After twenty-plus years in marketing communications, thirteen-plus at an agency as an account manager and more than seven on the client side, I’ve learned a few things about developing and managing client relationships. Some of these tips and skills can be used to manage most any business relationship, from media to customers to external third parties or even co-workers.

Managing a client relationship is an art, not a science, as there’s no set formula for success. What may work with one client may not bring results for another. One client may want a lot of control and input into what you do, to the point of micromanaging. Others may want little daily input, but demand accountability. Cost and budget may ultimately drive another. One may want to know about what you did over the weekend, another could care less and just wants to cut to the chase.

Second, I’ve always taken the approach that an account manager’s job is to make the client the hero and look great to their boss. The client, or the customer, is the king/queen and needs to be treated as such. You need to put your priorities second.

To that end, I have a few guiding principles that will help no matter the individual you are trying to turn into a happy customer and are adaptable to most any client relationship:
• Always work from an agreed upon plan. Having a plan that details what you will be doing (how many? When? What cost?) goes a long way to clearing up any misconceptions.
• Keep the client regularly updated on what you have done for them. You don’t need a detailed report (unless that’s what makes a particular client happy). Just a weekly or monthly summary that shows accomplishments and the impact, status of ongoing projects and next action items will help keep the client from guessing where their money has gone.
• Have something new to share at your meetings and interactions. This demonstrates you are thinking beyond the plan and are interested in the client’s business. You should share an idea for the next press release topic, an adjacent market to attack or mention a competitor’s ad. It may not immediately lead to new work, but will help the client see you as more than a vendor, which can help in times of trouble or if you must re-bid your work.
• Always remember that you, as the marketing agency, only represent a small fraction of what your client is doing during the day. Don’t take it personal if you don’t have an immediate response to your email. That client may have just gotten a high-profile, tight-deadline assignment from their boss. Don’t assume you are their top priority.
• Don’t take criticism or negative comments personally. You absolutely need a thick skin to be a client manager. You will be on the receiving end of unhappy clients. Be honest with them, remind them of the plan and ascertain what is at the root cause of their displeasure. One tactic that might work is to let both sides walk away, cool down, and regroup later with a clear mind and less emotion.

There are some other things that go a long way to being an effective client manager. One is the ability to read people and know what drives and interests them and adapting how you interact with them on their level (not yours.) Being able to connect to each client on a personal level also helps, such as asking about their kids or hobbies (hint – I make a note of kids and interests for each client in my contact management system.) It helps break the ice and be able to talk about things other than strictly work.

Now, how does one be a good client? You’ll have to wait for the next blog!

RTC

Although I am not a fan of marketing buzzwords, “content development”, “content marketing” and “content management” are inescapable these days. In the last week, I’ve presented content development strategies to two companies and attended an educational event on the topic. But what is content development/management/marketing, why should your business engage in content marketing and how should you go about creating the right strategy?

First, think of “content” as anything original you create to communicate with your customers. This can range from a customer newsletter to a press release to a blog post or a YouTube video. This content needs to be relevant, fresh and of value to your customers in order for it to have any impact. With the advent of online and social media, disseminating and managing your content has become more and more important. Also, it helps to have insight into what your customers have found of value in the past (tracking and measuring any content you disseminate is as important as the content itself.)

It’s important for you to engage in content development to connect with your customers, the media, influencers and other relevant external audiences. You want to be connecting with these audiences because if you aren’t, your competitors are. Don’t miss this opportunity to directly communicate with these audiences to build your brand, deliver news (good and bad) and send a message.

While everyone’s strategy will be unique to their particular business and industry, there are a few guiding principles to creating the right strategy:

• You need to be consistent with your communication; whether it’s once a week with a blog post or three times a day with social media or two press releases a month, you have to stick to whatever you decide is the right frequency. All too often I run across a company’s blog that hasn’t been updated in months. There’s no value in starting to develop the content if you aren’t going to follow through.
• You need to have content that is of value to your audience and mirrors your brand character and voice. If your content is of value, your audiences will find a way to share it, creating high-impact word-of-mouth buzz.
• The same content can be repurposed across different channels, but the message should be tailored to each medium. A Facebook post should not be exactly the same as LinkedIn, although the underlying message can be the same.
• Think in terms of visuals to quickly convey or support your message. Again, certain mediums (such as Instagram) are well suited to visuals.

One way to keep your strategy on track is to create a calendar in advance that helps you plan, develop content key messages and think visually. Below is a sample of the headings you might use:

Feeling overwhelmed? Need help getting started or staying committed? Contact me and I can help you navigate Content Management and create a unique strategy to connect with your key audiences.

