The other day, I took a break from teaching yoga and writing copy and stopped into the local pizza place to grab a slice (yes, even yoga-guys eat pizza). While I still own a studio just a few blocks away, I moved out of the neighborhood more than two years earlier and it had been nearly that long since my last visit.

So, I poked my head in and, from behind the counter, the owner looks at me and says, “one slice, not too hot, right?” Blown away. This guy remembers my pizza preferences two years after my last visit!

Instantly, I remembered why this place was my thrice a week haunt. Sure, they made great pizza. But, they also invested in learning and remembering my order preferences. And, that not only made me feel good about them, it made my life just the slightest bit easier. What does this have to do with freelancing and marketing? Everything.

I didn’t just buy the pizza.

For more than a decade, Seth Godin has been preaching the marriage of marketing and product development, because they are really just two points along the same continuum. Hopelessly intertwined. The best marketers are the ones who build the product around the marketing and the marketing right into the product, so they become one.

When I dropped into Sacco’s Pizza, I wasn’t just buying the pizza, I was buying the entire experience. And that included the slice, the ego boost of knowing these guys had committed what I liked to memory and ease of not having to say what I wanted. Then, the topper was when one of the guys asked how my daughter was. Man, these pizza-pushers are really good.

Starbucks is built largely on the same realization. People who buy Starbucks coffee aren’t just buying the drink, they could do that anywhere else for half the price. They’re buying the entire experience.

The drink, the overly-courteous sales-associate, the barista who remembers to put just right amount of foam on top, the quick turn-around, the jazz vocals in the background. They’re all part of the equation. They help draw people in and sell them, but rather than being add-on marketing, they are woven into the fabric of the very product being delivered. Starbucks does not sell coffee, they sell the Starbucks coffee experience.

So, how can the pizza guy’s wicked memory get you more clients faster, make them happier with your deliverables and giddy to recommend you to others?

Simple. Rather than focusing just on the deliverable, focus on the entire experience. Treat the way you interact with a client, from the first hello to every call along the way, not as customer service, marketing or PR, but as an essential ingredient of the service.

It’s not value-added, it’s not going above and beyond. It is an integral part of what you’ve been hired to do. Your deliverable is not a website, design, copy, photograph or program, it’s the entire experience of working with you.

And, a great place to really make that experience shine is to focus in on your clients’ micro-preferences, just the way the pizza guy remembered mine. Top boutique hotels actually do an amazing job of this, tracking what brand of coffee you drink, what paper you read and how many pillows you like and then having them all waiting for you on your next arrival.

Somebody does that for you and you not only go out of your way to return, even at higher fees, but you tell everyone you know to go check it out.

It’s the thousand little things.

Knowing someone’s micro-preferences makes you easier to work with and flatters the client. It turns working with you into a full-blown “experience” that is satisfying on levels that go way beyond just getting what was contracted for. And, it makes you more likely to be the go-to person, rather than the in-the-mix person.

So, what are some of these micro-preferences? Think about all the small things that delivered on cue, will make your client feel (a) ultra-confident in your services, (b) flattered that you value the relationship so much you’ve committed important things to memory, and (c) happy to have such an “easy” experience working with you on a consistent basis. Learn what these things are for each client, make satisfying those preferences an essential part of your service.

Here are a few micro-preferences to get you started. These are just the basics, the list is endless and can be easily adapted to any content area. Feel free to add more in the comments below:

• Contact mode: Does the client prefer e-mail, IM, cell, phone, smoke signals, in-person
• Delivery mode: electronic, hard-copy, both, live presentation, power-point, walk-thru
• Personal information: client’s age, marital status, birthday or other meaningful dates, hobbies, interests, sports, activities
• Workgroup info: co-workers, assistant’s contact info, workgroup members
• Personality/culture: funny, serious, analytic, talkative, abrupt, efficient, rambling, creative, buttoned-down.

Knowing all these things and then bringing them into the service you render so automatically that they become an inseparable element of the experience you deliver goes a long way toward turning your core product into a powerful marketing experience.

So, what are the cool things you’ve done to make clients feel like they are your only client and your very involvement makes their lives easier? Share them below in the comments…