be opportunities for organizations to partner. And we’re often working with similar linguists and buyers. So how do we separate ourselves or differentiate ourselves? I think there’s a few different ways that brands can do this. And it kind of just depends on how your brand is set up, right? So, it could be a particular specialization, so maybe you specialize in a particular industry. Maybe you specialize in a particular type of localization. So maybe it’s app development or game development, right? Or you specialize in a particular approach to how you handle localization projects, right? Or maybe it’s a particular technology that you’ve set up that can help improve the localization space. So, it’s really about understanding sort of kind of that Venn diagram that we were talking about before, right? Who is your target audience, because it can be tempting to go after everybody, but that’s hard to do really successfully. So honing in on who are you really trying to work with, and then what are their needs, and then what can you offer them that’s different than maybe some of your competitors.

 

For ULG, we’re really focused on outcomes. I know you talked to Nic a few months ago about this, right? So, it’s really for us, it’s about our process and how we approach new client projects or even existing client projects. We start with the end in mind, right? So, what is it that we’re really trying to accomplish with this localization project? Who do we need to communicate with in order to accomplish that? What language do they speak? What are the cultural nuances that we need to keep in mind, right? Because it’s more than just translating from one language to another. It’s also understanding that cultural adaptation or culturalization, and then sort of working backwards with those elements in mind to get to that outcome. So, for us, we’re really trying to differentiate around our particular approach and process.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Let’s talk about process here, and just like marketing itself, it covers so many different areas. There’s no clear distinction in some LSPs between marketing and sales. In some cases, it’s the same organization or the same people handling both of them. Now, please explain why they are separate, why these roles should be separate and handled differently.

 

Natalie Ayers 

Yeah, I mean, this is an interesting question. I don’t know if you’re familiar with Chris Walker. He owns a company called Refine, I think it’s Refine Labs. I’ll find out and circle back with you. He’s very active on LinkedIn, and he talks a lot about this and sort of the difference between marketing and sales.

 

At ULG, we’re all under the same team, right? So, we report up to a chief revenue officer. So, there’s a lot of alignment between the two organizations. And what Chris talks about is that it’s not so much about like sales versus marketing, but it’s more about, kind of like thinking about soccer, what we call soccer in the US, right? Or like football, what everybody else refers to as football around the world. And you have the different players on the team. So, I think of marketing as sort of the midfield, right? So, we’re catching the ball as it’s coming down the field, and we’re driving it forward to the sales team so that they can ideally have an opportunity to shoot on the goal. So, we’re all on the same team, we’re all moving toward the same objective, which is to drive pipeline for the organization. But we play different roles within that process, right?

 

So, kind of going back to what we were talking about before, I see marketing as really trying to set up the opportunity to create those connections for the sales team to then come in and have those consultative conversations and help guide the buyers to the right services or products that are going to help them solve their ultimate goal. So, I don’t necessarily see them as different, I see them as against each other, separate, but I see them as together and integrated.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

They complement each other.

 

Natalie Ayers 

Yeah.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Natalie, LSPs seem to be saying the same thing. They all want to do the same thing. We talked earlier about differentiation, but I’ve heard this in conferences, I’ve seen this myself, they’re almost always trying to sell quality of the translation to their customers and their marketing actually quite clearly shows that. What’s wrong with that approach? Why are they doing it wrong?

 

Natalie Ayers 

Yeah, I mean, we’ve been guilty of this too, right? And we’ve found through our data analyzation that when we talk about things like quality or accuracy, it just doesn’t resonate with our buyers. I think the way we see it is that quality and accuracy should be a given, right? We’re all trying to do a good job. I don’t know anyone in the localization space who’s deliberately not trying to do a good job, right? We all want to put out a good product for our customers. And so, quality should just be sort of a given in my, like a check the box, right? So, I think it’s important to talk about when you get to that stage with potential buyers about your process for handling quality, right? So, you’ve got your QA checks and you’ve got your metrics to measure. It’s also subjective, right? What you might think of as quality versus what I might think of as quality could be two totally different things, right? Or we might be trying to talk about soccer like we were before, and I’m using the word soccer and you’re using the word football. And they’re both words that could work for that situation, but which one is the right one, is potentially subjective. So, I think it’s hard to speak to that as a like 100% measurement as well. And then because of that, like at our organization, we talk a lot about understanding the brands that we work with, their voice, tone, and style, right? So, it’s less about quality and more about helping them speak in their voice in another language. And so, we have processes in place to help support that.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Localization and translation events are full of LSP ads. You just came back from LocWorld and you probably saw that. They’re literally trying to show how great they are and why people should do business with them. I mean, I can understand that they’re trying to prove to the world that they’re best at what they do, but I feel that they are advertising to each other. They use terminologies such as TM and MT and you know how there’s L10N and so on. Why is that the case? Why are they advertising or giving that message to each other as opposed to their customers? You just mentioned speaking the customer’s voice.

