Why You Shouldn't Charge Your Client
Why You Shouldn't Charge Your ClientHowdy. Part of our business is managing and marketing some of our clients' web sites on an ongoing basis. We charge a monthly fee and provide a service whereby the site is edited, updated, optimised for search engines and generally kept humming along.
We didn't charge the clients for a month
Search engine work is tough. It's an ever-changing part of web work and when the major search engines change the way they rank web sites, a web site can suddenly drop from a high ranking to a low ranking.
A while back we didn't charge the clients for a month because they suddenly weren't getting any decent result for their money.
I spoke with the clients and said "Because you're not getting any benefit there'll be no charge."
Now, it's tricky with search engine optimisation because not everything we do will work. And because search engines change their assessments so quickly we can lose a high ranking despite putting in long, hard hours on a site.
No Guarantee
And I go to great pains to explain that to clients - there are no guarantees.
So I guess I could have presented a good argument for why we should still be paid despite the poorer results. But that doesn't seem right to me.
The benefit to my business (and our reputation) as a result of not charging for that month has been greatly in excess of the income we didn't generate.
You see, it's helped further establish the trust between the business and our clients. And that's priceless.
What do you think? Should we guarantee the performance of the work we do even though the success of what we do can be so quickly changed by a search engine changing the way they rank their sites?
Cheers
Brendon
[ comments ]
But, then, do you get any refund when your ad campaigns don't perform in newspapers, magazines or on TV, radio? You already offer a great deal of value to your clients as well as the ability to measure very easily their ROI (compared to other marketing channels). So, I guess the real question is: should online marketing play by a different, higher-level set of rules?
brendon, if the money you didn't charged comes out of the marketing budget, was that money well spent?
did it generate more income? was it equal or better to other marketing strategies you use?
This world would be a better place if only more businesses were like this, and I've no doubt that this will help develop better relationships with your clients and cause them to refer more business your way!
Cheers,
Steve
Steve
Thanks for the feedback.
With seo services you can never really guarantee the client # 1 spot because many of the deciding factors are out of your control (se algos, competition, etc).
But, I guess you could guarantee # 1 if you had enough time and money to achieve it.
The accountability of web site marketing has added a new aspect to the work of marketers and, hopefully, will start to make the other avenues (newspapers, magazines or on TV, radio) become more accountable.
You ask :"should online marketing play by a different, higher-level set of rules?"
It can because it's so accountable, but then again it's difficult to guarantee the result (due to search engines, competition, market conditions, etc) so maybe not.
With Anon's comments: yes, the money did come off the marketing budget and will be money very well spent. You see, if we can develop a real sense of trust and be seen as our client's advocate (which is what we are, of course) then the goodwill/repeat/referral business that comes from that is immeasurable.
It's been our experience over the years that money spent on developing a positive relationship with the client is the best marketing expenditure. The returns are always far greater than almost any other marketing for a whole range of reasons.
In his response Steve says: "I've no doubt that this will help develop better relationships with your clients and cause them to refer more business your way!"
And that is generally what happens. The most accurate measurement of if a business will be successful is whether their existing clients will refer them business.
To have a client refer us business we must be seen by the client as being completely free of risk - that is, they don't want to refer us a friend and then have us provide a poor quality experience.
By developing the relationship with our client, and by demonstrating through actions our commitment to the client, we remove the perception of risk. And thus we generate more referrals.
And having said all of that, it sounds like it's a deliberate tactic that we use to aid the view of us as risk free. But it's not. It's just a nice consequence of what we do as an ethical and decent business doing what we believe is right (if I do say so myself!).
Cheers
Brendon