Welcome to episode 64. Nicky Parker, founder of Bang Consulting, helps companies make sure their marketing is fit for purpose so she’s very familiar with the realities of what our marketing clients do on a day to day basis and the challenges they face.
In this podcast, Nicky shares:
- Why agencies shouldn’t be putting technical people in charge of a client relationship
- How account managers can get more credibility and deepen the relationship with their client
- Why account managers shouldn’t be chasing invoice payments
- Why you need to keep the client informed about team changes
And lots lots more. Nicky really provides some valuable golden nuggets having worked with many companies on their marketing strategy and operations over the years.
I’m now taking bookings for my September training programme for those in creative agency account management. So if you want to learn how to retain and grow your client relationships, position yourself more as an adviser than order taker, you can visit my Training page and book a 20-minute call with me to see if this might be a good fit for you.
Transcript:
Jenny 00:02
On today’s episode, I’m delighted to be chatting to Nicky Parker. Nicky is the founder of Bang Consulting. She’s Chartered Institute of Marketing qualified, so she’s a marketer and she’s got lots of experience in marketing. What Nicky and her team do, is they go into companies to make sure their marketing is fit for purpose. So, she really understands the role of a marketer. And many of our clients, in the agency account management role, are in marketing. So, they’re either marketing managers, marketing directors, CMOs, etc. One of the reasons I’ve invited Nicky onto the show today is to really lift the lid on what it’s like being in the client’s shoes and maybe share with us some of the day-to-day activities they’re doing, some of the challenges they face and also, I want to get her view on how we can optimise our relationships that we have with our marketing clients. So, Nicky, a massive warm welcome to you.
Nicky 01:01
Thank you very much.
Jenny 01:03
Thank you so much for coming on. Could we kick off Nicky, by just spending a brief couple of minutes on your career and your experience in marketing?
Nicky 01:14
Well, I fell into the world of marketing by accident, really. I started in 1991, when I was the office manager for an industrial flooring company. It was a big American company, they opened a UK office and there was the managing director, me as the office manager and two salesmen. And after I started, my boss came to me one day and said, ‘Right, we’ve got a bit of a problem. The salesman hasn’t got any leads, and we need to come up with a solution. Do you think you could drum up some business for them?’ Well, I’ve got no idea. I’ve never done anything like that before anyone. He said, ‘Just give it a whirl and see what happens!’ So, I bought a book on how to write sales letters. I taught myself how to write sales letters. I got some prepaid cards and some booklets from the States, and I did lots of cold calling, which was really horrible. And I wrote the sales letters, and we got this awesome response rate 5%, which any marketer will tell you is a very impressive response rate! Entirely, I might add, by accident, not by design. And it kind of went from there. I realised I enjoyed that, so I made that part of my office manager’s role. Then I went to work for a group of newspaper and magazine wholesalers. Again, I started off as the office manager. And then people moved position and I suddenly became the Business Development Manager. I had to work with all the big publishing groups and all of the big retail groups. I went to Tesco’s every month and met the person there, and represented Independent Newspaper and Magazine Wholesalers, which was a really tough gig actually. It was super male-dominated and a bit behind the times, I would have said. I was very often the only female in the room, and it was quite challenging. It was quite sexist. But actually, that didn’t really bother me, I think I’ve become quite tough about all that sort of stuff. But I ended up doing marketing related things as part of that as well. Then I left and went to work at Motorola as the business planning manager for Western Europe in their two-way radio division. This wasn’t marketing but I had to hold the salespeople accountable for their figures. So, every week, I’d be like, ‘Come on, boys. What have you got in the bag? What can you sell? Come on, come!’ And they’d say, ‘Nicky, I can’t do any more.’ And I’m like, ‘Yes, yes, come on!’ So, I did that until I left to have my son. Then I had a bit of a career break and then I started writing some articles and someone approached me and asked me to do some PR for a private school. So, I did that. And then things sort of took a bit of a tough time personally. My husband was out of work, and I’m like, ‘Oh, my God, I need more money.’ And my friend who persuaded me to do the PR said to me, ‘Well, you’ve got these marketing skills. Why don’t you just run a marketing consultancy?’ And I said, ‘I don’t know if I can?’ and she said, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’ll be fine. It’ll be fine.’ So, unfortunately, she passed away last year in January, but she is responsible for me really setting up around Bang it’s gone from there. So, Bang started in 2006. We’ve evolved and developed and grown as most agencies have and now, we’re very much pure consultancy. So, we work very specifically with CEOs and managing directors.
Jenny 04:54
Amazing what an interesting background, Nicky. What it also tells me is you have a lot of resilience and also flexibility, like how you stepped up to the plate took on roles that you hadn’t done before, and just went for it. And I love the fact that you also did a bit of research before. Can you remember the name of that book on how to write a sales letter?
Nicky 05:16
‘Writing Words that Sell’ I think.
Jenny 05:19
Was it Dan Kennedy?
Nicky 05:23
Gosh, I don’t know.
