Improving Client Satisfaction & Enhancing Retention

What's up, digital marketing agencies? On today's session, I want to talk a little bit about some strategies that can help you improve your client retention rate, keep clients with you longer. And really, on this topic, one of the questions we get all the time is, "Why? I mean, I guess I should be meeting with my client more, or my team should be meeting with the client more, but what should we cover? How do we make those meetings productive?" I'm gonna answer that question on this video, so be sure to check it out. So when you think about your client retention strategy and the things you can do to improve your client retention rate, reduce your churn, get your clients to stay with you longer, really boils down to your onboarding process, how you communicate, and your, your client success management process as you grow and as you scale. I want to talk today specifically around, you know, this client communication rhythm process. And what you should be communicating with your clients on a consistent basis to keep them with you long term. So I wanna remind you, the number one reason clients leave, and there's been lots of studies on this particular topic, the number one reason clients leave is perceived indifference, right? They don't leave because you didn't generate results, even though that's part of it. They didn't leave necessarily because you didn't do a great job. Oftentimes because they feel like you don't care. They feel like you're not checking in. And so there's a really strong case for having a great communication process where you're meeting with the clients at least once a month. And if they don't meet with you live, you're sending them some type of recap with the wins and what you accomplished. This was something we struggled with in our agency, Plumbing and HVAC SEO, where we got really good at getting results, but we weren't really dialed in. We didn't plan to meet with the client unless they asked. Like no news was good news in our world, and that led to high churn. That led to a lot of clients being like, "Hey, we haven't heard from you. It seems like you're doing okay, but we're going a different direction." And so you wanna get ahead of that, right? I really think you wanna bake into your agency process a routine where you're meeting with the clients every single month. Because there really is a balance that has to be struck between results, right? Absolutely, you have to be good at generating results, right? If what you're doing for the client isn't making it rain, it's not generating tangible measurable return on investment, you don't even deserve to retain the client. So that's, that's the first thing. But then in addition to that, you've also got to provide world-class service, right? Because if you've got amazing results but you're not communicating with the client, they don't like you as people, they're still gonna churn. So you need to generate good results, provide a good service, right? Because the other balance to that is, let's say you get great service, you're super friendly, you send them stuff in the mail, you know, they love your team, but you're failing to deliver, they're gonna cancel as well. So you really wanna find that balance between results and service. And so really what you wanna focus on and what you wanna cover on that monthly review call is number one in the call, it should be something that you do ideally on web-based meeting, right? Yes, you can make a phone call, but if you can get on Zoom and they can see you and you can see them and you can show them what you're working on, what the results are, what the impact is, we found that that creates a stickier meeting meeting that they tend to want to show up for. So I do believe having it on Zoom is your best play. And really, you want to have prepared in advance, right? So you or your account management team— and you want to train this into the team— that before the meeting, they've set an agenda, they've looked at the key data, the ranking reports, the dashboard, whatever you guys have in place, so that you can show them what you're up to and you can feature some wins. And so what I'm gonna suggest is review the progress, whatever progress you're tracking towards. Maybe it's a number of leads, maybe it's an average cost per lead, maybe it's a return on investment, maybe it's a ranking result of some sort. You wanna review the progress, the rankings, the analytics, and the calls, but that doesn't need to be the main function of the meeting, right? You wanna come to that meeting, you wanna say, "Hey, thanks so much for meeting. We really appreciate your business. Here's what we wanna cover today. We wanna kinda go through the results that we're seeing." We want to get your feedback, make sure we're on the same page, and then, you know, we want to talk about some things you can do on your end and kind of what we're focused on next, really build a plan for the next 90 days. Does that work for you, Mr. Client? Right? Get their buy-in that that's what they have in mind. Sometimes on this meeting they've got a totally divergent path they want to go down, and that's okay, right? But you do want to make sure you hit and you've got this stuff as backup so that if they say, hey, let's look at the rankings, hey, let's look at the analytics, you can get into that detail. What we find is there are really two types of clients that show up for these monthly review calls. There's gonna be the Type D business owner that really doesn't care about all of the magic sauce and all of the analytics data. They just wanna know, how much did I spend, how many leads did you generate, what's my return on investment, and what are you guys doing for me this month, right? And so be prepared differently for that Type D personality than that more SC personality that the more you know, hey, I wanna understand why these results are happening. What are you doing with the SEO? What are you doing with the pay-per-click? How are we reducing the cost per lead? How are we expanding the volume? And so you need to prepare very differently based on the psychological profile of who you meet with, right? So these meetings will shift based on who the client is. Sometimes you're dealing with the owner, sometimes you're dealing with a marketing manager, and you really need to go into that meeting prepared a little bit differently and let those conversations take the path that they need to. The main thing I see a lot of agencies struggle with when it comes to the monthly review call is they wanna programmatically pull up the ranking