How Strategic Digital Marketing Account Managers Maximize Efforts With New Clients

Getting a signed contract from your new client is always exciting. The customer relationship in its infancy and you are headed straight out the gate in defining and building the relationship.

Digital marketing account managers are responsible for analyzing important information about the client, digging into the competitive landscape, maintaining a strong client relationship, and help identify and create opportunities to help their clients grow and hit their revenue targets.

As managers succeed in growing their accounts, more opportunities will present themselves. When your efforts lead to reduced acquisition costs, shorter sales cycles, improved relationships with priority people, and direct access to decision-makers, you can expect to climb the ladder and advance your own career by consistently nurturing your customers.

Here are how account managers working for the best growth-driven digital marketing agencies maximize their efforts, enable business growth for their clients, and take a step closer to their own internal growth.

Discover the Overlap Between the Client’s Digital Marketing Strategies and Your Solutions

Some clients are just set in their way; they invest in expert digital marketing services, yet they are adamant about using their own approach. If you needed your appendix removed, would you demand the physician to hand over the scalpel and back off? Of course not. But this is a commonplace thing to see in the landscape of marketing.

If you are able to discover overlapping fragments between their way, and your methodology, you can maximize efforts by keeping the client happy while still generating results. When onboarding the client note products and services that are revenue generated, as well as soft factors like buying behavior and the “who’s who” of their organization. Sales opportunities should always be front and center. If you can identify this in the client’s current operations, show how your strategic approach is completely growth-driven, and present a strategy that is goal focused using a hybrid of both methodologies, the client will still feel like their traditional approach has value, while feeling optimistic with their investment in your agency.

Focus on Your Client’s Needs

When engineering a plan, it should be built entirely around your client’s needs. Whether that means selling more product, hiring new team members, or increasing their brand’s stock value, the marketing strategy must be created to achieve the customer’s specific goals.

The tools and strategies used to hit client goals must also be appropriately selected, and aligned to work together to get a singular, desired result. For example, if your client sells recreational speed boats and his goal is to both increase sales but show why his brand is superior to other brands for the boating hobbyist, then the strategy might include educating consumers with a guide on how first-time boat owners can find the perfect watercraft to meet their family’s needs. Creating a guide that covers common buyer pains, FAQs and forecasts a lifestyle representation could be sent to the right email lists using marketing automation software. However, if the strategy and technology aren’t aligned to work together, this attempt would be futile. This is just another reason why working with a growth-driven digital marketing agency is highly advantageous–everything needed (including the right people) to design the right growth stack tools and strategies are in full existence.

Client Communication

According to a Quora survey that interviewed 1000 mid-size businesses investing in digital marketing services from an agency more than 60 percent stressed that communication was as equally important as service quality. If part of your job involves presenting marketing reports to the C-Suite, then this is especially accurate.

As an account manager, frequent and structured communication can improve results and strengthen relationships. Unfortunately, too many marketing agencies drop the ball with communication. Some have digital “tickets” customers use to set appointments, while others have strict rules on once-a-month conversations when reporting time is due. Even responding to emails in a timely manner can be a problem; some agencies promise to return emails within 24 hours, while others can take a few days.

Communication needs to be highly responsive and consistent. As a strategic account manager you should let the client know that you are fully aware of how unexpected things can change parts of a marketing strategy, and that having a conversation to clarify things for internal purposes is not out of the ordinary.

Set bi-weekly meetings (in phone or in person) to go over goals, ensure alignment, and look at progress reports. You should also respond to emails within an hour, even if it means acknowledging the client and letting him know that you will be responding with the desired information noting a specific ETA.

Regular communication also allows account managers to identify the strengths in the relationship, as well as weak areas in need of reinforcement. Without regular communication, small gaps can expand rather than being filled with a recognized solution.

Strategic Digital Marketing Account Managers Analyze the Competition

You can better prove your value while getting the client great results by executing an agile competitive assessment. When your team reviews the client’s competitive position from their perspective, account managers can find ways to articulate strategic results and the agency’s unique value.

There are a number of tools that enable competitive analysis. For example, SpyFu allows marketers to see how their clients stand against the competition regarding content, PPC strategic results, spend, organic keyword rankings, and engagement metrics. Then their are CRMs like HubSpot that have an industry analysis tool, customer relationship tool, customer strategy maps, and much more. These tools help digital marketing account managers compose a path forward that tightens up the relationship with the client for immediate utilization, or it can be preserved to use for a later time such as for a bi-weekly meeting, or for reporting purposes.

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If you found value in these talking points, we are pretty sure you will love our FREE guide on the WEBITMD digital marketing Growth Stack. Whether you are an agency looking to step up in service quality, or an organization looking for a measurable investment in digital marketing, our Growth Stack is likely your best bet. Give the guide a read, determine if it can help your business achieve its goals, and give us a call! We love to talk shop and would like to learn about your goals and current marketing results!