Jim's Marketing Blog

One of the cornerstones of successful marketing, is to retain as many great clients (or customers) as possible. Otherwise, growing your client base is like trying to fill a bucket that has a hole in it.

When I started out in business, I identified 2 things that guaranteed a new client project would start off, and progress, in the best possible way. I’ve used them with every client since. These 2 components create a super strong foundation for outstanding client retention and marketing results.

When I share this marketing idea with clients, I begin by introducing them to the 2 friends I bring with me to every project. Their names are; availability and willingness.

Availability

It’s essential to have enough time available to absolutely delight your clients or customers.

Many business owners work on too many projects simultaneously. They overload themselves. This approach fails the client. It fails the business owner too. In fact, it fails all round. When a service provider is unable to respond to the needs of their clients in a timely way, the client is left waiting. When a service provider has too little time to provide the level of service required, the quality of the service plummets. The reputation of the service provider plummets, too. This leads to low levels of client retention. And very few, if any, referrals.

The most successful business owners know how to avoid this from happening. Here’s what they do.

They charge a fair fee / price, which allows them the time needed, to provide the availability and quality of service required, to delight the client. They then develop outstanding client relationships. They enjoy exceptionally high client retention and are inundated with great referrals.

That approach sounds obvious. But just look at how few service providers get it right!

Willingness

Being available is absolutely essential. But it isn’t enough.

We need to inform people of our willingness. And then demonstrate it. After all, a disinterested person who contributes nothing to a project is technically available. We call those people RHINO’s… Really Here In Name Only.

What’s the best way to establish our willingness?

I’ve found the most effective strategy is to let everyone on the project know you’re willing, from the start. Right at the beginning. So don’t keep it a secret. Tell them you’re eager, motivated and happy to help.

Here’s a very recent, real-world example of what this looks like.

I joined a new client’s Basecamp group this morning. The very first thing I did was introduce myself to the team and encouraged them to bring me their problems and ask me questions. There’s no ambiguity there. I made my genuine willingness clear, so they can feel 100% comfortable asking me anything.

As things progress, we demonstrate our ongoing willingness to delight our clients by being consistently proactive.

Many service providers are reactive. They wait until a client contacts them. Some even see it as a win, if they don’t hear from a client for a long time! That’s a short-sighted approach to building a successful business.

If we haven’t heard from a client in a while, we need to reach out. I do this by sharing useful information with them or simply ‘checking in’ to see how things are progressing.

In short, availability and willingness don’t get mentioned much. But they’re essential components for delighting your clients and developing a highly respected, successful business.

Photo: Thiebaud Faix

A number of readers noticed something ‘weird’ in my previous post and got in touch. They all had the exact same question too.  Here’s the post. I thought I’d share it with you, along with my answer and a powerful marketing lesson.

Their question?

They wanted to know, how come a fellow marketing professional was attending, and asking me questions, at a marketing talk I gave to business owners. After all, she already knows how marketing works and we’re competitors. Right?

My answer

When I started my business in the mid 1990’s, I chose to adopt a zero-competition approach to my local marketing counterparts and embrace them instead. That’s to say, I intentionally decided to be as useful as possible to them.

More than this, I also chose to proactively seek out opportunities to help them flourish, to open doors for them, to share new ideas and strategies I’d developed with them, to connect them with useful people, etc.

I was only in my 20’s at the time. Many said I was young and naive.

I saw it differently.

My approach to marketing from day one, has been to help business owners achieve outstanding results, using creative marketing ideas… not marketing money. As a new business owner from a very poor background, I had no way to out-spend established marketing providers. If I wanted to get noticed, I needed to do things creatively. I needed to be meaningfully different. I needed to zig, when the ‘competition’ was zagging.

And it worked

Amazingly quickly, too.

The local marketing community was soon talking about me and talking with me. They were very aware that I’d only been around for 5 minutes, yet had gained a lot of what we used to call ‘buzz’. They wanted to know what I was about. What I was doing. Why I was doing it. Soon, this new kid on the block was being invited to speak at events by local banks, accountancy firms and government agencies. The clients quickly followed. Around 6 months after starting my business, it had reached my year 3 income goal. Without a penny spent on advertising. Without a single competing provider.

Throughout my career, massively more marketing professionals have hired me and recommended me, than people from any other industry. They’re also, by far, the biggest share of my readership. They can see that I do things very differently. For instance, they notice that I don’t use SEO in my blog posts. They notice that I don’t have (or need) a Linkedin account. They notice I don’t do guest blogging, attend industry events or send sales emails to my subscribers.

Marketing professionals notice all the signals. They notice them, because they’re trained to. They can see me walking the walk. So they follow my work, they ask me questions and the super-smart ones hire me.

You and your business

There are as many creative ways to market your business, as their are stars in the sky (well, maybe not quite that many, but I love the image it paints).

Throwing money at advertising is easy, but it’s expensive in a number of ways. Yes, there’s the cost of the advertisements. But there’s also the cost of suddenly losing your advertising sales leads, when agile competitors identify where you’re advertising, then wipe you out, with better ads or more ads. It’s very easy for them to do and you won’t know it’s coming, until it’s happened.

And as many of you will have already discovered, general marketing advice available via webinars and online marketing courses doesn’t work. It can’t work, because everyone’s already using those same general strategies and ideas. You’re simply camouflaging yourself amongst the millions of others.

That’s the exact opposite of gaining attention. It’s the opposite of what you need.

Embrace creativity

Why?

To start with, it’s very hard to copy. It sets you apart for all the right reasons. It gets people talking about your business, so you don’t have to. It stops you from needing to sell based on price. It gets you noticed. There are many other great reasons, but you get the gist.

And importantly, it’s also a spectacularly enjoyable way to build a fan-frickin-tastic business.