How do you let clients know that you're doing something new? Recently my company started a new division to respond to the growing marketplace demand for animation. Audiences are being inundated by more and more photos and videos, which anyone can create with the push of a button. But animation, with a clever script, professional voicing, and a unique visual style, can still stand out in the crowded fight for consumers’ attention. Plus, animation is just a whole lot of fun for a creative agency.
But how to promote the new initiative to prospective clients? In the past, like most others in our industry, we would have sent out a sample trailer or snippet of the final product in an email blast with a subject line like: “Here’s something new and exciting from Filmateria Studios!” But I've noticed that when we’ve done this with new offerings in recent years, we’ve rarely gotten any response at all, beyond a tepid “looks good” from our best clients. It didn't take a genius to tell that this top-down information overload style of promotion wasn’t really working anymore.
Or, we might have sent out an Account Executive to walk through the client benefits with a catered lunch featuring a PowerPoint presentation showing all the ways our new offering could help them. But those days are long gone. No one has time for a "dog and pony" show, and potential clients have a healthy skepticism about marketing claims.
The rise of data analytics has also increased the distance between the marketing need and the creative solution. Gone are the days when Apple's Steve Jobs worked with Lee Clow of Chiat/Day to personally approve the creative look and feel of an ad. Now algorithms rule, and clients expect data to back up claims.
Then it hit me—instead of telling our clients how they could use the new offering, we should ask them. Instead of a sales pitch, we created a survey. The response was phenomenal—more than 50% response rate to the 40-plus clients we surveyed. And I learned so much more than I would have had we simply sent a sample and awaited a response. Clients seemed genuinely flattered to be brought into the development process.
Like a lot of small businesses, I thought that crafting a survey would be difficult and the response would be tepid. Apparently, I’m not alone. 61% of small businesses are staffed by four or fewer employees, which makes surveys seem like a luxury. Laura Wronski, Senior Research Scientist for industry leader SurveyMonkey, understands: “Businesses avoid surveys because they consider them too difficult and time consuming to send to customers. Yet, when customers survey their customers frequently, they generate insights that can position them as experts in their field.”
Wronski says surveys can bring up qualitative issues that a business owner might not have considered. We learned this ourselves as our survey generated numerous creative ideas about the best way to position our product. Clients had ideas about best places to post the spots, what the subject matter should be, even the names of our characters. Best of all, we received a number of side emails from clients telling us that they were interested in our animation capabilities, and may even have some upcoming projects. Thanks to the survey, our efforts resulted in solid leads–before we had even finished our product.
There are a number of easy-to-use survey products on the market. SurveyMonkey is the largest and best known, but by no means the only option. We crafted our survey using Google Forms, a process that took less than an hour once we’d created our questions. The world of business messaging has never been more crowded, yet, conversely, the opportunity for micro-targeting is greater than ever, as well. Take the opportunity to make your best customers fellow stakeholders in your dreams. After all, if you’re going to succeed, you’ll need them to be your biggest cheerleaders.