Jenny 05:25
I’ll have a look as well, because there is a famous book that I’ve heard mentioned several times. So that’s really interesting. Brilliant. So basically, you’ve worked with medium sized companies, with corporations and worked in different kinds of guises. And this has all culminated in you starting Bang in 2006 and it’s evolved from there. So, when did you do your Chartered Institute of Marketing degree?
Nicky 05:53
I started in 96. And I did it two nights a week while I was working full time. So, I started with a certificate then the next year, I did the Advanced Certificate, and then I did the post grad diploma. So, I qualified in 99. Pre-internet. And of course, because I’m a chartered marketer, which means you have to keep up at least 35 hours of continuous professional development every year, a lot of that stuff has been obviously, learning all about what digital looks like and online. And understanding the world of web and social and all that sort of stuff as well. So that’s how I’ve kept up my skills and knowledge.
Jenny 06:41
Fantastic. So, it’s a mixture of practical hands-on experience, as well as the academic side, which is the principles as well. So typically, you said that you work with CEOs of companies, or CMOS, for example, who bring you in? And typically, what kind of problems do they come to you with?
Nicky 06:59
Okay, so, in truth, it’s unlikely to be the CMO, it’s probably the chief exec or the managing director. And it could be that the marketing director or CMO has resigned. And they’re like, ‘What should we do now? Do we replace like with like, do we need to look for a different skill set, do we need to look for a different personality fit? Is that the right structure for our marketing department?’ Or it could be the business has got a new chief exec and they want to understand marketing. Are they doing a good job? Is the team the right team? Have they got the right skills? Are the external people the right people? Are they even doing the right marketing things? And I think the marketing profession is yet again, another sector that is quite good at talking in acronyms and techie language. And probably in reality, most CEOs are like, ‘I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about, but I don’t really want to tell you, I don’t know what you’re talking about!’ So, they just go, ‘Yes, yes, carry on.’ And then they’re thinking, ‘Things are not going quite as well as we’d like, is that the marketing department’s fault?’ So, we get brought in to give them an independent assessment of, ‘Have you got round pegs in round holes? Have you got the right people doing the right things? Are you doing the right things in business? Have you got the right agencies in place? What is working from a marketing perspective, what needs a tweak, and actually what needs a complete rethink?’ So, we do a really in-depth review. We interview the whole of the board, because it’s nice to get all the different perspectives. We interview all the marketing department, usually the sales team, all the other stakeholders within the business, their key suppliers and their customers to find out what everybody thinks of marketing. But we usually unearth stuff that is non marketing related as well, like there’s a bit of a problem with data and that’s because IT is not working that well, or whatever it might be. We do huge, in-depth online review, what does social, the online reviews like? What’s the website looking like? What’s SEO looking like? So, we do all of that stuff. But we look at the offline stuff as well – how do you show up in your premises? What does your building say about you to your customers? Or if you’ve got retail outlets, what are they like? Is it consistent across all of them? So, it’s that whole thing, your tone of voice, you’re branding. It’s a full circle. This is everything about how you show up from the customer’s perspective and here’s the bits that aren’t joining up.
Jenny 09:55
Amazing. Do you get involved in interviewing the customers as well?
Nicky 09:59
Yes. Which I really like doing. Because that’s the fun bit. For me, it’s always all about customer, I love the customer bit.
Jenny 10:10
Well, it sounds to me like something that most marketing departments should be doing, or most companies should be doing as a matter of course anyway, regardless of whether a CMOs left or not. So, this feels like a sort of best practice approach. Do you find that you’re generally welcomed? Does anyone in the organisation feel threatened by you coming in and sort of uncovering stones and trying to find insights about what’s happening? And if so, how do you approach it?
Nicky 10:41
If the senior marketing person is leaving, I think they feel less threatened because they’ve made the decision to go anyway, and they might then be a bit more honest about why they’re going and it’s an opportunity to then help senior leaders to fix any problems so that when they recruit a replacement, they’re not going to go around the same loop again. I think if in their heart, the CMO or the marketing director knows that they’re perhaps not doing all that they could be doing for a variety of different reasons, they might feel more threatened. But that’s a tough one because ultimately, I’m there, to be honest and say, ‘That this person is really good at their job, and they just need a bit of support and help or they need to think about this and this but by and large, it’s doing well.’ Or, actually, ‘I’m not really sure that this is the right person for your business.’ But that’s what they’re bringing in – an independent review. It doesn’t make any difference to me, whether they’re good or not good. It’s about is marketing working, or isn’t it? And is the person leading it the right person to be leading it? Obviously, there’s a way of delivering that message. And having spent 20 odd years as a school governor, where I sometimes need to dance around the houses with head teachers to try to get them to recognise things need to change, I’ve kind of learned how to do it. But there are times when the direct approach is the only approach.
Jenny 12:15
Well, I was going to say, actually, I can just imagine you come in to do this really thorough audit, which was also a great example of the remit that our marketing clients have, and all the different areas of business that they get involved in, so that was a good insight, thank you for sharing, but then presumably, you go back to the board or that individual with the results and then even within internal teams, in the senior management team, there’s probably differences of opinion. Some people think it was working before didn’t need fixing, other people probably want to push for change. So, you’ve got to deal with all those stakeholders as well.
