The first impression is all about your agency clients’ perceived value of your marketing services and ensuring they have a memorable client journey that will mark their lifetime value.
Ensuring you set clear expectations with clients from the get-go and fully understand how your services will work with their business is key to any successful client-agency relationship.
Have you analyzed your onboarding process lately? How effective and efficient is it? Is it resulting in a successful client journey and resulting in higher retention rates? These are the questions you should be asking yourself as an agency when honing how to take growth and acquisition to the next level.
The Client Journey
Every client follows a path and makes decisions towards acquiring a service or purchasing a product.
Because we live in a world of constant change, there are always new ways in which people acquire services, and it’s a business’s job to consistently update and innovate how they will anticipate how a client will act every step of the way.
Expectations are everything, and there’s no use if they don’t align with a client’s goals.
Factoring In Client Onboarding
Client onboarding is all about giving a warm welcome to your marketing clients where you have the opportunity to set expectations, goals, and a timeline of work executed through the trajectory of the first 90 days.
Not having an efficient marketing client onboarding process is one of the top reasons agencies fail to survive.
Developing an onboarding process that fits your agency and clients needs can:
- Give your business a more professional and organized aspect.
- Boost a smooth and lasting relationship with clients.
- Reduce churn and efforts in client retention.
- Increase chances of client acquisition through referrals.
Best practices for marketing agencies to take into consideration during the client journey:
- Businesses that wow clients each step of the way will always be ahead of their competitors.
- Foster a relationship during each step, and it will enhance the client’s lifetime value.
- The communication strategy should support the purpose of each phase.
- Make sure you are delivering the right content in each stage.
In-Depth With The Marketing Client Journey | Onboarding Process
The onboarding process consists of pre-sale and post-sale phases; knowing which phase your client is experiencing is important for ensuring communicating effectively and giving the right message about your product during a particular stage.
Awareness (Pre-sale)
It is also known as the discovery stage, where prospects have realized that they have a pain point and are beginning to look for solutions to their problems. Ensure your marketing efforts gear towards engaging audiences with your brand, products, and the value they provide their business.
Goals:
- Brand awareness of your product.
- Creating content that attracts leads: blog posts, videos, infographics, etc.
Consideration (Pre-sale)
Brand awareness marketing should be established now given that prospects are currently performing comparison shopping of similar services including, pricing, features, and benefits. Show your prospects why you are a good fit over your competitors.
Goals:
- Engage with the client and influence them to consider your product over others.
- Presenting case studies, webinars, live interactions, whitepapers, and comparison reports with possible competitors.
- Be readily available to communicate given 60% of customers want to get in touch with a sales manager during this phase.
Purchase (Post-Sale)
The much-awaited conversion stage where a prospect will have converted into a client. Initial impression and contact are crucial to engage in during this stage by providing a great experience towards a progressive client journey. Because loyalty has been well established, you can educate less and promote more on your marketing services.
Goals:
- Provide client reviews or testimonials that can seal the deal.
- Have promotional content for your services handy.
Retention (Post-Sale)
Helping the client navigate their business with your product is essential to keep them engaged in the long run. Continue to cater to their business’s digital marketing needs, and upselling becomes a breeze.
Goals:
- Constant communication is key to maintaining loyalty to your brand.
- Providing follow-ups, reminders, and opportunities to clients will keep them interested in maintaining services.
Advocacy (Post-Sale)
In this last phase, referrals will become an automatic source of leads and clients. Your onboarding process will become shorter and more fruitful as you gain happy clients that recommend your product to others; this experience gives you the chance to innovate and improve the onboarding process.
Goals:
- Incentivize recommendations through a referral program.
- Obtain positive reviews and testimonials to build your collateral base.
Benefits of a Strong Onboarding Process
Considering to create a schedule to analyze and brainstorm on renovating your onboarding process and strategy is essential. A robust onboarding process helps your agency revenue and client acquisition; it exists to take the guesswork out of your client’s needs.
Helps Clients:
- Have confidence in your product and an excellent first impression.
- Understand the benefits of your service through guidance on setup and use.
- With helpful ongoing support.
Helps You:
- Understand your marketing clients to provide them with a great user experience.
- Maintain or increase client retention to maximize profits.
- Insights and actionable points to improve client experience.
Tips For Your Onboarding Strategy
Don’t ignore feedback, as this will only strengthen your process in the long run. Ask relevant questions at the right points in the client’s journey.
What Your Process Should Look Like
The client onboarding process flow includes first interaction, details about the service, usage, check-in, and initial success.
Creating a roadmap of your process helps you better design and support your clients’ journey.
Onboarding Success
Consumers want personalized content, and tailormade solutions offer this, and client acquisition will no longer be challenging.
- Reduce sales funnel loss
- Increases client LTV (lifetime value)
- Create long term loyalty
- Increase referral rates
- Set a positive tone for your agency and service value
- Enable the opportunity for upselling and cross-selling
Create a plan, monitor the results, and aim for the best service possible to create loyal clients that will go on to sell for you. If you want a winning sales strategy, we can provide you with a roadmap and tools that take you there.
