Clients Who Aren't a Good Fit

The Average Digital Marketing Client is Two Years

The average marketing client tenure with an agency is somewhere around two years, which is a relatively short amount of time in the grand scheme of things. It’s important to make sure that both client and agency develop a symbiotic relationship. This ensures both operate on the same frequency with a mutual understanding and respect based on similar expectations and even to a point, similar professional values. It’s important because the agency + client relationship is more of a partnership.

Marketing is an Art and a Science

This is often the case when professional services are in the form of an art, which is what marketing is. Marketing is half art, half science. When hiring an artist for a painting there is always a dialogue between the artist and the patron or customer. It’s a very fluid and again, symbiotic relationship. Patrons hire artists to create a piece, usually based in part on their flexibility and parameters for openness and ability to offer input whether it’s music or a painting or anything else.

Corresponding Core Values for Copywriting

Interstellar takes the onboarding of new clients rather seriously for this reason. We have certain operative values and ways of doing things that we know work because we’ve honed them over years of experience. We maintain a very high retention rate and satisfaction rate in part because we are careful to work with clients who we understand well, and they as clients, who understand us. This creates a more complementary relationship where there are similar expectations and fewer disappointments all around. It’s not that everything will turn out perfectly every time, but there’s a mutual understanding that keeps the level of frustration low.

No one likes the idea of going out and sourcing a new agency for any reason. It’s no fun to start all over again with another group that requires a re-explanation of your business and ideas. That’s why we strive to create long-term relationships that are beneficial for both sides, often lasting years into the future.

We recently found ourselves in the rather unusual situation of taking a pass on a potential client that honestly, we were sincerely excited about. It was a cosmetics product line. We all liked the initial information we received about who they were and their mission. It was something as a team, we all felt we could get behind and market well. The owner had a great concept and it just made practical sense.

A Disconnect

But during our phone conversation, everything seemed to change. It wasn’t so much what was said, although that was part of it, but what wasn’t said. Our team began to figure out that this client didn’t seem to have the necessary information that he should possess as the owner. We suspect that he spoke with another marketing agency that was solely after a fee, and not out for his best interest.

Partnering with Clients

Interstellar Digital partners with our clients because it shows that we have skin in the game. When our clients grow and thrive, we grow and thrive right along with them, and yes, so does our billing. But by then our clients understand our worth. That’s why we don’t mind taking on new clients slowly without hitting them with a big bill. It’s important that both of us test the waters and see how things go before jumping into a huge commitment. Of course that means different things to different people.

Transparency

In order to gain trust with our clients we maintain an ‘above reproach’ relationship with our ability to pinpoint where, when, and how their advertising dollars are spent through the use of our proprietary dashboard, Gnosis. This maintains a trusting relationship so that clients understand our methodology and reasoning for directing their resources. It’s not simply about taking a client’s money and spending it, but developing a comprehensive marketing strategy based on empirical data. We give our clients assurances that there is also a “science” to marketing and that we’re not just “shooting from the hip.” It’s true not every strategy works all the time, but when you can justify a plan based on statistics and experience, there’s a greater likelihood of success. And when our clients succeed, we succeed with them.

Influencer Marketing Isn’t Always the Best Choice

It’s not easy to write to a potential client that we aren’t a good fit for their brand or idea. It’s very difficult to do. We value every opportunity we’re given. We look forward to onboarding new clients that we can grow and expand with. Our team loves to develop new ideas of marketing different products and watch a client get excited about it. But sometimes it’s not possible.

This potential client was sold by someone on the importance of “influencer” marketing, which is fine, but we don’t believe the return would be there for our client at this early stage in the game.

Influencer marketing is expensive and isn’t typically used for a new company/new product rollout because of that.

We were able to do the math during our conversation and realized the owner would have had to sell 25% of his product to pay for one influencer promotion. We felt badly for the guy. We knew he was facing an uphill battle and the likelihood of selling every unit of SKU was going to be a practical impossibility based on whoever was in his ear.

We’re not against influencer marketing, but we were going off statistics that showed the unlikelihood of a reasonable (if any) return on investment in this situation.

We were then faced with the dilemma of squeezing the last dimes out of him, and watch the project fail anyway, or just walk away according to our best estimates. We chose to walk away.

It’s not an easy decision to make and no one would have blamed us for trying to help him, but when you have moral certitude that it wasn’t going to happen, and then pile on the resentment of the client after the experience, it isn’t worth it.

We wish our friend every success, and we do hope we’re wrong, but we can only go on our 10 years of experience in the industry. It’s not about what you can do sometimes. But what you can’t do.

Please stand for the Creed… #marketing #copywriting #digitalmarketing #cosmetics #contentwriting #contentmarketing #searchengineoptimization #sem #writing #writer #digitalagency #digitaladvertising #digitalbranding #branding #b2c

Published by Hubbard Street Marketing