Nicky 12:53
Yes, absolutely. But the big advantage that we have is that we’ve heard from the customer. And so, the argument is always, it doesn’t actually matter what you think, it’s what the customer thinks that matters. And you might say it’s not broken, but the customer is telling you that it is. So irrespective of what you think, you need to fix it, if you want customer loyalty. And yes, we do present that to the board. And we tend to use a very visual rag-based approach to it. So, they can see this is going well, this needs a bit of a tweak, this needs fixing. And with some headline fixes, restructure your marketing department it should look like this, or you don’t have a big enough budget for where you want to go, or you’re not using the right tools, or maybe you’re not using the right agencies, all that sort of thing.
Jenny 13:48
What other elements do you come up with in terms of, these are the areas that need fixing? So, you mentioned, you need to restructure the team, you need to change your perspective on what the budget is needed for what you want to achieve, you haven’t got the right tools, you haven’t got the right agency or suppliers. Anything else that you can think of that are some of the elements that throw up from this audit?
Nicky 14:14
Customer profiling for definite. So, when the company is not clear on their customer profile, that usually leads to ineffective marketing, because they go charging off, following the latest trend -‘Oh, we’re on TikTok now, we’re on Twitter, we’re on this, we’re on that.’ Okay. Are your customers in any of those places? ‘Yes, of course, they are.’ Are they? Are they really there? ‘Well, we don’t know.’ Okay. So, stop then and think about where your customer is. You don’t need to jump on the latest trend bandwagon because you’ve been persuaded to buy the most junior person in the marketing department or somebody in your external agency who’s got a brownie point for creating a video for you on TikTok. You need to be sure that that is the right place to go for your customer. So that is the biggest thing that people just are not clear on, on the customer. And this isn’t about, one customer is called Fred and one customer is called Valerie, we don’t need to do that. But what we do need to do is understand commonalities between customers. For example, most of our customers are between 45 and 60. Okay, great. So now you know that and they’re men and they’re white and they’re middle aged and they drive a BMW, and they drink red wine and they like dinner and they’ve got a family and they take their kids away every year in the summer – you start to build a picture. Why is that important? Because all the imagery and the wording, and the messaging needs to make those customers think they’re talking to me. So, if your customer is a middle-aged white man, why are you showing the 20 year old girl on all of your social media because that’s not going to resonate with your customer. So, it’s that sort of thing. I mean, there’s myriad of examples. But that principle applies.
Jenny 16:16
I think what I’m hearing from you is that it’s a real back to basics, back to the strategy point of view, rather than getting side-lined by shiny objects and things that are kind of trending right now. So typically, what are the kinds of outcomes and results that you’ve seen as a result of going in and working in this way with the companies?
Nicky 16:38
So, they then go away and take what we’ve suggested and start to implement it. So sometimes they crack on, on their own, and they’ll come back to me and go, ‘Oh, we’ve done this bit now. And it’s working really well. So, we’re really pleased about that.’ Great, that’s good news. Or sometimes they say, ‘Can you help us a little bit.’ So, I’ve done some interviewing for a replacement marketing director for a business. So, I sat in, and we did the interviews altogether, so that they had somebody who knew about marketing in there to say, ‘They might come across really well, but that’s actually not strictly true.’ So that doesn’t feel like the right person, or the right fit, or the right set of tools that they’re planning to use in your business. So, I do that, too. Sometimes I just end up being a sounding board for the Chief Exec. So, they’ll go away, and they’ll do it and they might just drop in every so often go, we’re thinking about doing this, what do you think about that? Or this is happening at the moment, kind of thing. So that’s what generally happens, we leave them to their own devices, but we’re available at the end of a phone or the end of the email if they want a bit of a sounding board. Or if they’ve got a project where they’re like, ‘We haven’t really got the skills in house for that, can you support us with that?’ So that sort of stuff. But they tend to use the roadmap we’ve created as part of the presentation and go off and start the implementation.
Jenny 18:14
I hope that people listening to this, in the agency side of the business, are maybe recognising some of the problems that their clients have been talking to them about, or that they’re noticing about the way their client is operating. Or maybe it’s you’re giving them ideas for spotting areas that they could support them with. So, this is really useful so far Nicky, thank you. And I’m just kind of wondering, while you’re talking, can you say that having worked for so many years, with so many marketing clients, what typically is the 20% of the problem that kind of drives 80% of the impact? So, is there a commonality that you spot when working with marketing? You know, if only they would get that right because that tends to be a problem that comes up time and time again?
