How to retain clients

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00:00I've had those moments where you just look at the data and you see overspend yesterday or something like that you know and then if you have built that relationship with your client then it's much easier to tell them okay honestly I made a mistake I see this and this happened this and this is what we're gonna do about it sometimes I've even offered like yeah okay I'm gonna this is my mistake gonna work for free or I'm gonna refund it and then they said no dude it happens that we learn from it okay it's not gonna happen again let's move on welcome back to the PPC Mastery podcast and of course the GM gmgm in this episode we are going to be talking about how to retain pliers because in the last episode in the previous episode we shared our stories on how we got our first clients and what we're doing now to get more clients as as a freelancer and in this episode yeah we want to take it one step further by looking into strategies to apply to make sure that the clients stay with you for a long time because we mentioned this in the last episode as well it's really nice working as a Google ad specialist because the projects tend to be really long because Google Ads is such a always on never-ending story stories yeah stories and once you get a client then it's it's definitely doable to keep them on for one two three four five years even yeah just yeah just out of curiosity actually what's the longest time that you've worked with one client seven years seven years yeah seven years still working with them still working oh yeah see they're still working seven years that's crazy just imagine the lifetime value of those all right actually calculated this a few months ago yes and I really fell off my chair

01:38it's a lot yeah narrator no it's a lot so basically this this client cost me a few hundred euros to close yeah they came in yeah they came in from my Google Ads campaign back then and yeah I was like okay I'm just going to to do this one time over and then basically just use that money to fund the Google Ads fence that I needed to acquire them but ever since the monthly return has been incredible nice and I've grown with this client every single year in terms of hours in terms of work in terms of spend in terms of freedom because that's worth a lot of money as well yeah indirectly so yes seven years in yeah yeah that's a long yeah that's that's really nice so we can definitely take that as a as a case study in this in this episode so what we've done we've defined three yeah make sure that you can stay with the client for a longer time so yeah the first one is build trust and Report the personal level I would just name the three of them then we can just dive in the second one is setting goals and evaluating them and the third one frequent proactive check-ins so building trust and Rapport on the personal level is really important and yeah did you also do that with that client yeah forever still working with now every single client that I currently have I have a great personal relationship so I think when you're starting out as a freelancer uh you're mostly focused on the revenue and making the switch making the transition from agency site or client-side to full-time

03:16freelancing yeah so I guess really working on the relationship on personal level with your clients is something that comes in later on it's also because of the fact that in the beginning you will obtain a lot of clients that that are not your ideal clients most of the time but a few years in a few years later basically you start to polish your client portfolio and you can build trust and build yeah build trust on personal level yeah so that's that's what I did for all of the clients that I currently serve and this client is one of them so I think it is really important to find clients that you have a great fit with on personal level next to business level yeah since everything that we do as a Google ad specialist is mainly built on trust people have to trust you with their money and you need to have that that click in terms of well do you like me do I like you in terms of can we can we hang out can we drink a beer together and with my biggest clients that I really enjoy working with I can essentially drink a beer together with them and hang out with them because they they have become such good friends and it's sometimes hard to obtain the business relationship because the personal aspect becomes that big but I think those are your best clients and you really enjoy working for them yeah should you do you think you should aim for becoming friends with your clients I think so I think so and I guess that's a hard take yeah it's a lot since a lot of people like to keep things real business

04:55business-wise but I think it's most enjoyable yeah to work for clients that you that are like friends of you know that are like friends of you and it's nice because you you mentioned trust a few times and I think trust is actually the key word here and yeah whether you become friends or not with your clients as long as you have a really deep level of trust and it's easier to trust someone that you also like yes and I think what happens if you build that trust on a deep level and you also connect on a personal level then you can also get away with errors much more much much more than otherwise if it's such a cold business it doesn't actually have to necessarily have to be cold but if it's such a Strictly Business relationship then it's often called yeah and then it's really like going to do about it sometimes I've even offered like yeah okay gonna work for free or I'm gonna refund it and then they said no dude it happens did we learn from it okay it's not going to happen again let's move on yeah but if you have a really strict business relationship then that's that's already like that's already like this and people are you're on the edge of well yeah then you're off and especially if you look at the example from the last episode that you said with the client that just basically scammed you if that happens with a client like that they're gonna sue you because they say yeah you know you made a mistake yeah so that's why it's so important to to yes the same with with bookkeeping essentially because we have the same book right now

