How to onboard a new client into your agency
You’ve had the sales call, and they love you—check! Now it’s time to make good on what you’ve promised your new client as you onboard them into your agency.
But, what is the best way to onboard a new client?
One of the things digital marketing agencies ask us on repeat, “How do you onboard clients without a hiccup?!” is number one. And it’s a good question. We’ve onboarded more clients than we can count, so we tried, tested and re-tested our process to get it so just right, even Goldilocks would approve.
1. Use an onboarding template
A key to wowing your clients from day one is having your onboarding process down before you close the sales call. If you’re on a sales call and you know you’re not ready to onboard this client seamlessly, it’ll be a mindset block for you during the sales process.
Lucky for you, there’s an easy fix: You just need to spend some time customizing an onboarding template for your agency. We’re sharing our own onboarding checklist with you below, so whatever platform you use to manage clients (we’re personal fans of Asana), you can integrate the process, step by step, into your platform of choice. First things first, steal our workflow here.
2. Hand the client relationship over to someone on your team
This is an important step—passing the torch to someone on your team will not only allow you to get out of the day-to-day client communication faster, but it’ll showcase the legitimacy of your agency to your clients. If you’re the person who’s doing the marketing and taking the sales calls… and invoicing… and running ads... and managing all of the projects and all of the client communication (phew!), your agency doesn’t look as professional to clients. It makes them panic. As soon as you’re able to pass over a piece of the puzzle to someone, do it. (Psst! Client management happens to be what we do best, and we’re ready to take the torch off your hands. Just email us.)
3. Have a plan for client retention
As soon as you onboard a client, you’re onto the next, right? Wrong! This is the time to begin fostering a long-term relationship with your client. The cost of acquiring a new customer can cost your agency hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars, so rather than solely focusing on new customer acquisition, spend some time on the clients that already know, like and trust you! Of course, happy clients aren’t just informed—they’re spoiled! With thoughtful touches like regular Happiness Surveys and the occasional snail mail (hello, Starbucks gift card!), your clients will feel spoiled and, more importantly, heard. Grab our ‘Happy Clients’ checklist list for free inside the Client Onboarding Checklist.
And if your blood pressure has gone up just thinking about client onboarding or you're running a digital marketing agency, but you have zero clue how to make the client experience smooth like butta, we've got you. Before you begin mapping out an onboarding process for your agency, download our Client Onboarding Checklist to learn the exact steps we used in our digital marketing agency and still use today as client account managers for other digital marketing agencies.
Cheers to happy clients.