 

Natalie Ayers 

Yeah, I think there’s potentially two things happening there. One is that whenever you’re part of an industry, that industry has its own language. So those acronyms that you were talking about, the jargon. So, part of, for me coming from not being in localization for the last few years and trying to get immersed back into it, part of that process has been having to relearn the language of localization and to show that I fit in this world as well by speaking that language. So, I think that’s part of it, right? It’s just, we’re here, we’re all part of it, we’ve learned the language and that’s how we communicate internally.

 

I think the other thing that is really top of mind for me and goes back to the customer voice piece that you were talking about is that we forget that the customer is the hero. I really, I don’t know if you’re familiar with the StoryBrand framework, but they talk a lot about establishing the customer as the hero of their own journey and that the brand is the guide, right? And I think we have a tendency; it’s just sort of probably human nature and also just branding to think about it from our perspective and making us the hero as the brand or the person. And it takes a different mindset to take a step back and say like, no, actually the customer is the hero and it’s important to understand what their needs are, what their goals are and what language they speak and translate our jargon into their language.

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This podcast is made possible with sponsorship from Hybrid Lynx, a human in the loop provider of translation and data collection services for healthcare, education, legal and government sectors. Visit HybridLynx.com to learn more.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

That’s a very nice segue to my next question. I feel that in our industry, there is a generalized difficulty to explain to outsiders, I mean people from outside the industry about what we actually do. I met recently someone, and he was explaining to a buyer, a potential buyer, about his translation company, but he had a hard time explaining it clearly and concisely and making sense out of what he does. How can we overcome that barrier?

 

Natalie Ayers 

Yeah, I mean, I think part of the challenge is that we over-complicate it, right? And so just distilling it down to the core aspects. And I think the other piece is understanding a way to apply what we do to what the buyer already knows and understands, right? So, you kind of bridging that gap. I don’t know if this is the most amazing thing or solution, but for me, when I am talking to people outside of the industry about what we do, I try to keep it super simple. We provide translation and interpretation. And then I find that a lot of times the people that I’m communicating with who maybe don’t have any context for that, I can help them understand by thinking about it in terms of interpretation and using the conversation that we’re having in that moment as a way to demonstrate what we do, right? So, role playing like in that situation, I would say, you know, for example, if we’re having this conversation and you speak French and I speak English, we would bring in someone to help interpret for us. And oftentimes they can get that concept immediately. And then once they understand that, then I can sort of bridge the gap to the other things that we do, right? So, think about that in terms of the written word as well. So that would be translation.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

I had a conversation with Renato Beninato. He is, you know, a well-known figure in our industry. And several times he mentioned to me that we are not selling translation. We are actually selling a solution to a problem. Now we talked about speaking about, you know, the customer’s language and customers typically do not want to buy translation. In my opinion, they just want to solve their problem of reaching out to another country or dealing with your staff or handling customer service inquiries from a different country. Most of the time, they’re not even thinking along the lines of language. Now you mentioned earlier that we should speak in their voice. Now how do we go about researching and figuring out what are the main concerns within a specific industry or a segment of the industry that we are trying to target to buy translations from us? As an example, you know, if we are selling it to healthcare and COVID vaccine was an issue, how do we go and get the terminology related to COVID vaccines that can resonate with a client as opposed to just, you know, assuming or hoping that everyone will understand what we are selling or what we are offering?

 

Natalie Ayers 

Yeah, I love that. This is something that we talk about a lot on my team. And I think there’s a few different ways that you can do this depending on the resources that you have, right? So, we have a tool called 6sense, which is an account-based marketing platform. And one of the things that that tool allows you to do is to create segments and then track those segments and see where are they going and what keywords are they researching, right? So, in the example that you were just talking about, if you were trying to target healthcare organizations who are trying to communicate about COVID, one of the things that you could do is create a segment within 6sense to just sort of get some insight into what those particular organizations are looking for in terms of keywords. And then you can say, okay, we’re seeing a trend around community engagement, for example. And so, we want to make sure that we’re communicating back to those buyers around community engagement, because that’s a topic that’s really important to them.

