How and why should an account manager study the customer's business processes

Any relationship starts with an acquaintance. And the first person that any business meets when contacting a digital agency is an account manager. You call him for the need for adjustments, changing prices on the site, with questions about the report, and in general with all questions that somehow relate to your site and its promotion strategy.

An account manager is a person who represents the agency you applied to promote your project. To describe the work of a manager in a nutshell, this is the link between the customer and a large team consisting of the company's CEO, marketers, SEO specialists, PPC specialists, technical department, SMM manager, Link manager.

The correctness of the promotion strategy and the success of its implementation depend on the depth of mutual understanding between the customer and the account manager.

We want to tell you who the perfect account manager is and why he should be in speed dial on your phone.

Why does a digital agency study other people's business processes?

Most companies that think about promoting on the Internet are divided into 2 types:

In both the first and second cases, it is important to find competent specialists who will help you build a promotion strategy and be able to implement it. But this does not mean that it will be enough to find a company and conclude an agreement with it, and then simply collect orders from the site.

Search engine algorithms are increasingly leaning towards quality and expert content, and this is exactly where your expertise is needed. No one knows your business, your customers, and their needs better than you. It is you who understands how to solve the problems and tasks of your customers.

Let's go back to the point when you have already found your agency, agreed on a budget and signed an agreement to promote a web resource on the Internet. It is on this day that the responsible account manager who is assigned to your project will call you. Carefully remember the name of this person. It will become the best friend (albeit a little annoying at times) to your business for a long time.

Why annoying? The account will call you, write, constantly ask something, like the most demanding client:

• How much does shipping cost?
• What companies do you ship with?
• Do you have a product warranty?
• Do you sell wholesale?
• How can you get a discount?
• How are these brands different?

But do not rush to blacklist your account manager. He is interested in all the nuances for a reason. See how the delivery page of a person who was not promoted by a cool account manager could look like:

So why do we study your business in such detail?

For a very long time, it’s not enough just to make a website, buy links and wait for orders. The site should be as convenient as your favorite smartphone, as a convenient application that you use every day. In order for your customers to believe you, choose you, buy from you, and then come back and buy again, the agency studies your business. And only then offers you a competent promotion strategy.

What questions do we ask our customers most often:

1. What is your sales region?
2. Who is your customer, what is he like, what worries him? What does he expect? What are his interests?
3. Tell us about the chain of sales, production, delivery. What is the length of the deal?
4. What is your product, what makes it unique, why is it better?
5. What customer problem does your product solve?
6. Do you keep track of sales?
7. What do you expect from the promotion, and what will be the main criterion for the result for you?

These are just 7 basic questions that SPRAVA specialists ask at the very beginning in order to roughly begin to understand what you do and who your customer is. At this stage, we get to know you and your business, and we begin to get to know each other better.

Marketing strategy always depends on the marketing goal.

How fully you answer these questions will be the key to creating a successful strategy for moving forward. Because there is a big difference between whether we are promoting a business for a certain region or around the world. What can be the differences?

After we determine the basic requirements, we proceed to the selection of optimal tools for promotion. Both the Customer and the digital agency work as closely as possible, because it is teamwork that underlies the successful growth of the project.

Tips for SPRAVA customers

We have some tips for you:

1. Get ready to tell all the secrets
   It's really important for us to know how many cups you sold this month, what color they were, and how many of your customers didn't like their shape. And we do this not at all in order to count your money, but to understand the effectiveness of your actions. This understanding allows us to adjust the promotion strategy and bring only an interested audience to the site and, of course, see if this audience buys your product.
2. Get ready for change
   We know that you are very used to your website header without a phone number, but sooner or later something needs to change. We will tell you what no longer works, and what urgently needs to be implemented on the site and what results this will lead to. All you need is to listen and hear us.
3. Be prepared to trust recommendations
   In the world of Internet marketing, everything is changing so rapidly that the business that does not adapt to these changes will very soon give way to competitors. We don't want this to happen to you, so we only recommend what really works.
4. Get ready to prove everything about yourself
   Tell it all. Publish prices, reviews, company documents, product certificates on the site. Everything that can interest the user, arouse his curiosity and trust, should be on the site. And we will ask for the necessary information.
5. Get ready for a lot of sales
   The user no longer wants to wait 2 weeks to receive their product. You must deliver quickly, the product must be in stock (and if not, inform the user about it and tell how quickly you can deliver it). Train your sales team. Because we are ready to bring users to the site, but you must be ready to sell your product.

