Learning from Clients

I’ve heard many times about mentors learning lots from the people they are mentoring. While it seems counter-intuitive, it does make perfect sense. Usually the mentee is someone who is in a younger generation, has less experience in an industry, or is looking for advice. Being new in an industry, being younger and needing advice typically gives the mentor a fresh look at something that has become a part of their lives. In many ways, working with clients on their marketing strategy has similarities to a mentorship. I hear similar feedback and receive compliments on the advice that they would otherwise have a hard time finding or take time building the experience.

Today, like the mentor learning from the mentee, I learned a lot from one of my clients.

While there aren’t any prerequisites to working with myself or our marketing agency, we rarely get clients who are complete rookies when we start talking about marketing, advertising and building their brand. That’s why I was so impressed when I reflect on the first month working with one of our clients.

During the pitch, I thought we would be winning this account from another agency. From our perspective, it looked like we were going to take their business to a new level because they had outgrown their current agency. The website was good (but dated), their email list was a little shy of 10,000 and social media was great with over 5,000 likes on Facebook and a few thousand on Instagram. Not having Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn and really only fooling around with YouTube, it seemed like they were following the advice of a marketing pro. And it had been working.

Going through the on boarding process, I learned of the actual state of affairs. The two founders had built the company from the ground up and grew through hustle (marketing included).

• They learned a bit of code, enough to build a WordPress site.
• They took a crash course in photoshop, learned just enough to make flyers and images.
• They went to as many events and asked people to connect on social.
• There was actually only a “part-time marketing department” in house that was helping with social posts, updating the website and coordinating events and email blasts.
• A few tasks had freelancers helping out when needed, and each employee helping with marketing also had a bunch of other tasks they were responsible for.

Marketing was just another thing.

Marketing happens to be my thing, I know how incredible it is to dive deep into the tactics. I was puzzled, I could never push my marketing to the back seat. How could they have so much success without having at least someone? How does a non-marketing oriented company build a really great marketing strategy? The recipe: Their hustle was focused on their business. They built organically engaging one client at a time, shared their experiences, participated in their community events and along the way happened to build an audience.

This was their recipe:

Website.

Building only what was necessary to function and facilitate operations that clients need. There was some information about their business, but too little was focused on existing clients and didn’t meet the needs of a new person or prospect. The website had good stats because most of the traffic was organic: they would put information on the website and tell people in person to go check it out. Smart. Just like the early 2000s, they aren’t afraid to say, “check out the website.” In fact, they took pride in it.

Facebook & Instagram.

They only use Facebook and Instagram for social media because they like it themselves. Luckily, they are a part of their target market and its a perfect fit. They gained likes and followers by telling people at events that they were posting photos from the event. Again, they drove traffic to their social media in person. They don’t know how to reach new people on social, yet they have thousands of followers. That’s a good takeaway. Their accounts have become a place that their audience expects to see industry event coverage, regardless of how bias it might be (since they are attending). Being authentic and delivering on promises builds a strong audience.

Email.

They would only take emails when necessary for someone to sign up, receive receipts and specific promotions. The emails that were sent out were mostly personal and always including something the person wanted: their open rate is unbelievably high. This has, however, created a list that is purely client focused (existing or old clients) and doesn’t have a way to engage prospects. It has also defeated the purpose of email marketing and actually cost them sales because they would send a promo to a paying customer who would then opt in for a lower promotional price.

Strategy.

Their strategy was to listen to all of their current clients and seriously take feedback and implement it. This customer feedback channel was impressive, BUT, it caused them to make changes they heard from the most vocal clients, not necessarily what was the feelings of the majority, prospective or the best clients. This listening and acting gave them a huge advantage with building a strong culture. The founders lead their team to have the same attitude and the vibe in their locations is incredible (and very welcoming). The reviews always talk about how amazing their staff is.

Do marketers ruin everything?

I worried with the state of their marketing that most of this pure and organic promotion would be tarnished along the way. The opposite has been true. They have enough knowledge to apply what they have been doing to current tactics. Our strategy calls have been fantastic so far. I’ve never had such positive response to some of the ideas that us digital marketing folks think are basic / typical / simple. For example, setting up an auto-responder with a lead magnet was like magic to them. It truly is a whole new world.

I learned to think beyond the technology. Beyond the tools, strategies and hacking growth. Organic growth does exist, but it shouldn’t be expected to manifested online when you have a physical, brick & mortar business. The metrics we follow online are just a score card; the face-to-face relationships are truly the fuel of their business. They are interested in the analytics, but like most business owners, really just care about the sales and the customers. I’ve been excited about new content that immediately takes off, or a campaign that is performing incredibly, but they are much more interested in a 10% increase in sales.

My benchmarks have shifted, and are more holistic about the entire funnel metrics than ever before. The thrill of impacting their business operationally is an outcome of good marketing. There won’t be any plateau when we reach our marketing milestones, we’ll continue to impact the bottom line. We’re lucky to have access to see the bottom line (not all clients are comfortable with this level of transparency) and that matters to us. We can see how our marketing is affecting the business, rather than just stop with lead generation.

Over time, I’ll learn more from this client and understand how doing the minimum viable activity to stay lean helped them grow by over 400% in 5 years. Its not start-up to IPO growth, but its very impressive for small businesses. They want to keep growing, but have reached their limit, they needed some help. The strategy moving forward is going to take away a lot of the “guessing” that they were doing. The technology and improved digital assets will make their user experience better. The social engagement is already improving and driving more sales. We’re brining the marketing to be more current and positioned for the future.

All of this interaction made me think, and adjust how I’m going about building my personal brand. Maybe these will apply to you too.

Social is just a score card. What are you doing in person? Get back to networking and connecting.

Could someone notice you on the street and say hello? Or are you just a profile picture to most of the people you pass every day?

Chris Milton works with organizations to achieve their sales & marketing goals by strategically improving their customer experience. After co-founding a full-service marketing agency; working with clients in Real Estate, Fitness, Health, Finance and Construction, Chris has developed an understanding of what works and knows how to get people moving in the right direction.