06:33right yeah so I fully trust this guy I Almost Do not check the stuff he does because I fully trust in his capability to just fix the fix the [ __ ] yeah you know and he well if you if you ask him a question he always has a great answer he really goes into depth he tells you everything that you have to know but not more and you can fully rely on him yeah and you are essentially yeah the same person you're also responsible for a lot of money you're also responsible for a business of your client essentially so yeah you can see you can compare Google ad specialist with an accounting specialist in in essence yeah so yeah it's all about trust it's all about trust and I think if you really if your client can trust you fully we have the freedom to do yeah whatever true it takes to bring the account to a higher level the client of yours isn't going to check you every single week yeah what did he do he isn't going to hop in the change history to see if you really made these really made five hours or if you just made 4.75 so to say yeah so yeah that's what I want to say but yeah absolutely it makes it real easy yeah and it also makes it more fun because then you have the freedom you feel free in your accounts then you you know that okay I'm the person I'm the guy that's managing the campaigns and I don't have someone watching over my shoulder yeah and then you just say okay we want to test x y and z now we want to test value based bidding now we want to test service I think blah blah whatever it is and then ideally they

08:11will just say okay let's go let's try you have your whole deck ready to convince them you're like okay this is I'm gonna persuade you and then they say okay let's do it I trust you okay nice yeah exactly that's that's what you want to what you want to reach yeah and I think the the clients that gave me a hard time in the past are the clients that didn't fully trust me or I didn't have the feeling that they that they believe in me or they fully trusted me because of some errors in the past with other Google Ads Freelancers or whatever and those were the clients that I eventually stopped working for in the end because you you feel as a Google ad specialist whether you're being trusted or not so and if people do not trust you you have to really be convincing in everything that you have to say everything that you want to pitch and it is starting it becomes stuttering especially if you have clients on the other side that are basically giving you a card Blanche hey dude do whatever it takes to bring my account to a higher level yeah I believe in you let's go so yeah it's a big big pillar yeah I think trust is built by one result for sure of course of course yeah that's all what they hire you for yeah so you can show them the results then of course you get trust but it's also communicating yeah because I think that I've had that experience as well in the past also when I was to work in the agency and in my own client portfolio sometimes it's so how do I explain this sometimes it's easier to have bad results but good relationship because then the client will feel the trust that you will do whatever it takes to fix it and to take it to the

09:49next level then it is to have great results but a bad relationship and they don't trust you because even though the results are good they are looking over your shoulder all of the time and then it becomes really annoying and then if you have really good working relationship with your own personal much easier to to to take the hits of those bad days because they always happen you always have periods when the performance drops always not every month is a green month nothing goes up all the time no and then you can especially Shiba Inu yeah except for Dojo always goes up sorry no but anyway anyway let's move on to point two okay how do you make sure to to communicate here yeah exactly yeah so I think let's take a one step back actually because that's the the third one but the second one is setting goals and evaluating them because that's also where communication comes into into play yeah because you said them before you start to work together and you evaluate them every quarter every year or so because then you're always at this on the same you know you're on the same page and working towards the same goals and then it becomes easy to say to your client okay this is what we wanted to achieve this is what we achieved either we performed on target over Target under Target then X Y and Z is why but I've also had a lot of cases where we didn't Define those goals clearly and then the clients are just like never really happy or always unsatisfied and then it's it's terrible it's terrible that happens at a lot of agencies yeah a lot of agencies that they do not set proper goals and proper targets and they just they just make the

