5 Tips for Agencies to Boost Retention

On average, the customer acquisition cost for digital marketing agencies is $87. Approximately five times higher than the cost for retaining customers, acquiring new partners is an expensive undertaking for any growing business. 

This is a big problem for agencies that may be experiencing high turnover rates in the post-Covid world. Stress levels are high, patience is short, and people are especially results-driven, all of which makes customer retention an increasing challenge no matter what line of business you’re in.

On top of that, consumer spending has not entirely recovered from the pandemic. People are more price-conscious than ever before. That includes your agency’s clients.

Retention is arguably harder for marketing agencies than for many other types of businesses, and indeed, retention rates for marketers are notoriously low. It’s largely because marketing is tough, so marketing clients often keep their eyes open for another agency that appears to deliver better results, even if that’s not how things eventually play out. 

But despite the challenging conditions facing marketing agencies in 2022, there are still steps you can take to boost retention and cut client churn rates. Here are five strategies for you to try. 

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5 Client Retention Strategies for Agencies

1. Automate Reports
2. Deliver customized services
3. Surprise and delight clients
4. Adjust contracts
5. Strengthen Client Communication

1. Automate reports

As every seasoned marketing professional knows, even at its best, marketing is essentially about stringing together a series of small wins. It’s a long-term process that requires slowly building momentum towards significant impact. In short, it’s a war that is fought over a significant period of time, not a battle that is won in a day. 

This is often what makes marketing so frustrating for your agency’s clients, who are waiting to see big results like a jump in revenue or spike in sales. 

To stop their discontent from building up into irritation and churn, make sure to send them regular reports about your small achievements and minor wins. This way, it’s easy for them to chart progress, and they’ll be less likely to feel like they aren’t seeing any results or wind up feeling discouraged and let down. 

However, you don’t want to have to give up too much of your active work hours to prepare reports for your clients. That’s where automated reports come in. They help demonstrate the value you’re providing your clients on a regular basis, keeping your achievements top of mind, without requiring you to set aside time every week or month. Plus, you’re less likely to forget to send them when you’re having a busy period. 

Source: https://www.octoboard.com/cross-channel-ppc-seo-reporting 

A tool like Octoboard offers easy client reporting for marketing agencies, so you can share up-to-date dashboards and automatically generate and send reports on every area of your marketing work.

2. Deliver customized services

Every marketing client is different, so their needs are going to vary greatly – even if they’re all in the same vertical or a similar size. 

For example, Hubspot’s list of the most common challenges marketers face shows that measuring ROI, managing websites, and generating traffic and leads were listed as the “top challenge” by a similar number of participants, with 28%, 27% and 27% respectively. 

These kinds of data points emphasize that there’s no use trying to guess at what “most clients” are “most likely” to need, because there are far too many possibilities. Instead, you need to take a more personalized approach, keeping an eye on each client’s marketing data and using it to customize your service offerings according to what will help them most. 

Source: https://www.vcita.com/ 

If you create and offer a co-branded app using vcita’s agency partner platform, you gain increased visibility into your clients’ lead capture, nurture and sales data. Your agency’s employees and your clients’ marketing teams can view the same figures and visualizations at the same time, giving you better insight into the challenges and obstacles in their way, and helping you to craft targeted service offers that address their biggest and latest pain points. 

Your clients will appreciate the extent to which you’re paying attention to their specific needs, and they’ll enjoy the business value that you deliver.

3. Surprise and delight your clients

Go above and beyond to deliver unexpected benefits that show how much you care for your clients. This can be in the form of holiday gifts, free upgrades to higher service levels, loyalty-based discounts – see where your creativity takes you. 

If you don’t have a loyalty program, perhaps you should consider implementing one. Offers like a free blog post for every ten they order, or one month of marketing free when they prepay for a year, can be an immense incentive for clients to stick with you through the thin as well as the thick. 

Remember, incentives and gifts don’t have to be costly to be valuable. Something as simple as fresh donuts on National Donut Day, cupcakes with the client’s logo on the anniversary of their signing on with you, or a box of chocolates on Valentine’s Day, can make them fall in love with you all over again. What matters is that these small bonuses are unexpected, and they express how much you care about your clients. 

Source: https://www.instagram.com/p/CSadjpyB8H2/ 

In fact, your gifts don’t have to cost anything at all. Share your network and contacts by boosting client achievements on your own social media networks. Shout out their successes, profile their accomplishments in your blog posts, and bump their brags in your social media feeds. 

Australian branding photography agency Sister Scout, under the leadership of Sophie Timothy, does this especially well, transforming the agency’s clients into a community of celebrated entrepreneurs, documented with a dedicated directory and cheered on with social media posts, like the above, speaking to a PR success scored by Hayley Clinch from Grevillea Marketing.

4. Adjust your contracts

As mentioned above, marketing takes time to pay out, so make sure to set yourself up for success by building in time for your efforts to bear fruit. 

This is especially true in the world of SEO, where 82% of practitioners say that the full search rankings impact of their work can take six to 24 months to be realized.

Source: https://morningscore.io/how-long-does-seo-take/ 

If your contracts are too short, clients aren’t likely to see significant results before they come to review their contract, and then there’s a risk that they’ll blame your agency instead of recognizing the long-term nature of marketing, and move on to someone else. 

One option is to extend your minimum contract duration when you sign up new clients. Instead of having a minimum of three to six months, make it at least 12 months and create incentives for those who upgrade their commitments to 18 or 24 months. 

That way, you’ll have enough time to prove your capabilities and deliver on at least some of the promises you make when onboarding. 

5. Strengthen client communications

Part of what makes marketing such a challenge is that many clients don’t know what they need. 

For example, they might say they want more leads, but does that mean that they need a connected social media marketing plan, or to improve their website? Or perhaps they already have all the leads they need, but they don’t realize it because their lead attribution tactics are falling short? 

As discussed above, having access to their performance data can help a great deal, but the path to success also lies in truly listening to your clients about their objectives and pain points. That’s the only way that you’ll be able to innovate ways to meet those objectives and cement your relationship with them. 

Source: https://partner.ascend2.com/agency-trends-2020/

A report by Ascend2 shows that the primary barrier to a positive agency-client relationship is a lack of innovative ideas. The trouble is, you can’t deliver these ideas without good communication. More barriers on the list, including effective project management and understanding the brand completely, likewise demand good communication.

Improve Client Retention With These Strategies

It might be a tough economic climate for everyone, and loyalty might be low, but that doesn’t mean you can’t improve your marketing agency’s retention rates. 

By offering improved communication, customized services, automated reports, and delightful surprises, at the same time as revising your contracts, you can set yourself up to cut client turnover and boost your bottom line. 

Looking to improve your site’s online ranking? Find an SEO package from experts that fits your budget.  

Additional reading

• 5 Customer Service Mistakes Businesses Make
• 7 SEO Tools for Businesses
• How Your Agency Can Positively Impact Your Client’s Strategy
   

About the Author

Gabrielle Sadeh Content Marketer at Freelance

A consultant, social media specialist, and blogger based in Tel Aviv, Gabrielle Sadeh helps brands share their voices and scale their businesses through powerful digital marketing strategies. Find her on Twitter @GabrielleSadeh

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