If you’re a small agency that often feels edged out by larger organizations with much bigger budgets, remember that you can still level the playing field with one critical choice: building client relationships. Fostering client relationships is essential to the growth and sustainability of any company because, when done right, it can lead to larger consultancy opportunities and additional sources of revenue.
Any agency could allocate time and resources to building client relationships and expanding their revenue streams, but not all of them do. Why? Because many agencies forget the foundational consulting best practices and instead focus all of their attention on their creative work. Here at Leap Group, we believe in delivering top-quality creative content, but not at the expense of our agency/client dynamic.
Ready to start fostering long-term client relationships and level up your agency’s consulting best practices? The Leap team have compiled our tried-and-true strategies to help you build success. We’ll take a quick tour of the current digital landscape, identify current marketing trends, examine how loyal client relationships can grow your agency and expand your consultancy opportunities, and wrap things up with a list of actionable tips you can start implementing today.
Understanding Today's Competitive Digital Landscape
You may have noticed that all anyone’s talked about the past few years is digital marketing. The days of print advertising seem to be a faint memory of the past, and while a well-placed magazine ad or flier can still be effective, digital is where it’s at. And that’s not just a Leap perspective, that’s straight from the biggest agency holding companies in the game: WPP, Omnicom, Havas, Publicis Groupe, Interpublic, and Dentsu, known in the ad world as the “Big Six.”
Years ago, the Big Six all recognized this trend toward digital marketing and poured their budgets into gaining online visibility, a move that resulted in up to 6.3% revenue growth from 2022 to 2023. At the same time, they also began gobbling up hundreds of independent agencies and absorbing them under their brand umbrellas, making it far more difficult for small agencies to survive.
To complicate the situation even further, the current and ever-present threat of economic recession has caused many companies to buckle down on their spending even more than before, placing the full burden to drive results and sales on agencies. In the US, this election year will skyrocket the cost of media to new heights, so agencies will need to make every advertising dollar work even harder.
So how can we stretch our budgets to keep our profits in place and our clients happy? That’s where fostering client relationships comes in, so let’s take a look at how that practice can help your agency grow, even when you’re in competition with big-league players.
How Building Client Relationships Grows Small and Midsize Agencies
Ad agencies are always on the lookout for trends, and not so we can look “relevant” to our clients. Staying in the know and keeping up with marketing evolutions means we can make our budgets stretch further and our clients happier. Aside from the explosion of AI, the rise of augmented reality, the impact of social media advertising, and the consumer preference for short-form video content, building client relationships is an undeniable trend that’s consistently effective in growing small and midsize agencies – and here’s how.
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Strong client relationships are proven to increase loyalty.
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High levels of client loyalty lead to steady agency income.
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Happy loyal clients boost your agency’s authority through word-of-mouth advertising.
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Clients that have worked with your agency for years are fantastic sources of feedback that can help your business grow and expand.
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Shift your strong partnerships with clients into consultancy relationships to open new opportunities and expand your revenue streams.
Tips for Building Client Relationships: Consulting Best Practices for 2024
Although there is more competition for brands’ marketing and advertising dollars than ever before, small and midsize agencies can stay competitive by parlaying client relationships into marketing consultancy roles for clients’ executive teams.
Repurposing your marketing expertise to act as a marketing consultant helps increase your agency’s scope of work and provide another path of revenue.
If your agency is interested in developing consultancy relationships with clients and becoming a trusted marketing consultant, these are our top tips, straight from the Leap team. Keep in mind that some of these tips might seem a bit basic, but that’s the point: The best practices for fostering long-term client relationships aren’t flashy and loud, they’re dependable and steady.
- Establish regular check-ins. These meetings might feel annoyingly routine, but they help build loyalty by showing clients that your agency is consistent, reliable, and aligned with their goals.
- Act as an extension of your clients’ internal teams. yes, you’re there to share your agency expertise, but you’re also working with brands to bring their vision to life, so embrace the partnership wholeheartedly!
- Proactively solicit feedback. Clients are in a unique position: They witness a large portion of your agency’s process and can offer valuable insights into what works, what doesn’t, and what could be implemented in the future.
- Consistently delivering on expectations. Show your clients that your agency, no matter its size, is capable of meeting and exceeding deadlines and expectations. Over time, this trust translates into loyalty and advocacy, driving sustainable growth for your business.
- Become a trusted consultant. Once you’ve established trust and a strong relationship with your client, they’ll be able to turn to you for strategic marketing advice at a higher level of business than your current day-to-day projects.
The Leap Group Senior Consulting Program
Establishing your agency as a client consultant allows you to provide unbiased, outside opinions from a strong knowledge base. You can clue clients into industry and market trends, as well as insights into their own unique company and team. Sounds like a win-win situation, right? If your agency needs a little boost to get started in consultancy, Leap offers a Senior Consulting Program that’s tailor-made for this very opportunity.
The Leap Senior Consulting Program gives your agency direct C-Suite access to the Leap leadership team, meaning you can ask questions about our marketing strategy, execution, activations, and general business decisions and then repurpose the solutions for your own use. We can also assist with presenting board reports, provide weekly updates for leadership teams, and help craft strategy and vision documents.
If you’re ready to learn new (or additional) consulting best practices and need a guide to help, our Senior Consulting Program might be right for you. Reach out to Leap today to see how our program can provide expert, unbiased strategic advice to your executive teams and ultimately help your agency foster better client relationships that lead to consultancy possibilities.