RTC

We’ve all been there. You and your colleagues are sitting around and you are brainstorming new ideas or reviewing the latest tweets and posts, and you start talking about the competition. In most cases, the discussion usually turns very negative and belittling of the competition. At one time, my colleagues and I tacked up “bad ads” from trade publications for a laugh. And while it was funny (and many really were bad), we never took the time to think further than the awkward creative to really learn anything to help our clients. Because no one’s better at marketing in your industry than you, right?

If you spend all your time talking and thinking about how bad the competition is at marketing, you are making a big mistake. Even if the marketing is, in fact, not very good you need to respect the fact that there must be something that is working for them and keeping them viable in your industry. If you sit back and relax just for a moment, a smart competitor will see the opportunity to change strategy or increase their budget and take market share.

Instead of blindly laughing off their latest ad or strange looking new trade show booth, take time to review your competition’s marketing from your/their customer’s perspective:

• What do they do well?
• What about their pitch is attractive?
• What messages are they conveying and are you countering them in your marketing?

Needless to say, you better be following your competitors on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and other relevant social media outlets along with reviewing their ads and media coverage. But the key is to not be snarky or overly critical of little details that you would do better. Think about the impression they are making on customers and ask yourself what kind of impression your marketing team is making on the industry (and what is the competition saying around the water cooler)?

Looking at the completion in a more serious manner will help elevate your marketing to a more compelling, customer- focused level. Contact me if you’d like to learn how this can be done for your company.

RTC

By now most have heard about the alleged “deflating” of footballs by the New England Patriots in the AFC Championship game. The immediate backlash against the team and its coach can be found in most sports-related blogs, papers, and electronic media, mostly negative towards the team.

If you were to ask me about the Patriots reputation or brand, it’s not a warm and fuzzy one. They’ve been known to skirt the rules, fielded a player currently facing murder charges and have a coach that would probably prefer a root canal without anesthesia rather than speak with the media. The reputation is very “win at any cost” and the latest controversy falls in perfectly with that feeling.

Is that the reputation the owner and team want to portray? They haven’t done much to counter that image and if you ask their fans, they probably don’t care as long as they keep winning. Does it matter what the rest of the league and fans think?  Probably not. In the sports/entertainment industry, it’s better to have an identity or brand (chose the term you want) than to blend in to the background. There are several teams in the league without much of a distinct brand or reputation (quick, what’s the reputation of Jacksonville?)

Could the Patriots counter the “hit” the latest controversy? Possibly, but they have not built much “good will” among other fans or the media. The bigger question is do they want to? My guess is that deep down, they don’t, as it “fits” in with their current brand. Turning around that image now would be difficult and against the brand. The current issue is not expected to dramatically affect their reputation in such a way that it would hurt profits.

But the Patriots are just the latest in a long list of negative reputation hits the entire league has taken in the past twelve months, from the mishandling of various domestic violence incidents to the pressure to change the name of the Washington Redskins. The reputation of the league and some specific teams has been under siege but it seems that as long as the dollars keep rolling in, the reputation is not taking enough of a beating to warrant concern.

The problem is, most companies are not the financial juggernauts like the NFL and at some point, negative press can affect the reputation and bottom line (particularly for consumer companies). A good strategy is to identify your brand and employ tactics that build a positive reputation with employees, your customers/constituents and the community you serve and create a “good will” band. You can’t put a dollar figure on good will, but if there is an issue that may negatively affect the company, consequences could be lessened through the good reputation you have demonstrated.

RTC

If you sit within the marketing communications department at a company or organization, you have a unique perspective on employee communications as you sit squarely between both sides of that topic.

In my years as both a communicator and employee, what I’ve learned is that companies do not communicate frequently enough with the people that are responsible for making a daily impact on the business. This results in employees that do not feel engaged, involved or knowledgeable about basic organizational goals and achievements. This causes an information ‘vacuum’ where employees fill in the blanks with their own thoughts and rumors to take the place of actual company information.

Effective employee communications programs combines the most pertinent information delivered at the right frequency, with a stated consistently and in the most efficient manner. It should also have a measurement component where employees input on what’s working can be fed back into the program. The actual program will vary from company to company (a bi-weekly email blast of key company news might work for one while a monthly presentation from senior management might work for another.)