Nicky 19:09
It is the customer profile journey without a shadow of a doubt. Nearly every time when it doesn’t work, it’s because they haven’t drilled down enough on the customer. They’re not using the right tone of voice. They’re not using the right style of messaging or the right mediums. A lot of it is around tone of voice. But if you understand the customer, then you can deliver the right tone of voice. So many businesses, all have their copy is about, ‘We do this, we do this, we do this.’ Actually, it’s not about you, it’s about the customer. So instead of saying we they should be saying you as in the customer reads and goes, ‘Oh, that’s me.’ Technical businesses tend to talk in technical terms, but they forget that quite a lot of their customers, in fact, so often all of their customers are not technical. So, talking technically already puts the customer on the backfoot. And very few people are good at saying, ‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand. Can you explain that to me?’ They don’t want to look stupid. So, they just go, ‘Okay then.’ And they either wander off and go to someone who will talk to them and explain it to them, or they’re in blissful ignorance and then end up being told to do the wrong thing. And actually, that’s something that agencies are quite bad at.
Jenny 20:35
Go on, elaborate.
Nicky 20:37
So, web agencies, SEO, pay per click, they’re all quite technical subjects. And I think that there is a big assumption that the marketing person knows that stuff. They don’t. They very rarely know any of that stuff. That’s what they’re employing you as an agency for. But the agency ends up talking tech speak to the customer, and the customer is like, ‘I have no idea what they’re talking about.’ And they don’t want to tell them that they don’t know what they’re talking about. So that’s often where the relationship breaks down. Because the customer doesn’t know what to say, such as ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about’ or ‘I don’t know what I need to do to make this work. You’re talking away to me, you might as well be talking in an entirely different language because I don’t know what that means.’ And they’re usually super time-poor and depending on the structure of the marketing department, you might have a marketing department where there’s only a very small team, and the majority of the work of that small team is to manage external suppliers. So, they don’t have that many skills in house at all, they outsource the skills to different agencies, and their job is to manage those agencies. And so, the relationships that go well are the ones where the agencies are really strong communicators, and they know how to talk client language.
Jenny 22:15
So, what advice would you give to either a web company SEO, PPC, performance marketing in general, that maybe someone listening to this thinking, maybe we could get better at not being so techie when we speak to our clients? I mean, apart from the obvious, don’t be so techie, when you’re speaking to your clients? How could they do that? Have you got any kind of ideas for how to manage that?
Nicky 22:37
Well, one of the biggest problems is that in an agency, the head person, the senior partner, is usually responsible for sales and marketing. So, they go out and they win the business, or they head up the team that wins the business. And that person is usually quite confident, and in very strong agencies, a really strong communicator, quite gregarious, quite outgoing, quite social. And that’s what the client buys. The person that is lovely and sociable and easy to talk to etc., etc. The problem then happens, that once the ink is dry on the paper with the order, the senior person is gone off to win the next piece of business and has handed the client over to the team who’s going to look after it. But the rest of the team doesn’t have the personality of the person who is the most senior. And they haven’t thought through how to transfer that communication style and approach to the rest of the team. So, it isn’t about making a series of account managers that are ‘mini me’s’ of the director. But it’s about identifying the nuances of the senior person’s style and approach and speed of response and all that sort of thing. And then transferring that into a really robust, dare I say, Ops manual. It’s pretty boring, but it needs to be done. About how to talk to customers, what you should be saying to customers, how to get them on side, knowing the little details – what their dog’s called, what the children are called, when the child starts a new school, what their partner’s called, when are they’re getting married, when are they having kids, what they like to do. It’s a picture you build up over the course of time. I think marketing is all a series of jigsaw puzzles and it’s just about fitting all the pieces together to make one picture, not trying to ram in a bit from a broken jigsaw that you’ve got in the corner, because ‘That will do,’ kind of thing. That’s the analogy I tend to use most of the time. So, for me, it’s about understanding how to talk to that customer so that when it’s transferred from the selling to the managing, it doesn’t all fall away. It’s not built on a house of sand. It’s built on really solid foundations, with some real clear processes and ways of talking. And also setting it up for success from the start. I talk a lot on LinkedIn about post-purchase dissonance, which is a horrible marketing expression for buyer’s remorse really and the higher the value of the purchase, the more anxiety we all feel, as individuals when we bought something. And that’s true in our personal lives, and in our business lives. And people forget that when they’re selling in a business environment, you’re still selling to real people. It’s not the organisation, people buy people. And all those emotions are still true. We don’t buy with logic; we buy with emotion. We might sandwich emotion with logic along the way. But that first feeling of, ‘Do I want to work with somebody?’ is driven by emotion and that last feeling about, ‘Am I going to sign on the bottom line?’ is emotion. You might have looked for some validation to sort the logical part of your mind out during the process, but it is emotion. So, once you’ve signed you’re then like, ‘Have I made the right decision? Have I made the wrong decision? What’s going to be the impact if I made the wrong decision.’ So, if you think about how a good car sale goes, once you’ve bought that car, and let’s be honest about it, other than our house, that’s usually our most expensive purchase. We’re then filled with anxiety and angst about, ‘Have we bought the right car, have we done the right thing?’ So, the good car companies send you a series of communications before you go to collect your car, that continues to reinforce in your mind, ‘I’ve made the right choice.’ And so
good account management for me, is reassuring the client that they’ve made the right choice. Talking them through how the process is going to work. If you’re going to have a web project, this is how we start a web project, this is your team. The person who sold it to them should introduce the team on the first call – ‘Here you are Mr Client/Mrs Client, here is your team. And the person who is the contact should not be a technical person. It’s not that I don’t think the technical people have an awesome set of skills, they do. But they shouldn’t be facing off with the client unless the client is a techie, geeky personality type who wants to know the ins and outs. But I would say to you that 99 times out of 100, they don’t. Their argument is, ‘Well, that’s what I’m paying you for, that’s your skill set, you do what you need to do to make it work. I just want the end result.’
