Insights / Agency

Hands-on vs hands-off clients

Some clients are very hands-off, some clients are very hands-on. I think the clients that tend to be hands-on are nervous, and they want to input a lot, and then I think it's a case of managing them as best you can to sway any fears, to help them understand that things are in hand, and that there's progress. Data is a key one there, and constant reporting back on where they're going.

I think we're living in an age as well where people want to see immediate results, and sometimes that's not possible, brands take time to move. Even within digital disciplines like SEO, it takes quite an amount of time to move, some clients are looking for performance campaigns to deliver in a month, and you're going "well, we've just set up, we're in the process of managing, we're looking at optimising, you're not going to really see returns for about two or three months, so you're gonna have to bear with us as we go through that". Again, it's constant education, a lot of the time we found that education is key.

Lunch and learns with clients, going in and being that educative consultant to them, helping them keep abreast of where the market is, where the industry is, where their category is. It's like judo, you're constantly having to roll with the client in different ways depending on who they are.

Then there are clients who are extremely hands-off, and just allow you to get on with it. They are dream clients in many ways for us obviously, because there's a level of trust there. It may not have started that way, we may have had to get to a place where we have earned trust, and I think agencies do have to earn trust, it's no longer a case of we can do this, we can do that, there's too many people out there saying that they can deliver, but don't really demonstrate it or back it up with the results.