The February issue of Global by Design is now out and the title story looks at all the ways companies measure the return on investment of their translations, or “ROT.”
Needless to say, the better execs get at demonstrating ROT, the more money they’ll get to spend on translation.
Most executives rely on metrics such as unique visitors, leads, qualified leads, and referrals to local dealer Web sites.
And here’s a new one that I think will help further the cause — the “Translating for Clicks” model.
It’s a simple model, based on the assumption that more Web content generally results in more search engine referrals. I’m talking about organic “free” search engine referrals rather than the paid referrals.
Since marketing teams now pay search engines like Google for referrals, we now have a basis for placing a value on organic search engine referrals driven by translated content. So if we add, say, 100 new pages of translated content, how many additional clicks are we going to get from search engines? And how much are these clicks worth in leads and/or sales generated?
I’ve floated the model past a number of Web services and marketing execs already and the response has been quite positive. The model is another way to unlock the hidden value of translated Web content.
UPDATE: If you do not subscribe to Global by Design and would like access to the model, we now offer it for sale as a Global Brief.