11:27amount of hours they have sold that you start working on search term reports improving ad copy but they they never know when the client is happy or not when they are on target or below targets so often when you look in inside of an agency account or agency relationships like 50 of the client portfolio is isn't really satisfied because you because they didn't clearly Define goals yeah so that's where you have to start with absolutely yeah yeah and then from those when you set those goals you can you can evaluate them and I think that leads to the third point is frequent proactive check-ins with your clients so yeah what is that what does that mean yeah what does that do if you have frequent check-ins with your clients so yeah there are multiple things to say about this point I think it's the first thing that I would like to say here is to to always check in even if the the results are extremely good but also when results are extremely bad so you have to celebrate your wins yeah and you have to well communicate your your losses yeah and if you are honest and proactive about certain weeks and when you performed below Target or when you had this crazy crazy deal that you close or your client close and it came from your Google Ads campaigns you have to always be communicating you have to always be one step ahead of your clients in essence yeah so you do not want to receive a meal on Monday morning 10 a.m hey last Friday was really really shitty and what happened yeah because if

13:05you the worst that's the worst if you receive one of those emails okay it can happen but if you start receiving them every single month or every single quarter then something is then something is wrong in your own communication you have to be on the ball yeah so yeah that's important to always be proactive be communicating clearly and especially the clearly part is really important over here because people tend to communicate and they tend to have a great idea okay I'm I'm having a lot of contact points with my client but then the clearly communicating part is missing over there and they're just rambling or they're not being clear about the next steps or what went wrong and what we can prevent in the near future from this happening again so you really have to to be clear in what you want to achieve and be clear in well follow-up questions that your client may have when your email has been sent yeah yeah it's actually funny because I just wrote that down as a note do not forget don't let them find out because the and what I mean with that is be proactive yeah not try to hide what you have done or try to hide the bad results no sorry man we lost access to our account yeah whoops my bad no but it's exactly what you said you don't want the client to find out before you tell them yeah because then if you take it back to the trust level again then if you communicate to them when it's not going well that's going to signal to your client that oh okay you're being honest even when the results are not not as great and you're you're on it you're on the wall yeah and that's a really important part as well yeah because if

14:42you if you are communicating faster than your client and you're finding out faster than your client that then that means that it signals to your client that you're checking the results often yeah and that's when that's where you're hired for and that's what they they know ultimately they don't want to look in inside the Google Ads account they just want to have the feeling that you're going to do that so that they can do other stuff yeah they're arguing hiring you for for that purpose exactly yeah 100 yeah and when it comes down to reporting how do you do that do you do I've heard people do do weekly reports monthly quarterly what's your approach to to that I think it depends on what your client needs and what your client expects and obviously the size of your client so working for Weight Watchers for example means reporting every single week on last week's results because they have well message spent across the globe they want to check in within every Market see if their CPA to CLT fee rates are intact if not we have to adjust fast in order to prove and overspending and whatnot so for the bigger clients with really huge levels of spends it becomes more important to check in frequently but if you have smaller clients they're often okay with a monthly report and a monthly checking call so for most clients that I currently work with I check in on a monthly basis where we just plan a video call so I prevent sending out reporting emails I've done that in the past when I first started out in the first couple of years

16:18the first four years but one I really hate it writing out every single monthly report hey last month we did 5000 clicks and the month prior to that we had six thousand that's a minus 20 change blah blah blah blah blah so I really hated that so that's when I decided okay I'm going to ditch that part if the client is okay with that and we're going to have a video call yeah instead because one you have a visual contact points that builds trust until you do not have to write 10 plus reports every single first Monday of the week which is terrible which a lot of them are not going to be read any yes yes more than 50 are is not reading those emails they're like okay Bob did it did his job again yes he needed one hour for this that we paid him for uh more more than half the clients wasn't even reading those those reports yeah so video call is way way more effective in my opinion if you can replace that by a physical meeting yeah that's even better but a lot of us are working from home working through remote meetings are really nice but I will say I really like that you can do everything online now because it saves a lot of time as well yeah but in fiscal meetings every once in a while a video meeting is like one hour one and a half hour max if you do a physical meeting you have Chit Chat yeah exactly yeah a meeting will will will cost you three hours to go there and go back more than double of the amount of hours but I would highly suggest or yeah I would highly suggest doing at least one