 

I think good old-fashioned conversations, are another great way to do that. A lot of times with marketing in particular, it can be easy to just sort of get stuck behind your screen and not actually talk to customers. So, asking customers is a great way to understand what are your pain points? What are you trying to figure out? And hearing the words that they’re using, going to industry events, right? So, thinking events in the healthcare space in particular, stalking people online, right? So, if you have particular customers who fit the criteria that you were talking about, if we were using that healthcare example, seeing what they’re talking about on LinkedIn with their colleagues, what are the topics that they’re bringing up? What is the language that they’re using? Those are just some of the ideas that we use internally.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Natalie, I would like you to explain what catches a customer’s attention when it comes to marketing of translation localization services. I mean, it depends on the customer’s buying cycle or the journey as well, because if now they’re at a point that they know they need translation, they will probably be looking for translation companies, offering something specific to them. But what about those customers who don’t know what they’re buying yet, but they might need translation two months down the road as they’re developing software or they’re trying to reach out to a new country? So, what catches their attention depending on where they are in their journey?

 

Natalie Ayers 

Yeah, that’s the magic question, isn’t it, Sultan? I mean, I think that’s the holy grail that we’re all trying to answer on a regular basis. Only, some of the things that we’re just generally seeing across the board that are resonating with our audience are when we have, let’s think about organic social, right? So, LinkedIn is a big focus for us and establishing our brand presence there. So, some of the things that we see that resonate there are when we talk about other customer examples and specifically define the results, right? So really leaning into the measurable KPIs that another organization has seen doing something similar, I think that gets people’s attention. Really clear, helpful educational information, right? So, things that are helping to elevate their knowledge about a particular topic also really resonate. And then one of the things that I think people are just craving more and more is seeing examples and stories of real people, right? So, whenever we talk about the people who are behind the scenes at ULG and how they go about their day, that tends to really resonate with people as well.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Let’s dive deeper on this subject. You mentioned LinkedIn, you mentioned organic social marketing and so forth. Again, marketing is not just about some ads that you put on the search engine and forget about it, as you mentioned. It’s a complex system. It can be very complex. How and where do you get the message out today? I’m talking in LSP context. What are the marketing channels typically for us, for our type of business, which is mainly B2B? I’m guessing the majority of us are in that space.

 

Natalie Ayers 

Yeah. So, for us, we think about it from a multi-pronged approach, right? So advertising is definitely a part of our approach. We have paid search advertising, we have display advertising, we have paid social advertising. So that’s a big part of what we’re doing. Organic social is a big part of what we’re doing as well. And that is not only from a brand perspective, but also from individual contributors, right? So, we work really hard to enable our internal team members to also be very active on their own LinkedIn channels and help build their networks from that perspective. Events are another great way, right? We’ve talked a lot about events so far. I think now we’re seeing events picking back up. And for us, we tend to focus more on events outside of the localization industry. So, events that are where our buyers are, right? Like the healthcare buyers that we were just talking about, going to those healthcare events or call center events, those kinds of things.

 

We’re working really hard to establish ULG as a thought leader in the localization space. And so, part of what we do there also is we are regularly pitching press releases and contributed articles and looking to get our content, our subject matter experts exposure in things like, I’m trying to think of some of the examples, I’m totally blanking on some of the publications, but we have an article coming up soon in Marketing Profs. We’ve had articles in health, I think it’s Health Line. I can get you the specific titles if you want, but getting outside of our industry, getting into the publications that our buyers are reading, right? And I think those are some of the bigger ways. There’re probably other ones I can pull through, but hopefully that’s helpful.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

I think that’s more than sufficient, and you mentioned marketing traditionally, like you would do on social media and then you would go now more targeted towards specific industries and so forth. So that’s great. I think our industry as a whole needs to think that way as well. Now we’re talking about expectations. What would LSP executives and leadership expect from marketing teams like yours, you’re running one? Do they understand the kind of investment needed to make these teams successful? Do they provide enough tools and are they up to speed in terms of what the landscape looks like and how should the company be playing with marketing?

 

Natalie Ayers 

Yeah, I mean, I can’t speak for every LSP, but I can definitely say that I’m very fortunate to work at an organization that does understand the importance of marketing and has invested heavily in the marketing organization. We talked about this earlier. We’ve grown our team exponentially from four to 12 over the last year. And I think, you know, I credit our CEO, Nic, for seeing the importance of marketing and supporting the importance of marketing.

