Here’s the real reason Why clients leave their agency: They fail to provide strategy.
I was talking to a client during an overseas trip. They’ve been in the industry for decades. They’ve dealt with different vendors, some we have a pleasure working with, some we replaced. It’s not deliberate elimination, it’s more of, “we’re at this point where we should be doing a, b and c to reach z but this part of your marketing mix is slowing down our journey.”
See, Digital Marketing has been commoditized nowadays. Everyone shout they are a full-stack digital marketing agency, they provide SEO, SEM, SMM, eDM, etc. The more the merrier. But let me tell you something: It’s not about what you can do but HOW YOU CAN use these to help your client solve a problem and achieve their goals. For businesses, it’s only about 2 things: CUT the expenses (bottom) and Increase their revenue (top). As simple as that. The worst part? There are always someone out there, more cheaper and more versatile.
If you fail to communicate, you will be nothing but an expense. Which brings me to the second reason Why they clients leave their agency: Lack of narrative.
Let me give you an example,
Social Media Marketing as a service. Growth of 350% in Social Media Followers sounds sexy. Yeah, but.. What can it do to my business? Can these additional buy? Help me save cost? Or is maintaining / keeping them engaged will cost me more? See, here’s the problem. This number of followers? It’s a VANITY METRIC. To be honest, you can even buy likes / followers (let’s not go there!) SO.. unless you know how to translate that into a narrative, your efforts doesn’t mean much for your client.
SO, how can you turn this into narrative? You can go and say,
“The increase in social media following is a positive indicator that our brand is getting recognized by the mass. In theory, potential customers have to see your brand 16x before making a purchase. Think about it. Unless we are doing some tv ad commercial or billboard, there is no way we can.
So, what’s next?
I say we continue building this audience but this time around, we are going to build them with your target audience to ensure that everything that we do inside your social media, the offers, the messaging is going to REACH your potential buying customers.
From here you can enlist strategy and build a roadmap with the client.
Okay, going back to the scenario,
How about we run a tactical campaign? FB and IG is a social networking, YES? People Like, Share campaign? It’s a classic approach but This will hit 2 birds in 1 stone. “
See what I did there? Always paint the bigger picture and then go down to action items. This beats double or triple digit % growth comparison on any given day.
Point is, IF you can transform this number into actionable insights for you and the client, you can bring their business into the next step. You will direct your efforts into moving their business from A to point B.
If Im a client and I hire you, I expect you to be ADVISE me. I don’t need an operator. I can hire fresh grads or freelancers to create video ads, or engaging posts. What the CLIENT really need is to build a CONVERSION FUNNEL for them. TO them, you’re an investment. It’s about MSF + AD budget = Conversion. ROI? How much of these LEADS / Enquiries have actually became a CUSTOMER?
It’s all about the bottom line. How much are your efforts translate to their revenue?
Originally Published on my LinkedIn profile in October 31, 2019
