Ways to Engage Your Clients
We’ve been talking a lot about engagement lately, so when I saw this post on Mashable about 10 easy customer engagement ideas I was intrigued.
Engagement with your clients doesn’t happen overnight or all at once. It is something that needs to be worked on consistently over time. Engaging your clients is a great way to keep them involved during the down time as well as offer them reasons to remember your great work.
Following are ideas to help you engage with you clients, which will improve that professional relationship and strengthen your freelance business.
Put the Spotlight on Customers
We like to write about the attendees to our events and their companies on our blog. This makes them happy because we’re spreading the word about their activities. They also feel more engaged and involved with our company in between events, and feel part of a larger community. —Tim Jahn, Entrepreneurs Unpluggd.
This is great advice! If you have a blog, think about touting your clients. Not only does this give you something meaningful to write about, it also helps their SEO—and everyone likes a little help with that. Plus, they might send your blog post out in their newsletter (if they have one), or to their friends, other clients, and social media followers. Make your clients look good and they will share it with others.
Call Your Customers
Call me old-fashioned, but what could be more engaging than a one-on-one phone call? Try calling some of your customers, even if it wasn’t part of your agreement or the package you sold them. If you spend 10 minutes getting to know a customer, you’ll learn some incredible things about why people buy your stuff. You can also win a fan for life. If you just have to keep things online, use Skype! —Corbett Barr, Insanely Useful Media
A check-in call can do wonders. It shows your clients that they are on your mind, even if you aren’t currently working on a project for them. It also reminds them that you exist. It doesn’t have to be a long phone conversation, either. I always pay more attention to the people that call me on the phone rather than send me an email. An email is so easy to ignore and delete…you can’t do that with an actual person.
Show Your Fans (or Clients) Some Facebook Love
We really love the relationship that we have with our fans and potential customers, so we like to show the world. Every week on our Facebook page, we highlight one of our fans as “Fan of the Week.” This is fun because their love for our company is displayed to our fans, and that person will then share it with their own network. —Andrew Saladino, Just Bath Vanities
Make sure you follow your clients on Facebook and Twitter, and ask them to do the same. If something positive happens to your client, share it on Facebook. Whether they hired a new employee or they reached a fundraising goal for a charity—help spread the good news to your fans and followers. It’ll show up on your client’s social media and they’ll see you are “working” for them even if you aren’t currently freelancing for them.
The point is to show your clients that you are thinking about them even when you aren’t on the clock. Wouldn’t you want to hire someone who is championing your business rather than someone who doesn’t bother to take the time? I know I would.
Do you have any success stories to share about how you engage with your clients? We’d love to hear them…
Photo credit: Some rights reserved by xilius.
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Great thoughts, Melanie!
This is part of my goal for my business’s new blog (http://www.creativeimprov.com/blog/).
I personally like to re-share/post photos that clients share via facebook of our design work in action. Just today a client posted a picture of a logo we did that was on a billboard they had done. I find that there is more interaction around these types of posts (as noted by facebook’s analytics).
Yes engaging customers is huge, especially over the phone. Never be too shy to talk to someone. Some people can have a hard time with that.
Really engaging content I think I’ll link back to this and a couple articles.
Cheers/Blessings.
Chad
I have to agree with you that “engagement with your clients doesn’t happen overnight..” and it’s a work in progress for many freelancers, seasoned or newbies alike. In my experience, I’ve been hiring freelancers for over a decade now and going the extra mile has made me stick to a few good freelancers who know how to appreciate their clients in small, simple ways..and I’m not talking about discounts here. Even a small thank you note or cards sent over the holidays can work its magic ( as we are still humans even if we work on virtual teams ).
Like Shaleen said, Thank you notes are so wonderful! So are holiday cards however I always do mine a little bit after the holidays (I just sent them out yesterday). And instead of a “Happy holidays” message, it’s usually one about Wishing them a wonderful 2012 (or whichever year it happens to be) That way, the cards don’t get lost in the mail trap with all the other businesses sending holiday cards.
Also, the way my business is run, it’s almost always virtual. Meaning I have clients I’ve never even met before. It’s important that you find some way to emotionally connect with these clients. If they think of you as a real person instead of a computer screen they become much more loyal and engaged. This can be done in many ways but get creative!