And that’s true for SEO and pay per click etc., etc. I don’t need to know all the stuff about impressions and what negative words you want to put in and how you’re going to do it. You do that. I just want to know that when I go to Google, I can find our business and so can our customers. So, it’s that sort of stuff really. And it’s about continuing to review. Are we communicating effectively with the customer? Are we telling them what’s going on? Because when you hear nothing, you assume the worst. ‘Well, they’ve dropped the ball, haven’t they? They don’t know what they’re doing. Oh my god, they’ve forgotten all about me. Oh, I’ve made the wrong choice.’ Whereas actually you haven’t but you just need to be reassured that you have made the right choice. And the only way to do that is to keep communicating.
Jenny 29:21
You’ve dropped some real golden nuggets here and I’m loving it. Because you’ve drawn an analogy between any purchase that you would make as a consumer and how you need that reassurance but use that example to translate into agency life. I absolutely 100% agree with what you’ve said, Nicky thus far because, absolutely right, the person that makes the sale, the agency leader, usually, or the business development manager, has a responsibility to then set the team up for success. Obviously, I get to deal with a lot of account managers who pick up the account without really being brought up to speed with all of the details and that sets them up for failure. Also, more and more performance marketing agencies, particularly where they’re offering paid social, paid search, they are technical people. Some agencies have decided not to have any account managers at all and are allowing the PPC expert to deal directly with the client. So, you’re shaking your head for those who are listening, I would love to know, this is, you know, maybe it’s a bit of a controversial point, but what would you say to an agency owner that’s decided that that’s going to be their model?
Nicky 30:38
That’s a mistake. That’s a serious mistake because you’re already putting the client on the backfoot. And if you want a client who’s going to stay with you and who’s going to grow their spend with you, and who’s going to refer you, then the relationship with that client is paramount. It’s almost as important as your performance as an agency because you can be super at what you do but, if you’ll forgive the language, if you’re shit at communicating it, then the client doesn’t know what’s going on. And making the client feel inadequate because they don’t understand, is a mistake. You will not get a raving fan, or referral client when you don’t value the relationship with the client. And the way you value that relationship is communication. And, the experts, the technical experts are awesome at what they do. I know so many that are superb at what they do. But they’re superb at that bit. It’s very, very rare, that you get a technical expert, that is also superb at being client-facing too.
Jenny 31:59
I suppose also, your point about the onboarding stage of the relationship is so key because you are setting the expectations at the beginning and managing the client’s expectations. And if the client feels that they’re being bamboozled in any way by jargon that they don’t understand, maybe they’re a little bit too proud to admit that they don’t understand it so then that sets the future for becoming worse and more muddled. So, communication is key. So, what other advice can you give to agencies, because you’ve obviously seen the side of the marketer, and what you’re sharing with us now is gold, because you’re sharing the insight into actually the reality of what happens? What other tips could you share for agencies, in terms of optimising those relationships that they have with the marketing department?
Nicky 32:58
I think to be clear about the timelines, with key milestones along the way. And be clear about when you need the client to do something as well, and what the implications are if those timelines are missed. I know that certainly in the web world, waiting for the content is always the biggest bugbear. If the client is supposed to be producing the content, then that is very often one of the biggest hurdles to cross. That and imagery, but it tends to be the content that is the worst fit. So, the client needs to understand that if they haven’t signed off on the key milestones and produced the content at the right time, then the project is going to be delayed. So, they need to understand that and know that they have a part to play too, obviously nicely, but they do have a part to play. And
I think that the best agencies have got a plan B, so that when the client’s sort of getting a bit fidgety in the seat, because they know that they’re supposed to be doing something and they haven’t, then come up with a solution for it. ‘I can see that you’re getting worried about the content, and I realise that you’re super busy. Would it be helpful if we introduced you to a copywriter who could sit down with key people in the business and pull out the information and do the content for you?’ ‘That feels like that’s got that off my plate? Yes, please.’ So, it’s about coming up with solutions, which obviously means you’ve sold another service, so that’s good news, there’s more income coming in. But it builds the trust. It helps to overcome the obstacles that can happen in a project and also helps set you up for success for the future. The client is then able to realise the true value that you bring as an agency and probably gives you more credibility when you’re ready to sell the next solution. You deepen that relationship and get the client on board for longer than just one project.
