8 Strategic Marketing Ideas To Keep Your Name in Front of Your Clients
I’m often asked, “How can I make sure my clients and prospective clients are thinking about our organization without becoming a nuisance?” We all want to be top-of-mind when a client or customer is ready to purchase services we offer and productively build relationships along the way. Strategic marketing is about developing an annual plan for how often, when, and how you will reach out to your clients to keep your name front and center.
Once you develop a master list of current and prospective clients, determine how frequently to contact them and the methods you will use for the current year. The length of your organization’s purchase cycle should provide timing and frequency guidance. Once your strategic plan is in place, consider specific marketing tactics that will work best with each client.
Here are eight of my favorite tactics:
1. Attend Their Annual Conference
Annual conferences provide great opportunities to interact with clients and meet prospective new clients. If you can “become one of them” and feel like the business friend versus the pesky consultant, you are on your way.
2. Send An Article of Interest via Email
Everyone’s inbox is overflowing with solicitations. However, an email with a carefully crafted subject line and attachment of high reader interest based on a past conversation you had lets them know you are there when they need you and listen well to their interests.
3. Have Fun With Your Clients
Invite your client to golf, a sporting event, an afternoon at Arlington Park Race Track, or an architectural boat ride on the Chicago River. You’ll see a lighter side of your clients and develop a relationship that goes beyond being strictly transactional.
4. Offer Something For Free
Offering clients and prospective clients relevant and focused advice in a white paper, article, or blog, is an excellent way to remind them of your knowledge and leave a good impression. They may even forward your information to their entire organization, encouraging some action that extends your reach and benefits their bottom line.
5. Invite To An Important Event
Invite clients to attend events that would be of interest to them as your guest or even get an entire table and invite a fun mixture of clients who would benefit from meeting each other. Plenty of other ideas qualify as important events if you place yourself in your clients’ shoes and get creative.
6. Snail Mail An Annual Update
Send clients an annual report or letter highlighting a few of the most important and exciting developments at your organization, along with a few case studies (used with permission, of course) of projects you completed. Present it in a visually appealing and easily digestible manner with photos, graphics, and pull-quotes and your clients may keep, file, or put it on a co-worker’s desk with a note saying, “It may be time to reach out to Susan about our assignment.”
7. Send A Handwritten Thank You Note
Yes, your mother was right. Handwritten notes to thank clients for their business or other nice gesture go a long way. Don’t delegate this to your assistant. Write the note yourself, be personable, and no selling.
8. Make a Call or Schedule an In-Person Visit
When the timing is right, and you’ve built a relationship, go ahead and try setting up a short call or face-to-face meeting. I like to suggest a couple of meeting dates with a 20-minute duration, either in their office or a nearby coffee shop, that corresponds to a wind-down time of day and am clear about the purpose of the meeting. Don’t be offended if the client declines the first time; you have executed your strategic marketing objective of reaching out to the client, so they know you are interested in them.
Even if today, you are fortunate enough to have the volume of clients you desire and/or an impressive project backlog, remember to keep feeding the pipeline. Strategic marketing and regular, consistent, well-timed outreach to your clients and prospective clients will yield positive results.
