One of the Best Metrics for Agency Owners

As an agency owner, I have a few favorite metrics; length of engagement, increasing budgets, referrals, etc. One of my fav favs is when a client leaves, but comes back.

This month, my PR firm Canvas PR had a client return. They never really “left,” exactly. She headed up marketing at a startup where she hired us for several placements, then she went to a new company, and she said, “You were the first people I thought of after I got here.”

Her new company has 30,000 employees. She’s the new VP Marketing/CMO. The company has never really invested in PR for marketing. She wants to give the other execs a taste of what it can do, but she didn’t want to deal with a traditional PR firm.

“I don’t want to sit there with them, trying to figure out what they’re going to get and when it’s going to happen, when I know I can come to you, pick the outlet I want, and have an article up there in a few weeks. It’s just so easy.”

What keeps clients coming back? From my perspective, it goes back to people doing business with people they know, like, and trust.

1. Know – If you run an agency, do you really know your clients? How well? What personal details do you know about the people you’re working with? How well do you know their roles, their challenges, their opportunities? How well do they feel like they know you?
2. Like – Sure, some clients will put up with a jerk, if that jerk happens to offer something the client can’t get anywhere else. But all things being equal, and in a world of ample choices, people like working with people they like. And they will forgive a lot of challenges working with an agency if they like the people at the agency.
3. Trust – What does it mean to trust an agency? It means the client feels the agency isn’t going to rip them off and they won’t be nickle-and-dimed for every little request. It means the client believes the agency will propose what’s best for the client, regardless of what may seem most advantageous for the agency. It means the client feels like the agency has their back.

Sure, an agency needs at least a basic level of competence as well, but even an amazingly high level of competence without know-like-trust means, at best, a short-term relationship.