Jenny 33:14
I absolutely agree with you, this is so good. And I suppose in order to come up with different solutions, offering solutions, you have to have a degree of empathy, don’t you for the client’s position? So, would you say that generally speaking, agencies really understand the client’s world and what their internal challenges are and their internal responsibilities? No, I don’t think they do at all. I think there are exceptions. But in the main, no, I don’t. I think the challenge for agencies are that most agencies specialise in a specific element, whatever that element might be. And to them, their element is really super important. And I think that they very often just don’t understand why their contact in the client’s business isn’t putting all the priority on their particular element. Why aren’t you meeting the timescales? And why aren’t you delivering the stuff that we need in order to do this for you? But in the client’s world, what you deliver is a really, really, really, really tiny part of what they have to deal with on a day-to-day basis. And if your contact happens to be the most senior person in the marketing team, they are literally plate spinning and they’re trying to keep all the plates going at the same time. And some days, all the sticks drop, and all the plates smash on the floor. And when you phone up and get agitated, because you haven’t got what you want in the timescale, that can be the tipping point for the client. And they’re like, ‘You know what, I’ve had enough now.’ They are trying to manage umpteen different agencies who are delivering different things and keeping the CEO happy and keeping the team happy and trying to do all the things that they need to do internally and externally. It’s so true. Relationship Audits and Management is a company that goes in and conducts yearly reviews with clients. They work with some big agency groups, big marketing companies, etc. And one of the statistics that they shared with me, was the average marketer spends on average 7% of their working week managing all supplier relationships. So, if you are the PPC agency, then you’re probably one of many suppliers that that client’s dealing with. So, thank you for throwing some light on this topic because I think it’s true. We think we’ve got one project that we’re waiting approval of, or waiting for the copy, as you said, but actually, it’s one of a million different tasks that the client has to do. Now, I want to ask you a question, Nicky, because this is something that comes up a lot. Where agencies have struggled to be seen as more of a trusted adviser, strategic partner, someone who could add value a little bit more upstream in strategic thinking, a little bit more of a business solution provider, they say that often, they’re dealing with quite a junior person at the client side. How would you suggest, if you’ve got an agency that is particularly good at strategy, they think they could add more value and talk to the client a little bit more about how they can provide more value upstream, but they’re dealing with a very junior person. How would you suggest they navigate that situation and try to get to speak to someone more senior?
Nicky 39:00
I think there are two or three different ways you could do that. I think that in addition to the weekly or monthly conversation, I would suggest while you’re in the middle of a project, it should be weekly, but you should have a review, at minimum once a quarter. And at that review, you should have the person who is the most senior person from the client side in the marketing department. So, the CMO or the marketing director or head of marketing or whatever their job title is, should be in that quarterly review. So that’s an opportunity to review how things have gone for the last quarter, from your perspective as the agency and from the client’s perspective as well. And that is the time to be honest. So, if you’ve dropped the ball, you need to tell them you’ve dropped the ball and what you’ve done to fix that. And equally, if things are not working with you and the client, you need to think about how you’re going to communicate how that needs to be fixed. So it could be, ‘Look, the meetings keep getting cancelled every week. And therefore, we’re not able to keep you updated about what’s going on and give you a little nudge about anything we need.’ It doesn’t have to be super aggressive or anything, there are obviously ways of doing it. But you do need to say if the relationship isn’t working as well as it could be, because really, what you’re saying to them is, ‘You’re not getting all the value you can out of us because this relationship isn’t working as well as we think it could. And we want it to work better because we want you to see the real value of what we can bring.’ But those quarterly review meetings are also an opportunity to say, ‘Okay, we’ve looked back at what’s happened in the last three months, and what we’ve learned about. Now, let’s look forward to what we’ve got planned, is it still the right thing for business, from our perspective and from your perspective? And what else could we bring to the party?’ So that’s definitely one way of doing it. If the most senior person won’t agree to being always there for the quarterly, then make sure that you definitely have an annual review. So that you’re saying, ‘Look, every year, we expect you to review the relationships you have with your agencies, and to consider whether they’re the right agencies for you for the next year ahead. And we want you to do that because we want you to value the relationship you have with us. So why don’t we sit down and have a wash up of the last year, and a look ahead, and we’ll bring some ideas to the party of what we think you could and should be doing in the year ahead to develop your business.’ And we’re all up for being sociable. Especially now that we don’t have any restrictions anymore. So why not say let’s take you out for a nice dinner or do something that the client likes to do – go horse racing, or dog racing, or wine tasting, or whatever it is. And that’s back to the agencies knowing their clients. In the same way, as I said, marketing departments fail because they don’t know their customers well enough, well, maybe sometimes agency marketing could be better if they knew their clients better. And if you build up groups of clients that like car racing, these are the clients that like wine tasting, etc, etc. Then when you’re putting on an event, you can go well hold on a moment, 20 of our clients love wine, why don’t we do a wine tasting, that will be good fun? And that’s when people relax, you can get people to talk to each other. So, your clients can meet other clients, and they can go, ‘Oh, my God, we all have the same challenges! This is exciting.’ And it’s a great opportunity for you to deepen your relationship with a client.
Jenny 39:00
A great tip there. I think it was Simon Rhind-Tutt also said that he deals with lots of different industries, and many other professional services firms have client meeting days, where they invite all of their clients to meet each other. And it’s something that we don’t typically do as agencies like in the creative space. In other professional services industries, like lawyers, accountants, etc. it’s more usual and I think we could borrow some of those ideas. So great share. Thank you. What if the senior client refuses to go to the QBR and doesn’t have time (the quarterly business review/ quarterly review). A year is too long for the agency to wait to get them on a yearly review. Any other ideas for how they can access more senior people?