Let's imagine a hotel website that has started promotion. The site has feedback forms, online chat, phone numbers, mail. Four months of cooperation pass, traffic on the site has doubled compared to last year, but the number of bookings through the booking module has not increased. The customer asks the obvious question: why? The account manager starts to analyze. Over the past month, there have been:

• 42 calls,
• 17 appeals through feedback forms,
• 3 emails,
• 52 requests to the online chat,
• 12 bookings directly through the booking module.

The account manager calls the customer and reports this data and learns that only those bookings that have been fully completed on the site are processed. But calls, contact forms, emails, and online chat messages are also potential bookings. And if the question “Are there any free rooms at the hotel on August 12-17?” your booking manager says “No”, then you should consider scripting for your booking department. You must suggest other dates, rooms, and do everything to make your potential guest happy. ”No” is not an answer, and it doesn't work. We checked :)

Be ready to be connected and work together.

Bringing users to the site is 50% of success. The remaining 50% are well-organized business processes.

Another reason you might not be satisfied as a digital agency client is because you know what's best. You have been in this business for a long time, you have regular customers who have been with you for 20 years. And you start to bring your business to the Internet and answer all the requests of the account manager like this:

• «My clients always call and never write».
• «Why do they need a lot of photos on the site? They will come to the store to feel everything».
• “What are the reviews? Everyone already knows me!”.

Turn on critical thinking. Through search engines, a completely new audience comes to your site that does not know anything about you and does not want to call their friends to find out more about you. They have already visited your site and want to get all the information. Make sure they have that opportunity.

How to get out of the situation and achieve the desired level of interaction with the customer?

If you are already a customer of a digital agency or are just thinking about becoming one, take a closer look at the account manager of your project.

• Does he write to you often?
• Do you always answer his calls?
• Do you receive recommendations from him to improve your site?
• Are you actively coordinating all changes?
• Do you keep him updated on changes within your business? Perhaps you stopped selling coffee machines, and he was not told about it.

If you are the owner of a digital agency and the account is a person who works for you, then pay attention to the following:

• Can he advise the customer at any stage of project development?
• Does he call his customers?
• Does the customer receive recommendations from him?
• Can the account additionally sell the service required by the customer?
• Does he know how to close disputes and work with objections?
• Does he bill on time? Remembers that it is worth calling the accountant and reminding about it?
• And most importantly – can he make a competent commercial offer for the customer?

An account is a technologist, a psychologist, a sales manager, an accountant, and a lawyer.

If you want to get a really cool account manager, then just know that his main goal should be to help you and sell your services. What is it about?

Business owners don't have to (and most likely don't want to) understand complex terms and how search engine algorithms work.

• Do not use complex terms to show your expertise. Simplify, strive to convey your idea in an understandable language, and you will have much more understanding customers than dissatisfied ones. If you understand this, that's cool. But what really will be an indicator of your expertise for the customer is an increase in sales and traffic.
• Always take the place of the user, include criticism in yourself and look for what is wrong. Anything that can be even slightly uncomfortable on the site should be fixed. The minimum information that has not yet been published should be written. Don't let your site's users look elsewhere for answers.
• Constantly learn. Understand the new requirements, look for what to improve, know what is no longer working and in which direction to move.

The account manager is the face of the company for the customer. And we at SPRAVA know that. We know what a big team is working on each project, and we managed to build that level of relationship between customers and our company, which has become effective and convenient.

Our customers do not need to remember the names of all the specialists working on their site. It is enough for them to know the number of the personal account manager and his name. If you are wondering who usually stands behind this person, then just look at this diagram.

It is very important for an account manager to build long-term and trusting relationships with the customer. He must know everything about your goals, needs, sales, or lack thereof. Provide more information, don't limit yourself to laconic “All is well” or “Sales are not very good.” Believe me, we ask about this for a reason. The more transparent the data, the higher the effectiveness of the promotion strategy.

Do you want to talk to a cool account manager about your project?