First priority is going to be keeping our customers happy.
Gabriel Marguglio, CEO, Nextiny Marketing
Provide as much value as you can to your customers during times of crisis and uncertainty. This is a key message from CEO of HubSpot Platinum agency Nextiny Marketing, and one he’s clearly passionate about and has put into action at Nextiny.
In this 10-minute video interview, Verblio CEO Steve Pockross digs into Gabriels ideas about how agencies can succeed in times of crisis and uncertainty through the ideas of service, being human,
Here are 10 principles Gabriel shared for agencies:
Prepare for some customers to leave. Your agency may very well lose some customers in the coming months in industries most affected, be prepared.
Shift the focus of your leadership from sales to customer happiness. Gabriel is shifting much of his time from growing his agency through sales to ensuring his customers are happy.
Get creative to ask: “what can I do to help?” The things your customers need may be different from the services your agency traditionally provides, get creative to meet your customers needs during this time—help them go remote, set up online ordering systems, and more.
Get lean, but continue to invest in education & software that helps your customers. Gabriel is looking for areas to tighten his budgets, including some that will happen naturally—travel budget has gone to zero—but he’s continuing to invest in educating his team and software that powers results for his customers.
Communicate with customers more than ever, but don’t sell—help. Customers need to hear from you now. Use video, be human, but don’t aggressively sell more to your customers, ask them how you can help instead.
Help today, and you will grow tomorrow. This has been true forever, not just during a time of crisis.
Evaluate, cut back, or consider pausing your marketing automation. This is not the time for automated messaging that may come across as tone-deaf right now, it’s the time for one to one, human outreach.
Be hyper-aware of the tone of your content. It’s worth one more check to make sure nothing you publish (or pieces that get lots of evergreen traffic) has phrasing that may come across wrong today.
Build for the long-term. It’s tempting to focus on news-driven content, but think about what is going to build your clients’ business for the long term, so they come out stronger. SEO, evergreen content, repurposing and revamping old content into new pillar pages will serve your clients well over the long-haul.
Who is your micro audience? Think about the 100-200 SMBs that are in your agency’s sphere of education—what can you help these businesses learn that’s going to benefit their business in the long-term?
Automatic monthly payments and taking your agency remote are great moves for cash flow. If you’ve been sticking with getting checks from your customers to avoid PayPal fees, now is the time to switch—you don’t want to be chasing down checks. And, now might be a good time to consider if your agency can operate remotely over the long haul.