Nicky 43:58
Well, I mean, there’s no harm in just picking the phone up and call them. And I do sometimes think that we tend to make things more difficult than they need to be! You could attempt to call them, you could attempt to drop them an email, you could do something a bit different. I think that we all tend to veer towards everything being online. You could send them something interesting in the post that would make them sit up and take notice. If you’ve sent something ‘lumpy’ as we used to call it, in other words, something beyond a letter, something interesting or different, you stand out and the chances are that the person who it’s aimed at, is the person that will open it. So that would seem like a nice alternative and also shows that you can think outside the box and ultimately, that’s what you want them to think. That you are able to have creative, innovative, imaginative thinking. Just because you’ve been doing one particular service in one particular way with your client for a period of time doesn’t mean that you can’t come up with new ideas or different ways of doing things or try something different. And you know what most marketing professionals recognise is that there is no silver bullet in marketing, there are no guarantees. And whilst there are certain things that we know, should and probably will work, there are other times when we don’t know if that’s going to work or not. But if we don’t try, we won’t know. And the most forward-thinking marketing people are always up for hearing about new ideas and things to try, to see if they’ll work. Because they’ll look good, as well as you’ll look good. If it does work.
Jenny 45:46
Some great tips there. So, bringing ideas proactively that have more of a future focus, this is where we see the market going, the industry going or your customers going. And being the first to be the sage, if you like, I think that’s a great tip. And stepping back to previously what you said, another great tip was one of the biggest problems that you find is that they really don’t have a clear understanding of their customer profile. So, for those agencies listening, that maybe are in the copywriting space, for example, content marketing space, to carry out some kind of audit, to do a tone of voice workshop or messaging workshop or a deep dive into that might be another idea if they’re also seeing that they think their client hasn’t got that profile right. So, thank you, Nicky, this is really, really valuable. And just before I move on to talking about the future of marketing, is there anything else that you think could be done to improve the client agency relationship? Anything else that we haven’t covered that you think agencies could be better at?
Nicky 46:55
I think it’s important that they communicate when the team changes. So sometimes that happens where someone leaves, and we’re trying to brush it under the carpet, especially a relationship with that person in the agency. I think that’s a Rob Mayhew TikTok sketch actually – ‘Sorry, who? No, no, never heard of that person!’ I don’t think that most of us go that bad. But I do sometimes think the reserved ‘Sssh, that Sarah’s going, let’s hope that they don’t realise.’ And then someone says, ‘Where is Sarah?’ and you’re like, ‘Oh, dear, we haven’t actually introduced the new person in.’ So definitely ensure that your internal process is set up so that when somebody leaves, you’ve pre-warned the client that they’re leaving, and you’ve introduced the new person when they join. And if you’re struggling to recruit a replacement, you’ve come up with an alternative strategy about how you’re managing the client while you’re filling the gap. So, they know what’s going on. Because definitely, not communicating is the biggest fail of all. It’s not actually making a mistake; it’s not communicating that’s the biggest problem. And if agencies did regular annual reviews of their clients and got independent surveys done, of what their clients all think of them, they would be able to track the little things that are trigger points for the client. So, if you dropped the ball in a big way, you know you’ve dropped the ball, you know what you need to do, you know you need to go and say sorry and this is what we’ve done to fix it. But you might not know that the client finds it really annoying the way that you number your invoicing or the way the invoice comes out and it doesn’t work in the accounting system, or the way something or other out else happens. Something that on the face of it might seem very trivial but it’s the trivial things that are usually the trigger for the client to leave your agency, not the big things. So, if you’ve dropped the ball and then that invoice niggle turns up, that can be the, ‘Do you know what? I’m done now. I’ve had enough now and we’re going somewhere else.’ And they’re easy to fix. So, picking up the little niggles and ensuring that everybody in the process of the relationship with the client is as good as each other. You know that whole system works. It’s not just that the account managers know how to talk to the client. It’s that credit control is handled beautifully. And that the communication that goes out, if someone misses an invoice, it is a nice process, a smooth process. You don’t need to get the big boys round the first time they miss an invoice payment. There is a process that you can follow that means that the communication can be a bit softer. Equally, don’t get the account manager to have a go at the client when they haven’t paid the invoice because you’ll ruin that relationship. Someone from a different department needs to be the invoice tracer, not the account manager.
Jenny 46:55
Oh, you’re pressing on my buttons here. Yes, I agree with you, love it. That’s an absolute no, no, I think. We used to be asked by accounts to chase up money and it was awkward. Maybe some agencies are so small you have to do everything, I get that. But preferably, you want to keep those relationships slightly separate and have someone else do that. So that’s a lovely, lovely insight. And I also like, talking about team changes, great insight there. And I would just add to that, that occasionally, if this is a really important client for you and that relationship has been good and your account manager is leaving, then one option could be to invite the client to be part of your recruitment process. So, for them to be kind of second stage and get their view on the new person coming in, that could be a smart move.