 

From kind of going back to what we were talking about before too, in terms of the expectations that I think executives should have for a marketing organization. For me, my primary objective as the director of marketing is to help drive pipeline for ULG. I know the business wants to grow. I know where they want to grow. And so, I do my best to align my team to help support the growth in those initiatives. And I think it’s really important to have those clear objectives and align on the KPIs and then have a regular process for reporting back to the executives on how we are laddering up to those, right? So, for us, we have some clear objectives around brand awareness, lead generation that we talked about before and sales enablement. We have KPIs that we’ve aligned on for the year for each of those that are very quantifiable and measurable. And then we report on those on a monthly basis, and we share that back out with the CEO so he can share it with the executive team and the board, and they can see, are we trending toward the goals that we set for ourselves and overall helping the business grow?

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

What do sales people expect from marketing teams? Because in a way they depend on marketing. We talked about earlier how they are integrated, and they are kind of one unit in a way. But at the same time, they complement each other. What do sales expect as an output of marketing?

 

Natalie Ayers 

Yeah, I think this is one that will continue to evolve, right? And hopefully we’ll continue to see more of that collaboration between the two teams. In the localization space in particular, I think from a marketing perspective, we have a little bit of a challenge because a lot of the localization organizations have been very sales driven, outbound focused, right? So, I think traditionally sales has looked to marketing as more of an admin and kind of a sales enablement group, right? So, I need a sales sheet for this. I need a PowerPoint presentation for that. That’s definitely part of what we do. But I think what I’m hoping to shift within our organization and within the industry as a whole is that marketing is a partner in driving pipeline. And ultimately, we are helping to set up those connections. We’re kind of hopefully getting it to the place where we are the hunters on the team, right? Or the fishermen on the team. We’re casting that net and bringing people in. And then sales can be the farmers and cultivate those relationships as they’re coming in. And we’re making those introductions so that they can build out those relationships.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Natalie, let me ask you this. What is the role of marketing or a marketing team in product development, such as new service line like interpreting or a new vertical? We were talking earlier about other opportunities. And as an industry, as we are evolving, LSPs are evolving, they’re adding new lines of business. How does marketing play a role in that?

 

Natalie Ayers 

Yeah, I mean, I think one of the big things that marketing can bring to the table. So, at ULG, it’s a very collaborative effort, right? So, we work with the product managers and the sales team and then the marketing team and collaborate together on developing out new products and positioning. One of the areas that I think marketing can continue to help support is bringing in the voice of the customer, right? So, what are we seeing to your point or your question earlier? What are we seeing in the data? What are people looking for? Where are the gaps? What are the key terms that they’re using? What are we seeing on social media? What are people asking for? What are we seeing in our CSAT survey? So, bringing a lot of that data forward, also some of the competitive insights, right? So, what are our competitors doing? How are they positioning? What does it look like? Where are the gaps from that perspective? And then really helping with the positioning as well. So, once we’ve kind of defined what, you know, based on the research, based on what we’re working on internally and the opportunities that we see, we’ve defined the product that we’re going to move forward with, we can really help with that positioning. How do we differentiate like we were talking about before from what our competitors are saying and talk about it in a way that’s going to resonate with our buyers using language that they use.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Before my next question, let me ask a follow up question in terms of the value that marketing brings into the team and for a language business. Traditionally marketing, as we talked about earlier, is kind of an approach where you just put something out there and hope that people will see. But now it’s more data driven. What type of KPIs are you tracking to make sure that the investment dollars are bringing enough ROI for the organization?

 

Natalie Ayers 

Yeah, so we track, you know, your sort of standard KPIs in terms of traffic to the website. We track conversions on the website. So, you know, of those people that are coming to the website, are they actually filling out forms or are they bouncing? We track marketing qualified leads. And so those are people raising their hand saying we want to talk to somebody about a particular need. We track revenue that’s generated from the leads that we bring in. We track whether or not those leads, how they move through the pipeline, right? Do they become sales qualified leads? Do they become customers opportunities? So those are some of the high-level ones we’re tracking, you know, engagement and followers on LinkedIn. So, depending on the objective, we’re tracking different KPIs.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

What are your thoughts, Natalie, on outsourcing marketing function to agencies as turnkey solutions? I’m sure there are lots of them out there. Do these agencies from outside our industry get what we do and deliver our message to potential clients as effectively as we could do ourselves?