17:57physical meeting every single half half a year that's quite nice that's really good for your relationship yeah and if you can and if the client is okay with that replace it by an online meeting yeah yeah so those are the the the the the well the the frequent check-ins and that's when I like to discuss the the Google S3 returns and the results that we perform on target above Target on the target what was the spend what was the conversion value yeah volume stuff like that and every single quarter I like to do a quarterly review that is most of the time a video meeting sometimes a physical meeting and it is more of a presentation instead of a well screen share of a lucr studio report right look this is what we did so that's when I take some preparation do some preparation about what the actual results were of last quarter in comparison with the quarter before and last year's quarter so year on year what we did so what were the optimization made what what were the things that we tested with what are the things that are on the agenda for the next few months so it's more like a bigger check-in point to be on the same page as the client and that's when you can also ask about the business so how are things going how are you how are your stock levels how are the profit margins these profit margins yeah during covets yeah well shipping costs basically doubled sometimes tripled margins really went down and those meetings were well were really important to just break even roast

19:34targets an actual Target Bros targets so yeah that really really help yeah and then we have the yearly meetings that I'm also a fan of so I do monthly check-ins for Google's results quarterly meetings for well check-ins and then yearly reviews to discuss the next year's plans mainly but also a quick look back on what we performed last year and I think that really works for me at least those sessions are usually also fun as well especially if you have really good growth that year oh yeah you can really celebrate that together yeah yeah and for your biggest clients often you see the spend like in a parabolic trend but also the results oftentimes yeah so it's more of a party oftentimes to celebrate the success which is important yeah which is important and it builds trust and it builds your relationship and it also is a notch for the next year that you're going to hopefully perform again and deliver on your on your promises that you are making in that specific meeting yeah so yeah I think that's really important are you doing that approach of the monthly check how long are the monthly check-ins oftentimes an hour an hour yeah yeah and then you have the quarterly meetings there I think closer two hours and because you have more to discuss and also to recap and nearly saying yeah yearly is also two hours yeah something like that do you yeah I I guess I assume you don't do that for all your clients right no no only the bigger ones if you have a client that only spends 300 500 euros per month I tend to well be a less be a

21:15little bit less frequent with all of these meetings so my monthly meeting becomes a quarterly meeting and a quarterly meeting becomes a yearly meeting yeah and it really depends on well what they're paying you for as well so if they're paying you for two hours per month and you have to do every single everything optimization in a limited amount of time you do not have time to properly prepare for these kinds of meetings yeah whatever I'm a fan of right now with smaller clients that you don't have too much time for is doing the monthly check-ins like you said they're creating the or maybe not even creating a report but if you have a looker Studio dashboard then doing a quick loom video 15 minutes or so yeah yeah you record it and then you send it to them if you have any questions just let me know yeah they can reply and then it's nice because you you can also type an email but I as you said I also don't like to type those long emails no and if you do a 10 15 minute video they can watch it at 1.5 times speed and plus they see you so it's personal as well yeah I really like that approach as well definitely and that's something I learned from you guys and I think that's one of the one of the easiest optimizations you can do for your monthly check-ins because you can throw out these videos quite easily instead of just writing this long in a gym during a gym session or whatever so that's a really really good