report, pull up the dashboard, and, you know, just look back. Hey, here's what happened, here's how many leads we generated. And usually what happens is the client gets bored with that. They're like, okay, what's the point? I could've looked at this report myself. And they stop engaging in the monthly review process. You need to make sure that it's an actionable meeting where you're looking at some of that relatively quickly, but you're also talking about, here's what we're gonna be working on, here's what we need from you, right? And you wanna think about what you can get them to partner with you on in this process. Maybe it's getting more aggressive with how they get reviews and training their team to create a better experience and request a review after every service call. Maybe it's you want some more authenticity and some more images that you can infuse into the website, into their social profiles. So ask them, look, These are the types of images we need and this is how we can get them from you. So think about the homework that you can give to them, that way they're not just sitting there like, hey, you're not making my phone ring, but they're like, okay, we're in a partnership in this business relationship. You guys are doing this part, we're doing this part, and there's a reason to meet next month because we're gonna talk about the progress on that. We're gonna fill in gaps, we're gonna keep the ball rolling in a really positive direction. You want to make sure that they're clear from your perspective as the account manager or the owner of the business, like, "Here's what we're going to be working on in the next 30 to 90 days. Here's the roadmap. Here's where we're headed. Here's where we're going to be focused." They're paying you a monthly fee. They are paying that fee for results, but they also are continuing to pay that fee because you're bringing something new to the table. You got to constantly be seeding the vision about where you're headed Next, if you're dealing with the owner, which is ideally the case, you wanna spend some time talking about the goals that they have for the business and what the goal for this particular month or this particular interval was and whether your services as the agency helped to hit those targets. Are you on track or are you off track? And then adjust. Sometimes it's more content that needs to be created. Sometimes it's more budget that needs to be pumped into the advertising strategies to generate those results. Now, I mean, in a perfect world, that's what we're covering. Hey, here's, here's what we've done last, in the last couple months. Here's what we're seeing with the results. Here's what we're focused on over the next 30 to 60 days. Here's some things we need you to do cumulatively. Any questions that you have? And then you also need to make sure that you send a recap, right? The end of that call, if there's to-dos, you need to send the to-dos to the client. Hey, here's what we worked on today. Here's what we're gonna get done between now and the next time. Here's what you need to do. They expect you to recap. That's a very professional process. And as the account manager, usually you're the liaison in the business relationship, which means you're not necessarily gonna go do that work, but you do need to put it into the project management system. You do need to get that out to the team and make sure that it gets done. And then close the loop with the client. Even if it's before the next meeting, let the client know, hey, this was done. Hey, we got this finished. Hey, this was updated on the site. Hey, we just loaded that new thing. That makes them feel like things happen between one meeting and the next, and that you're taking action and that you're closing the loop and that you're carrying the ball across the finish line. Now, in the perfect world, we're meeting with the client monthly, we're following this process, we're developing relationship, we're starting to get to know them better, but we do find there are certain clients that just won't meet. They're busy, they got other things going on, and they don't wanna meet. And in the past in our agency, we'd just be like, okay, It is what it is. They didn't meet, so we'll send them the automatic report and hopefully that's enough. That's a recipe for churn, right? 'Cause eventually they're gonna rear their head and they're gonna say, hey, you guys haven't even checked in with me. I'm moving in a different direction. And so what we wanna bake into our account management strategy is if they can't meet, at the end of the month, send them a recap video. Do exactly what you would've done on a live call and just do a quick video. Hey, Mr. Customer, I know you're busy this month. I wanted to shoot this quick video to show you kind of what's going on with the reporting, what we got done, what we're focused on the next 90 days. And so boom, boom, boom, you just walk through those same elements and say, hey listen, if you'd like to jump on a call to talk through this, if you have any questions, my calendar link is here. I look forward to connecting with you soon. This will create a professional process where the client can't claim perceived indifference because you cared enough to try and meet with them, you cared enough to send a recap, and they can't get disengaged in the process because all you're doing is regurgitating the report. It needs to be a strategic conversation. You need to be seeding the vision and you need to be kind of bringing them into that process with you where they've got things to do and there's a reason to continue meeting and to continue to track in against those goals. Hopefully this has been helpful. This is the things you want to cover on the monthly review call. If you got value, please be sure to press the like button. If you have follow-up questions, type those in the comments and be sure to subscribe. I'm rolling out new videos like this on how to grow and scale your digital marketing agency every week. So if you haven't already, hit the subscribe button so you can get alerted as new videos are loaded. Um, if you'd like more ideas and strategies on how to improve your client retention, um, I've got a client retention workbook that has a checklist of the key things you wanna think about to maximize your client retention from onboarding to the monthly review call to, um, everything in between. So you can get that by going to 7figureagency.com/retention- workbook. Go grab that now. And thanks so much for watching. I look forward to seeing you on a future video here for the 7 Figure Agency. I'll talk to you soon.