In the early stages of having an agency, you’re doing everything you can to nail down your set of services and be really good at them, and that’s exactly what you should be doing, but at some point you are sufficiently good at what you do that your team is going to execute and deliver on your promises. This creates an amazing opportunity for you as an agency leader.
You can start thinking strategically with your customer. Are we feeding audience data to your Facebook marketing? Are we making sure that the people who have just purchased from you are either included or excluded from particular marketing activities? Are we leveraging email to ask your clients for reviews, or endorsements, or engagements, or referrals?
You’ve delivered more value to your client, and now they know that you are thinking about them. You have thought strategically about your client’s business, and you have helped them, so they’re going to be all ears because they know you’re thinking towards their benefit.
Many marketers think about agencies as a giant center of cost, but when you’re able to show the ancillary or non primary benefits of the work you do (maybe customer insight or data), and you share that with the clients and help make their business better, you’ve just taken a big step from vendor to maybe trusted partner, or advisor, or marketing peer.
You’ve elevated yourself from outsourced service to valuable peer. You now have a seat at the table with your client, you are now part of the strategic team, and you now have a voice about the direction that your client should take. That provides you with incredible opportunities for growth because there’s certainly other ways that your client could work with you.
When your clients have high trust in you and are letting you inside, it makes them giving you referrals easy. It allows you to see your service from the purview of your client. You understand how they’re thinking about it. What’s the value that they think they’re getting versus the value that you think you’re offering? This gives you an amazing look at your own business, so that you can take those learnings and apply them to your next marketing and sales activities.
You’re getting closer to the client. You’re getting better information for the client. You’re adding more value to the client. You’re gaining trust with the client. They’re in a position where they have no hesitation to spend more money with you and introduce you to people they know, like, and trust.
The real growth happens when you are able to step up from provider to partner. When you’ve got your service working so that you know it’s dependable, that’s the time to reach out to customers and clients and start thinking, “What else can I tell them about their business that I might be able to help them with? How else can I empower them?”
When you empower your clients, the benefit is increased trust, and increased trust gives you a higher resolution visibility into the workings of their business and how they see you. It gives you an inside track to being able to leverage that relationship to grow your business.