22:54tip and I like to do that as well not only for the monthly checking or monthly reports but also sometimes if there is a big event in the account something happened or I see opportunity and I also do quick Loom videos sometimes like two three minutes you know yeah instead of just sending an email hey we switch from Roxas to Boaz last week and we saw a huge fluctuation right now everything's normalizing yeah that's great to to shoot a little video for and oftentimes you get compliments from clients as well that's a nice tool this is a nice way a great way of working because it's new almost nobody actually does it that way so yeah yeah and it's modern modern yeah yeah true and it saves you so much time because if you can record a three minute video if it's your account so you know what is going on so you can explain it really easily but if you have to sit back and take the time to write it out in a clear and concise email then it's going to take you at least 30 minutes then you have to think about the the paraphrasing exactly the order of the emails yeah everything yeah now you can just share a screen and yeah it's yeah you ramble a bit and it doesn't have to be so perfect yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah let's see great point so the quarterly business reviews do you also have them sometimes with Google because I know that they they are heavy on that as well yeah but I have qbrs I only do them for my for the the the biggest clients so I have currently three accounts that are really big in terms of spends and in terms of assistance from Google and that's where the Google reps are often good they're serious in giving you concise and clear tips and optimizations this is where you often get access to product Specialists like Neil Kirby as

24:33well that we both knew new so so yeah those are the the important meetings that also give you a lot of new insights they also have these competitor benchmarks peer-to-peer reviews so those are the reviews that I like to attend but the the calls for the mid and lower yeah lower end I tend to ignore them I tend to reply on their emails yeah I do not pick up the phone when they call in fact I've blocked the the telephone number because it's often Spain Spanish number yeah I've I've just blocked it so nowadays now they email me instead and I just politely thank them for well the fact that they want to call yeah but I do not see a reason to do so because I have my own priority prioritization list of to-do's that I've discussed with my clients as well and that's a very big one as well make sure to have a big backlog of to-do's and frequently share this with your clients so how do you do this because we we're we're both we're both fan of notion yeah do you also use notion for yeah yeah I think I um I used to be all over the place I've tried Trello Asana Monday now I use yeah notion and it's I don't have a system it's just literary list of backlog I will use we use a notion for PPC Mastery as well yeah it's just a list with some check boxes like okay this is what we can do this is what we did or I yeah you can also use like the kanban templates but yeah usually I keep it really simple what about you

26:11I have things really systemized right now so I'm also using notion I came from Asana but I really like notion for these types of stuff because you can literally do all the things that you want to do with it so creating a backlog of all of the things that you can do for specific clients the things that you're currently doing right now things that are blocked because you're waiting for a developer to implement certain conversion tracking techniques it's important as well and also keep track of a list of the things that are completed and done so I've created a kanban list for every single client doesn't matter if they are small or large obviously the larger clients have way more stuff to do and have way more things on their to-do list and backlog than the smaller clients but it really really helps to to to update this compound per client and share this with them in your monthly check-ins because they see the way that you're working they see how how systemized you are and that builds trust as well they can actually see your internal system so this is not not something that I share with my clients I share I shared during the monthly course because it is my to-do list and we prioritize all of the tasks together during the monthly course but I do not mess within my compound word uh I do not let them create certain cards or lock certain comments so that really helps what also helps is to keep track of every single thing that you have discussed with your clients that also helps in building trust being clear communicating clear so every time I have

27:51a meeting doesn't matter if it's planned or not I tend to write it out in a really simple email yeah which are basically what are the the notes meeting notes they're kind of meeting notes so to say so I just create a small email where I start with the client name in the topic then meeting notes of date well what is it today 16th of August 2023 and then I'll list all the things that we have discussed really short and concise and the action points so what are we going to do right now just send it over just so we have that on paper then I transfer that to the common board on notion and it really really gives you a clear list of the things that you have to do prioritized this month but also the things that you have discussed that are less important that you can zoom in on the month after next month so there's always something to do if you keep track of the things that you communicate with your clients and discuss with your clients yeah yeah and that really helps in your relationship as well if you are all over the place so if you are just creating your own notes inside of a small booklet or sending over emails and then creating a video I think that is less effective and less professional than if you have a clear system that your client can actually see that's nice and I think it also helps as I think about it I think it also helps when clients are demanding and they say I think we should do act this and this and this and then you just say sure but we already decided to go for these projects so what are we going to do yeah exactly or we do something else next month yeah switch it around and that keeps track of your time that prevents you from