 

Natalie Ayers 

This has been a real struggle for us. I mean, we work with a lot of agency partners. And I think one of the biggest challenges that we find is that they might understand the marketing function, but they don’t understand the industry. And, you know, kind of going back to what we were talking about before, you need to be able to not only understand the localization industry, but you need to be able to understand the industry of your target market, right? And we serve a lot of different verticals, right? You know, we’re talking to healthcare on one hand, and we’re talking to enterprise organizations on the other hand. And we might be selling the same general service, but the problem that they’re trying to solve is a little bit different, right? And the language that they’re using about that problem is a little bit different. So, it’s been a challenge for us to get our agency partners up to speed on both what we do and what we offer and how we want to talk about it and who our buyers are and what they want and how they talk about it. So, I think similar to working with a translation and localization agency, right? As a brand coming in, you have to go through that onboarding process where you are making sure that the localization provider understands your brand, your voice, your tone, your style, your products. And we’re building out some really cool programs to help with that on the ULG side of business. I think you have to do the same thing with your agencies. You kind of have to know when, like, okay, we’ve been going at this for a while and it’s not working. It’s time to look for another solution.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

How do you see LSP marketing changing in the next two to four years? I mean, it’s evolved a lot in the past, but given the context of things opening up, people are traveling more. What trends do you see coming up?

 

Natalie Ayers 

Yeah. I mean, I don’t think digital is going to go away, right? That’s still going to be a big focus. I do think we’ll probably see events continuing to get, like, in real life events, gaining momentum again. It’s going to be really interesting to see how social media evolves over the coming years, right? LinkedIn’s platform has changed significantly. The way people are talking on LinkedIn and sharing information is totally different, a lot more personal. And TikTok is now becoming a B2B marketing platform, which is mind-boggling to me. I can’t believe it. It’s taking over for Google in terms of people going to search for information. So, continuing to track how different social media platforms are evolving and being used is going to be really interesting. Facebook and Twitter are going through their own challenges right now. So, it’ll be interesting to see how those shake out. Buyers are going to continue to look for brands that align with their values, brands that feel like they have a human connection with them, right? And I think we’re going to continue to see some of those walls that have traditionally been there in the B2B space coming down, right? I think B2B buyers are going to be looking for those same kinds of human connection, authentic connection, values, alignment, connections with the brands that they’re buying, just like they do on the consumer side. What else?

 

Oh, I think also the competitive landscape will probably continue to evolve, right? We’re still seeing a lot of mergers and acquisitions within our existing industry, our localization industry, and the evolution of technology that we both use and also could be seen as competition will continue to be rapid. So, I think continuing to review our value propositions and our differentiators is going to continue to be really important for us as well.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

As we reach the end of this conversation, Natalie, let me ask you about your message for LSP executives about marketing and what they should know and focus on as they run their businesses.

 

Natalie Ayers 

Yeah, so I think it’s just kind of summarizing some of the things that we’ve been talking about, right? So, beware of random acts of marketing. Make sure that you have a clearly defined objective for your business and for your marketing team. Define your target audience. Who are you going after? What do they care about? Make them the hero and you the guide. Establish a cohesive brand voice and message that really shows how you’re different and where you specialize. And just make sure that you are tracking the work that you’re doing back to those objectives and those KPIs that you aligned on, measuring them, reviewing those, optimizing if it’s not working or you need to make adjustments.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

With that, we will conclude this interview, Natalie. I think that there is a lot for us to learn and process. I mean, for me personally, I’m so happy we had this conversation and I think your experience in marketing within the LSP context and even outside is very unique and has made us think about quite a few things today. I’m sure there was something for everyone to learn today as I learned quite a bit, actually. I hope we can do this again in the future. And with that, I want to thank you for speaking with me today.

 

Natalie Ayers 

Thank you, Sultan. I appreciate it. And it was so fun to connect with you again. And hopefully we can talk again soon.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Absolutely.

 

Marketing is an important and essential part of running any business today as we tell our customers about what we do and why they should do business with us. As we discussed in this conversation, our industry has not been traditionally a marketing-driven professional services sector, but that is changing, and we need to ensure we deliver messages to people outside our industry about what we do and how we solve their problems. I think marketing should be less about us and more about the customer. As Natalie said, we should make the customer the hero of our story while the LSP is their support or enabler.

 

We must also recognize that marketing is not just about some fancy graphics. It has to be well thought out and different parts of it must be executed in harmony with our sales and strategic vision. I think it is an exciting time to market our services and products.

 

That brings us to the end of this episode. I hope you were able to learn at least one thing about marketing in the language industry that you could apply to your own business. I learned a lot and I think it is fair to say that we can all benefit from improving our localization and translation marketing techniques. Don’t forget to subscribe to the Translation Company Talk Podcast on Apple Podcasts, iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or your platform of choice. Make sure to give this episode a 5-star rating.

 

Until next time!

 

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