All Posts, Web Design
One of the biggest mistakes I think in this business is to treat your customer as a one time sale. Or even worse, as a number and not a long-term business relationship. This is actually one of our “theories” that a customer is worth more to us than a one time sale.
Now what are you doing as a designer in terms on client retention? Some designers I know have some sort of medium they use to keep in constant contact with their clients. Some of those tools are:
- Email newsletters
- Snail Mail postcards or advertisements
- Facebook messages
- Twitter mentions
- Quarterly phone calls
Those are all nice, only IF you perform them as necessary and with an expected frequency. There’s also a level of engagement that needs to be monitored per client too. For example, if you have a few clients that respond more to snail mail letters than they do with social media, you may want to save your energy on social media marketing with those in particular and engage with them via postal mail.
The real issue though is actually paying attention to what they’re saying or thinking about their design needs. Some things to think about may be
- When was the last time they updated their website?
- Do they have any new services to add to their brochure or print media?
- Is their email newsletter ready for a design upgrade?
- Is their blog up to date with relevant and new posts?
- Do they need more business cards for newer employees?
I can list out a bunch more but you get the drift. The threat with not listening to your clients is that they’ll end up complaining about their needs. Those complaints may not reach your ears, but a competitor’s ear. I’ll confess to a recent story from me. I created a site for a client maybe about 3 years ago. Updated the site after a year to a whole new look and feel. Client was happy. But I never followed up with them to see how they were feeling about their site, how their business was going, how many leads their site was generating them, etc. Now all of those could have been great reasons to sell them more services and I missed out on the opportunities. So as a result, they found another designer that was in closer contact with them (almost daily) and he created a new website, domain, and all for my client. Unbeknown st to me, the client was since then promoting their new site on all their media. The new site was horrible mix of flash, dated design and layout, and sub par graphics, and using iframes pulling content from the site I had created. I almost fell out of my chair in disbelief on how my client could have preferred this over my work.
Moral of the story is to keep in contact and close ear of your current clients. Their businesses are growing just like yours, and just as your needs change so will theirs. As you add-on more services, pass those service options to your current clients. Even if they’re not in the position to utilize them now, chances are they will be in the future OR know someone who can now and refer them to you. At the end of the day they’d prefer to work with someone they trust over having to start over with someone new.
Have any experience like this in your design firm? Let me know in the comments below.
All Posts, Social Media
When it comes to businesses, social media is a means of brand awareness and advertising. To further permeate areas where people dwell with their ads, coupons, services, and so on. I personally feel some big named brands are a bit late with coming to the party, but many aren’t even entertained by the notion.
Consumers are using the Internet and social media every day. At work, at home, and even on their phones. The traditional means of advertising are now being filtered out, so these new mediums are where to find your audience. Case and point is Webster Bank. A local bank here in Connecticut that’s been in business for over 75 years. I’m not going to get into their banking success or their great reputation with engaging the community too much – I’ll let them continue to do that. However I will comment on their use of social media.
Recently I received an email from Twitter informing me that Webster Bank @WebsterBank was now following me. At first glance I thought it was a fake Twitter handle, or at best a Webster employee looking to find new clients. To my surprise it was actually an official account from the bank. Had a couple hundred tweets. Engaging other users that I knew or were familiar to my Twitter stream, and even had a good bio.
This was ok, but I figured I should kick it up a n0tch and @ reply them. They actually responded, and not computer type of response but like from a real person.
Just about everyone within Connecticut has probably heard of Webster Bank, and though not everyone may bank with them, they’ve seen the branches in their neighborhoods. Now here’s where Webster can start to take advantage of their market where some other banks may not particularly care about social media.
- Feedback: They can better understand customer comments and complaints, that they may normally have never heard within their branches or telephone customer support
- Engage: They can engage both existing clients and potential new ones in a medium that can be familiar and friendly without the need to “sell”
- Awareness: They can continue to build company and product awareness. This could also lead to the perception of having authority on their regional/local market
- Promotions: They can host contests or specials
- Growth: They can further grow their community of loyal customers, and those customers will easily tell their friends about their bank in a way that is free advertising to the bank (word of mouth)
Just to make it clear, I’m not being paid by Webster to write this in any way. Really I’m using them as a live case study to prove a point in how marketing is adapting more from tradition means to social media. There are plenty of businesses big and small that don’t think this is a worthy investment in time and resources. And there are businesses like this one, who are taking the risk, maybe even on a small scale to at least have a social presence to engage an audience where they’re most comfortable and prevalent.