29:28overworking for some clients yeah and it's quite easy to do if you're starting out you're like okay I'm enforcing this client for six hours but I yeah I want to I want to build thrust and I want to oh deliverer which you cannot consistently overwork and be underpaid so you have to be very clear in what what you have to prioritize and what you can deliver this month and that's something that I like to do during the monthly meetings yeah so we had a personal level a lot of different examples and yeah that's probably that trust is the single most important thing in retaining clients right yes obviously that's it then the second one was setting goals in evaluating them and frequent proactive check-ins here's a final one quick question to to round it off this is from Hester in our PPC Hub membership she asked what are your thoughts on promotional gifts with clients your personal what's your personal take on that okay my personal take I do not like to buy trust [Laughter] yeah it feels like bribing and often the promotional gets are cheesy they're often cheesy yeah so if you receive like a pencil unless you receive customized PPC Master emergency yeah yeah that could be a bribe as well yeah it depends what you want to want to achieve with this but yeah if you receive a small book or a a drinking bottle or with your logo I think it's so cheesy people are I think they they have their the kitchen full with these kinds of toys and stuff already and they're like okay well great

31:04now I have to find an additional place for this so I'm not doing these kinds of gifts the only thing that I like to do um are basically on two specific moments the first moment is when a new client came in and the new campaigns or the newly restructured campaigns are live that's when I like to send out a a pie or some some some some sweets in order to to celebrate that we just kicked off a new campaign and we started working together so that's something clients tend to like and well yeah they tend to like that yeah they tend to and it's nice as well yeah some sweets are often good so that's the number one and the second thing is during Christmas I like to send out Christmas gifts but I like to make them personal yeah exactly so I really do my best to create a personal local gift so in the region where I live and where we both grew up there are a lot of small farms set up with little shops and a lot of these Farms often work with their own products or local source products and I like to pack package these gifts myself yeah a nice little wooden box for example and then send them out myself by myself as well and that that way you make your gifts personalized where people actually see that you have put some effort in it yeah with a nice handwritten card what I absolutely despise are wine wine bottles or champagne bottles or standard stuff standard stuff that people just buy online on well greets.nl or where you

32:43can actually see that people were like oh oh we have to we have to send miles a gift I forgot we forgot last minute or just let's just animate champagne and wet or a wine bottle a nice wine that's something that I do not do or do not like personally so I like to put in the work and those are the only moments that I'd like to to send over gifts yeah and it's uh it's all about making it personal like you said as well I I don't really give out promotional gifts either or yeah if you call it a promotional gift then it's already like what's the reason but if you give it because you want to give something away to your client and just like how you give a gift to someone on their birthday then it's completely or some I actually have a third reason where I do like to give gifts and that are important personal Milestones so a few a few months ago a partner of mine that I really like working with they had a kid yeah so that's when I basically sat down with Tara my wife and looked at hey what what can we what can we give like a proper nice gift for this little little boy that was born so we we gave him a little tricycle made of wood handcrafted and really nice almost like a nice piece of art yeah and they were we're so happy with it because we also put in the work yeah we made it personal yeah so those kinds of gifts are way more important than the the bottles and the pencil this crap yeah very nice very nice yeah I I only the only thing that I gave was a client of mine hit their first million dollar month oh wow yeah and then that was a couple years ago and then I gave them like a little Trophy and it said

34:20the name of the client and the first million dollar man that's epic and then I was they still have it in the office so at that time I come there I see the trophy I'm like yeah oh yeah yeah yeah he did that together those are the best moments yeah and those are the best gifts yeah and if you wanted if you want to give the gifts like this make sure to be it like a proper gift yes exactly and make it make it nice and personal yeah all right it's cool so that was it for today's episode I think that was a really uh yeah fun one session one one yeah to all you listening thank you for listening if you're watching on YouTube thanks for thanks for watching