Think about how you build out journey maps or of journey maps you’ve seen if that isn’t something your agency does. They chart out how a potential customer goes from not being aware of the product or service to the point of purchase. Typically, we’re building this journey map to coincide with our work in helping our clients increase their sales. In that way, it makes sense that the map would end at the sale. That’s our job is to get them to that point. But the customer’s experience has really just begun. The real journey begins once you’re in a relationship with the customer and how you nourish and grow the trust and connection with the client moving forward.
The opportunity for our agencies is to help our clients beyond the initial sale. What if our agency also engaged in helping clients build stronger, more resilient relationships with their customers? That’s some very profitable work for us and a lasting value for our clients.
As a certified customer experience professional, Jeannie Walters is an expert on this exact topic. An educator and consultant that comes from the agency world, she has a real passion for improving customer experiences and she’s here to share some insights that will help you serve your clients even better.
In this episode of Build a Better Agency, Jeannie and I dive into the changes in customer relations that were inspired by the pandemic and how companies were forced to evolve in order to survive. We also talk about how the entire supply chain process has come front and center, as well as the continuing need to be innovative, even though the stakes aren’t as high as they were during the pandemic.
A big thank you to our podcast’s presenting sponsor, White Label IQ. They’re an amazing resource for agencies who want to outsource their design, dev, or PPC work at wholesale prices. Check out their special offer (10 free hours!) for podcast listeners here.
What You Will Learn in This Episode:
- How to get your clients to think bigger
- The need for a customer experience mission in your agency
- Ways to improve journey mapping
- The difference between the buyer’s journey and the customer’s journey
- Why communication is key to the customer experience
- The way the customer experience differs in a B2B environment versus a B2C environment
- How to get your whole agency on the same page regarding the expectations of the customer experience
- How to use a customer experience success statement to measure what is being done right
- The important of including the billing process in the review of your customer journey
- How to spot and utilize “micro-moments” to create surprises that delight customers
As we celebrate the most anticipated New Year’s Day in any of our lifetimes, we also find ourselves planning, goal settings, and making resolutions for the new year. Whenever I ask an agency owner what goals they’ve set for their shop, without exception, the first goal (and often the only goal) they can come up with is a revenue goal. I absolutely want you to set revenue goals for this year but you shouldn’t limit your thinking to that one metric. There are other growth goals that are as important, if not more so, than what your gross revenue is for the year.
One of the fallacies that plagues agencies is that the only way to have a successful year is to get bigger (gross billings) but that’s a short-sighted and incorrect notion. There are many ways you can build and expand your agency that have nothing to do with your revenue. And depending on your agency – several of them could be even more fruitful and put more money in your pocket.
In this solocast episode of Build A Better Agency, I’m going to walk you through ten metrics worthy of consideration as you think about your agency’s growth. I’m not suggesting you try to tackle them all, but two or three might be the right number to consider as you plan your way to a good dose of growth for 2021.
A big thank you to our podcast’s presenting sponsor, White Label IQ. They’re an amazing resource for agencies who want to outsource their design, dev, or PPC work at wholesale prices. Check out their special offer (10 free hours!) for podcast listeners here.
What You Will Learn in This Episode:
- Reasonable expectations for AGI (Adjusted Gross Income) growth goals in 2021
- The right way to think about growing your team
- How to think about client growth in a different way
- How certain employees block growth
- The power of focused goals
- The growth potential in specialization
- How a gorilla client impacts your ability to grow
- Taking care of the clients who got you this far
- The powerful satisfaction metric that can impede or fuel growth
- Why you need to take some time to think about your life goals, and not just your agency goals, and an AMI mini course to get you started
As marketers we understand the power and influence of a brand. We know that every buying decision we make is based on emotion. This helps explain why some brands garner a cult-like fan base. They understand the power of their emotional triggers. As agencies, we should be brilliant at discerning and leveraging a brand’s specific emotional triggers. But sometimes it’s difficult to help a client see the value in what can appear a bit ethereal. But what if there was a tool to help you validate what you know about your clients’ (or your) brand?
Today’s guest has turned the science of emotion into a tangible tool. Brian Gregory comes from a long publishing and advertising background. He has studied the core emotional triggers that lead to a specific brand’s buying decisions and is using this insight to help agencies and their clients build a better business and ROI.
In this episode of Build a Better Agency, Brian and I discuss the principles of emotion-based buying, including examples of how it has been used successfully by well-known brands. We also talk about the formula that all good marketing follows, what the big brands fear small businesses will figure out, and why it’s important to have an emotional emphasis in all your marketing communication.
A big thank you to our podcast’s presenting sponsor, White Label IQ. They’re an amazing resource for agencies who want to outsource their design, dev, or PPC work at wholesale prices. Check out their special offer (10 free hours!) for podcast listeners here.
What You Will Learn in This Episode:
- The science of emotion buying marketing
- An introduction to Admanity, an online tool that defines which of the primal emotions can be best utilized by your clients and your agency
- How to use the knowledge of emotion buying triggers to increase sales
- How advertising follows a formula
- The importance of understanding how emotions are related when it comes to marketing communication
- How businesses and agencies get advertising wrong
- What the big brands fear small businesses will figure out
- Why this is the perfect time for small-to-midsize agencies and brands to embrace the power of emotion buying
- How an agency can use emotion buying concepts to sell a client on a new campaign