As always I’d like to get your thoughts on this, so please feel free to agree or disagree in the comments below.
All Posts, Social Media
Years ago, the only way to really get a companies attention on a product was to picket, rally, or boycott. Even then with all of that, most of the world would never hear a message that minuscule. Well enter social media. Now if you have a product that you don’t like, fails, or has major defects, you can broadcast your complaint not just directly to that company, but to everyone that may be following them online.
Let me give you an example. Same you buy a new anvil from Acme. It arrives fine, but when you open it up, its all scuffed up, poorly packaged, and doesn’t weight a full “1 ton” like advertised. Obviously you’re going to be a little upset because your Road-Runner trap won’t work. Instead of writing an angry complaint letter to Acme, you can go to your Facebook wall and tell the whole story for all of your 300+ friends to see. They immediately read it, and decide they too will no longer use Acme and will seek other vendors. Two weeks later, this small ripple effect starts catching even more wind, and Acme stock prices start to take a hit. A website gets created from another angry user that now has a forum for all other users to unit. They talk about Acme on that site and on the new Facebook groups, Fan pages, Twitter lists, etc. all about how bad Acme’s products are.
Sad thing about that scenario is that Acme never acknowledges the “small” complaints, and before two weeks, what was a snowball has now turned into an avalanche. We are now living in an age where companies can no longer play the elitist role and not listen to their customers and consumers. The mainstream media used to be the choice medium for these types of news, and even they can’t keep up with “right now” stories.
What does this mean for you as a business owner? A few things actually. For starters, you can grow your brand easily by keeping a listening ear to your industry. Listen for complaints to the big boy companies so that you steer clear of those woes. Hone in on your immediate competitors and find out what they’re doing and NOT doing. You can then adjust your sales strategies to fit the gaps, and emerge as the one company who actually services the key niche overlooked by all others in your market.
How do you do it? Simple. Follow your competitors social streams. Why not, I mean if you don’t, they will be following you. Especially as you start to grow your brand and recognition. Engage in consumer complaints. And when I say engage, I don’t mean “sell.” What I mean is to provide alternatives to their complaints. Answer their questions and provide quick fixes to issues. They’ll appreciate you more and most will end up looking to you next time they need that particular service again. No one forgets a bad service experience. Likely, people sing praises about good experiences. I promise, you’d rather be at the tail end of a lengthy complaint that highlights the faults of your competitor, and ends off with a praise to you for providing a solution.
This all takes time, research, and dedication. A lot of businesses are waking up to this new era of “right now” media. Most want to do something about it, but a large percentage won’t take the proper initiative. It may not look like so now, but it is worth the money to hire a social media marketer. If necessary, vet a company out. Ask around, contact their clients for feedback. Or simply contact us here at Design Theory. I know, shameless plug. (could you blame me?) The bottom line is that we all know good news travels – but bad news travels farther and faster. As always I’d love to hear your comments about this. Especially if you have a similar story you’ve experienced!
All Posts
By now you should be quite familiar with this topic. If you aren’t using email marketing, you probably are a subscriber to it in one form or another. If we look back, postage marketing was the most common form of business to customer marketing. Each day you would go out to your mailbox to receive your mail only to see that it is mixed with ads or flyers for services and goods within your neighborhood. Now fast forward to emails. Sure we get a lot at times, but more people opened and read emails from people that are familiar to them. This is where your email advantages are.
Here are some ways to get started. Look through your address book or Rolodex if you use one, and earmark or write down your most recent contacts that you’ve had communication with. Next write down a paragraph or two about your business’ recent accomplishments and goals for the near future. Maybe include an announcement about a recent new client. This way when people are reading your newsletter/email blast they see you’re progressing and showing tangible proof of that. People love to read about themselves and see mentions. This is one reason why Twitter is so popular. And also by doing this, that highlighted client will forward your email to everyone in their office, business colleagues, and friends.
You don’t have to do this every day obviously. This type of practice will most likely land your email address into many people’s spam folders and you don’t want that. Personally I would say maybe once or twice a month depending on your type of field and how relevant your content is. Once you get the hang of sending out your own email blasts for marketing, you should look to upgrading your execution. There are online services like Mail Chimp and Constant Contact that offer email marketing from free to very affordable premium services. They also provide some features that can really help gauge your level of effectiveness by tracking who opens, reads, and forwards your newsletters. One of the best things these services offer is contact management in the form of subscriptions and un-subscribers.
Of course if you would like personal assistance or have questions about how to get started, Design Theory is here for you. Contact us today and find out how to receive a free .HTML newsletter template.
