From Agency Pro to First-Time Client Learning the Harsh Truth About Marketing Partnerships
After years of working inside agencies, including my own, handling B2B, tech and life science clients, I became a first-time client. Working with outside marketing partners to support the publication of my debut novel—Stealing Time, a time-travel jewelry heist novel written with Tilia Klebenov Jacobs—was an eye-opening experience.
Here are six client service lessons I learned:
Explain your process, deadlines, deliverables and reasonable expectations. Much of what we do can be opaque to our busy, results-oriented clients. As a client, I wanted to understand next steps, be told what’s realistic, and learn what’s working and what’s not. So I asked. As a result, we’re now working to be more transparent. (We always set expectations and provided lessons learned for major activities but hadn’t done much regarding day-to-day activities.)
People who say, “Don’t judge a book by its cover,” have never marketed a book and don’t understand the importance of design in marketing. As an agency, we help clients with positioning, defining them and their strengths to appeal to core audiences—and design is always handled by someone else. With Stealing Time, we’re targeting two distinct audiences and marketing had to wait until we had a cover that could appeal to both. We still won’t offer design because that’s a distinct specialty, but I now have much more respect for it, especially for social media.
Good communication takes more than just being responsive via email. Tilia and I worked with a terrific cover designer, who was always extremely responsive by email to our questions and suggestions. But we had one issue too complicated to handle by email. I suggested scheduling a call, and it took us 30 minutes to resolve what would’ve taken days by email to solve.
It’s important to understand that clients are juggling other responsibilities. We had to delay some initiatives while we sorted out the cover, clearly the priority since we couldn’t proceed with some opportunities without one. Our publicist knew about the problem because we asked her for market insight about what the cover needed to do. But now, if I encounter client delays, we will ask about it because understanding the delay may help us re-swizzle priorities and activities.
Identify opportunities best handled by the client. Marketing partners can do a lot on behalf of clients, but to maximize our budget, our publicist suggested she focus on high-value media targets while Tilia and I pitch our local media and alumni organizations. That seemed smart, and is something that my agency will look to recommend when appropriate.
Prioritize collaboration and client-centric workflow. Clients and agencies bring different skills and experiences, and true collaboration can develop something more effective. That happened when Tilia and I brainstormed ways to pitch our story and how to handle some content requests. As an agency, we will more actively look for collaboration opportunities with clients.
Equally important is to use a workflow that’s effective for the client. Tilia and I worked with one marketing partner who delivered great results but his project-tracking app was unfamiliar and confusing to us. In my agency work, we will now check to ensure our processes and reporting meet the needs of our clients.
Here are observations about being a good client:
Trust the experts you’ve hired and stay engaged. Don't second-guess once you’ve chosen to partner with an outside expert. It’s demoralizing and unproductive. Tilia and I focused on being engaged. Reviewing materials and making decisions promptly are essential to keeping the project on track while avoiding delays that can increase costs and missed opportunities. The truth is we did miss one email that contained several requests; the lesson here is that as the agency, we will check in more closely if a client doesn’t respond to important emails.
Be reliable. Working with an outside partner is a two-way street. We expect the partner to deliver on time but we (as the client in this case) must also respond. There may be a very good reason why the client is waiting to make a decision (see the cover issue, noted above) but it’s important for clients to either meet their deadlines or to give a heads-up when that’s not happening. After all, the meter is running every time the agency has to reach out to check on the status of a decision or information necessary for them to proceed—and that can add up.
Be realistic about expectations and the budget. While we’re confident Stealing Time is a fun read, and the advance reviews have been very positive, we don’t expect to be booked by national talk shows. We’ve also been careful about the budget, which is why we’ve been willing to take on some assignments.
Pay invoices on time. Marketing partners should be focused on the project. If they have to worry about getting paid, they won’t be happy or effective.
My experience as a client has reshaped how we approach client relationships, inspiring more transparency and collaboration.