Nicky 51:21
Yes, or even if they can’t do that, if they tell you what they really valued about the account manager, then you’ll understand what you need to make sure is in place for the next one. And it’s probably less likely to be about their personality, but more about specific things that that account manager did that the client valued. So, you just make sure that the next one continues to do that good stuff. And they’ll be fine.
Jenny 51:48
Nicky, this has been brilliant, you’ve shared so many tips and insights. I really hope that this is as valuable to other people as I think it’s going to be because I think, honestly, everything you’ve said is really insightful. Now I’m just conscious of time and I’d like to just finish on one big question, really? What do you think are some of the biggest opportunities or challenges facing marketers in the future?
Nicky 52:17
Okay, I think it’s less about worrying about the latest trends like AI or Web3.0 and all that sort of stuff. I think that will be relevant for some clients and not for others. I think the biggest challenge we’re facing right now is the fact that it looks very likely that the country is going to go into recession. So, marketing budgets are going to be really, really tight. And so,
I think that the biggest challenge for clients in terms of marketing is ensuring that they get the best value for their marketing budget. So, it’s about really being able to deliver value and results. And those results might be different things. It’s not always about sales growth. It could be about a variety of different things depending on what’s important for the client. But I think that the agencies that will succeed will be the ones who don’t always want to come up with big-ticket items, but they come up with ways to add value and support their clients and make their client’s jobs easier. If we’re getting into the realms of going down redundancy routes and things like that in clients, and therefore there are fewer people within the team, their time is going to be stretched even more. So, what can you do to make life easy? The answer is to communicate really effectively and maybe take some stuff off the client’s plate. So that could end up meaning you end up getting more spend. But if you see the client is always stressed about something and it’s something that you could deliver, you could say to them, ‘We could do that for you.’ Even if you said, ‘Why don’t we trial it for a month and see how it goes and see if we can bring some extra value for you?’
Maybe look to do it at a reduced cost rate while you’re proving your worth. So, it’s not about being a cheapskate but it is about showing that you can bring value and that you can really understand the challenge that the client is going through. And if you’re going through challenges yourself because you struggling to recruit and that sort of thing, then be honest and say that. We know that there’s a skill shortage in so many areas at the moment. So, if that is a problem, then tell them it’s a problem. And tell them what you’re going to do to help them while you overcome your internal problem. I would say probably that that’s the biggest challenge right now.
Jenny 54:50
There’s a real theme running through our interview today, which is communication, isn’t it? And communicating on lots of different levels. We’ve talked about communicating with the client, managing expectations, but also internal communications as well and making sure there’s that seamless process that the client feels they’re going through. Pre-empting situations, communicating in advance of situations. So, Nicky, this has been really, really good. Is there anything else that you think we haven’t covered, that would be useful for an agency listening?
Nicky 55:21
I think sometimes, agencies need to think about whether they’re a good fit for a client and if a client is a good fit for them. And, if you, every time that phone rings, you look down, and it’s like, ‘Oh, God, it’s them again,’ then that means it isn’t a good fit for you and you need to think about why that might be. It could be, if you’ve tiered your clients, ABC, it could be a C grade client and it’s time for them to go. But if they’re not a good fit, you need to think about why they’re not a good fit. And is it because that’s not a sector, or that’s not an area where you really excel? Or is it that you need to reflect on your internal practice to make it work for you? But I don’t think that clients or agencies should be frightened to recognise that there are sometimes times to walk away. And you can keep on and on and on flogging it but if it’s not going to work, it’s not going to work. And I sometimes think the better approach is, to be honest about that and say, ‘We’re not right for each other anymore.’
Jenny 56:37
Very sound advice again, given the climate of the day that we’re struggling to get enough staff in the agency, then maybe it’s time to optimise our client base, and might mean making some tough choices. So brilliant, brilliantly said thank you, Nicky. So, tell me, who would you like to be contacted by? And what’s the best place to reach you?
Nicky 57:00
Well, in fairness, most agencies deal with the marketing team, and I don’t think the head of the marketing department is really going to want me because I might be telling them that their baby is ugly! But in a perfect world, it would be a chief exec or a managing director, who is perhaps uncertain about how effective marketing is in their business or would just like an independent lens of their whole marketing landscape and some reassurance perhaps. But certainly, at the end of our review process, we say that the senior leaders will have clarity and confidence that their marketing either is fit for purpose, or where it isn’t, and what they need to do to make it fit for purpose. And the best way of contacting me is probably my email, which is nicky@bangconsulting.co.uk.
Jenny 58:00
Great, we’ll put that in the show notes. Nicky, this has been absolutely brilliant. And I’m sure maybe there are some agency owners thinking about clients to who they can make an intro because they recognise that perhaps, they’re noticing their clients aren’t buttoned up in terms of marketing and they need some help from someone who has the experience. So, thank you so much for sharing, so many insights and so many tips. I think this is really gold. So, thank you for joining me.
Nicky 58:29
Thank you very much.
