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3 minute read
Let’s take an example of a full-service marketing agency offering everything from strategy and performance channel management to media buying and copywriting.
Firstly, our customers, or clients, have chosen us over our competitors. Do we know why? What was our edge or differentiation that led to that final decision? Understanding these key decision points provide us with a baseline of sorts, of today's customers’ reasoning behind choosing us.
But let’s say that over the last couple of years we’ve noticed the services that our customers/clients are spending most billable hours in are shifting.
Copywriting has been slowly trending down since ChatGPT launched. We may even have noticed the technology segments as each shifted, from early adopters to the laggards (who may remain using copywriting services as they don’t have either time or inclination to become comfortable using the new tool/s).
Ideally, we’ve had a quarterly customer survey running. We’ve been keeping an eye on the Customer Satisfaction and Net Promoter Score, as well as asking a few key open questions to keep our eye on how well we’re doing in each of our service offerings.
If so, at the time we noticed the early adopters reducing their copywriting hours, we ensure that our next survey would dig down into that observation more.
Which tools or other companies services’ were they preferring to use instead and why? Was the change motivated by budget, service or something else? How satisfied are they with the comparable output of copywriting vs our services?
These questions would then hopefully allow us to validate or disprove some of our hypotheses as to why billable hours had reduced, and also uncover attitudinal insights to help explain the behavioural change.
Hopefully we’d find something of value that would help us pivot the agency into the new behavioural trend to win back the billable hours, something our competitors might not be doing yet.
For instance, let’s say the survey uncovered that more than half of clients were under budgetary pressure and found that their in-house teams could handle basic AI prompts to create simple copy for ads and other comms. They have noticed that there’s more editing time required though and by checking their socials, we can also see some common AI errors creeping in.
As an agency we decide to train ourselves on AI prompting and editing, packaging this up as an extension to our copywriting services, at a reduced hourly rate, aiming to be comparable to the hourly equivalent rate of an in-house marketing co-ordinator or similar. We can now go out to those clients with a new AI-powered copywriting service that saves their teams time in prompting, editing and protecting their brands from embarrassing mistakes.
So now let’s rewind the clock.
Could we have predicted this would happen and have pivoted earlier to avoid churn?
In our weekly WIPs with clients, did we notice they were asking about AI or even mentioning it casually months before they reduced their hours with us?
Did the prior quarterly survey pick up on any unusual, off-trend results that could have been an indication of the change ahead?
What would we have included in the quarterly surveys ongoing if we’d had the benefit of hindsight?
Technology is shifting faster than ever before and it’s getting harder to keep up with it all.
So what are the key questions to ask your customers regularly to ensure you’re going to see the early flags of change brewing and give yourself enough time to pivot?
- What new trends are you seeing that you’re curious about?
- What are you watching closely which you believe may bring greater cost and operating efficiencies to your business?
- Where are the gaps in your knowledge and/or understanding in relation to the above?
- Do you anticipate your customers’ behaviours, needs and expectations will change as a result of the above, and if so, how?
- What preparations are you making to lean into these consumer behaviours?
Putting yourself in the position of being able to predict and get ahead of shifts in your customers' behaviour will help you stay ahead of your competitors, stay in step with your customers’ needs and keep your business relevant in changing dynamics, economies and technology.