Where many companies fail is either the frequency (not often enough) or consistency (how many employee newsletters never get past issue number 2?) How do you combat these pitfalls? A critical component for success is senior management support and participation. They have to commit the resources (usually time) and stand behind the communications team’s efforts to make consistent, frequent internal communications a priority on level of any other initiative that affects the bottom line. Senior management can also hold marcom’s feet to the fire to ensure internal communications takes priority.

Internally communications doesn’t have to be a burden nor be a flashy four-color printed newsletter. It can be as simple as a bi-weekly internal text-only email, a dedicated intranet area or a scroll on the television monitors in the cafeteria or work-out room.

Don’t short-change employee communications. Start by talking with the people in the organization – do they know about the company’s strategies and how they are progressing? Have they not heard about that new contract yet? Do they feel engaged? You may find an opportunity to positively affect the company by bringing everyone closer to the job at hand and how their role makes an impact.

RTC

Now that you’ve reflected and reviewed your accomplishments for 2014, it’s time to set your goals for this year and plan ahead.

Don’t think of this process as ‘setting New Year’s resolutions” as we all know how successful they are (for the most part) in affecting change.  Use your results for last year as the starting point and thinking ahead to what you need and want to accomplish this year to set realistic, measurable goals.

You should do this for your marketing communications job (What do you need to do to help the company met its forecast? What new markets are you entering? Are there any new products, services or events on the horizon?) Write down your goals, rank them in terms of importance, timeline them out and set up tasks or reminders in your calendar to check in periodically on progress and hold yourself accountable.

This is also an exercise you should do for your career. Take a look at where you are professionally and think ahead to where you want to be by 2016. Does that include a new role and higher salary? An entirely new job?  New skills? Similar to your work-related goals, write down your career advancement goals and make the same effort to stay on track during the year to achieve them.

It is important to periodically take the temperature of where you stand and be flexible enough to make adjustments in your activities to ensure you attain your goals. Making an adjustment to your tactics in June might make the difference between success and failure by December.

Also take the time throughout the year to adjust your plan for major changes in your company, marketplace or overall status. You never know what unknown action might happen that could derail your plan or make your initial plan obsolete.

Looking forward to an outstanding 2015,

RTC

Soon, if not already, you’ll be reading about New Year’s resolutions and looking ahead to the coming year. Making resolutions and planning ahead for marketing and public relations professionals is a positive thing to do but only if you take the time to honestly review and critique the previous year.

Now is the perfect time to review your 2014 programs and projects and compare them to your plan at the outset (you had a plan, right? With measurable goals?) Don’t just list everything you did; instead, think back to what had an impact (or didn’t) and determine why.

Looking back should also go beyond just counting how many press releases you issued or Tweets made during the year. What impact did those initiatives really have? What were the outcomes? Did you affect sales? Increase the number of followers? Touch a new audience?

This is also a good time to take a look at your competition and how they performed during the year. Don’t fall into the trap that many do and downplay or be snarky about the competition. It doesn’t help and you can miss opportunities (or overlook something coming) if you don’t think the competition does as good, if not better, than your company.

Once you have this evaluation written down, it would be easy to craft a simple, one sentence branding message for your 2014. Keep it short, honest and commit it to memory. Then you will have a succulent, thoughtful answer to “how was your year?” rather than just saying “It was good!” This works well with the boss or at that New Years Eve event.

Take the time to review, be truthful and honest, dig deep into your results (and your competitors) and come up with a message to wrap up 2014!

RTC

“Always Be In Student Mode”

I recently listened to a brief interview with one of my favorite musicians. He’s an accomplished bass player, well into his 50s and he made a very insightful comment about his most recent band, whose members are twenty years his younger: Always Be In Student Mode.

What he means is for him, no matter how accomplished he is, he’s always learning and keeping an open mind. There are many pitfalls when you think you know it all and think you can stop learning new things. This is true for most things in life, but it has particular meaning for marketers.

For those in marketing, Always Be in Student Mode means you should always be open to learning new skills, tools and other practices that may impact what you do in your work life. It’s also important to take advantage of these opportunities to learn as they happen and not to put them off. They might not be there later and you never know when that new skill will come in handy.

Another interesting thing from his interview was the benefits of surrounding himself with players much younger than him. Youth can have a beneficial effect on your ability to learn and try new things so don’t shy away from opportunities to interact with those your junior or to brush off those not as experienced as you. Everyone will benefit from an open, learning environment.

As you start your day, ask yourself if you’re “In Student Mode” and open to learning and interacting with those that may not be as experienced as you. If you’re not, you may be missing a great opportunity to improve yourself, your career and your work.

RTC