Your content may be ranking superbly on search engines. Your social media marketing skills could be earning you plenty of likes and shares. Maybe your videos and blog posts are even creating a widely shared buzz on each release.
However, with all these skills and achievements, you still find that you’re not getting the best value from your clients. How can learning to be a master of negotiation benefit digital marketers? Can searching Google for a “negotiation seminar near me” help you achieve more?
Learn to Give Better Value
Digital marketing is an ever-changing profession. The market faces new innovations, new technologies, algorithm changes, new techniques, and new platforms at an increasingly rapid pace.
One way to sell your client on new trends is through negotiation. When you make an offer to your client, you may upsell to a new or emerging service that performs better and gives better return on investment (ROI).
Through holding talks with your client, you are better able to determine your client’s needs. For instance, your client may ask for a product review page to attract more sales. However, by clarifying through discussions, you may discover that your client would benefit more from an improved sales page for the product to boast the product’s benefits.
While client testinomials are important, prioritizing a better sales page would offer higher value to the client in this instance. For the marketer, copywriting for the sales pages may attract a higher fee than a product review page.
Also, to Claim More Value
Negotiation is all about value exchange. You want your clients to get a valuable service, and you want to prosper by offering that service.
As a digital marketer, the skills learned by attending a negotiation seminar equip you to claim value. For example:
- Set prices for your services.
- Timely payments.
- Long-term clients with ongoing contracts.
- Bonuses on exceptional work.
- Commissions based on your client’s ROI.
- Referrals and testimonials.
- Exposure to new markets.
Improve Your Brand Image
When you give as well as claim value, you create win-win relationships that clients value. Creating mutually beneficial offerings earns you industry cred and respect. You will be telling your client:
- What solutions you offer that cure client pain points.
- The value your clients enjoy from using your services.
- Why working with you is better than working with your competitors.
- Why your types of services are better than alternatives that your clients may already be working with or considering.
Negotiation helps to demonstrate value and communicate your unique selling proposition. By preparing prior to a meeting, you’ll know what type of service your client values most. Knowing a client’s needs allows you to prepare slides, stories, and questions that get your client thinking about your company’s unique value proposition.
Negotiation Seminars Clarify Your Role
One of the most frustrating scenarios for digital marketers is where a client keeps changing the scope of work. Suddenly, a job order that was to be complete in a few days ends up taking weeks. Such changes in the scope of work can take a toll on your energy and enthusiasm.
Fudgy instructions lead to ambiguous objectives and a potentially less-than-stellar outcome. Clear discussions assist digital marketers in understanding client needs. During discussions, you and your client can agree on job aspects such as:
- What exactly needs to be done.
- Who to report to during each stage of the process.
- Milestones, timelines, and deadlines.
- Allowance for editing, corrections, and improvements.
- Refund policies.
- Criteria for bonuses and commissions.
- Support and service.
Work to Forge Enduring Collaborations
Digital marketers occasionally find they need some help to complete a project. Maybe you need a proofreader, web designer, or SEO expert. Perhaps you already have a team of trusted service providers or you’re searching for new experts.
Whatever your situation, you may need to agree to terms for a current or upcoming project. You may need your collaborators to offer support even after the contract has ended. For instance, you may need your web developer to step in later and conduct some software upgrades, or your content marketer may need to respond to reader comments.
In some cases, you may need to make new contracts on a case-by-case basis. Some of these collaborations may not be revealed to the main client. Negotiation training helps you maneuver such agreements without offending your client or collaborators.
Negotiation helps you get the best deals with your collaborators. You are able to define:
- Client expectations.
- Collaboration agreements.
- Collaborators’ roles.
- Privacy issues such as non-disclosure and non-compete clauses.
Scale Up Your Business
Like most businesses and service providers, most ambitious digital marketers dream of scaling up their business. Marketers strive to work for big brand name clients, higher margin services, a bigger paycheck, and more lucrative perks.
Negotiation helps your brand promote extra services, make upsells, and make connections with a better-paying market. The negotiation process creates a positive feedback loop where your current clients refer you to bigger clients, who then refer you to even bigger clients and so on.
Participating in an expert-led negotiation seminar can support the marketer’s growth goals. You can learn how to express your value to corporate clients and handle manager objections to improve your sales closing rates.
Find Chances for Cost Savings
Most of your clients are probably juggling budgetary constraints, just as you are. You can prove your value to the client by negotiating lower prices to their service providers. A cost-saving opportunity may arise if your clients already use premium-rate marketing tools.
For instance, if the client’s SEO tracking or optimizing tools are expensive, you may direct the client to less cost-intensive tools with comparable performance for their needs. You may also reach out to the administrators of the tool and negotiate lower fees based on the volume of work you might be sending their way.
For your own business, you can negotiate lower service provider fees and subscriptions. Lower fees can increase your profit margins and improve your market competitiveness. Negotiation seminars can guide digital marketers in improving their resource allocation and cost savings.
In Closing
When digital marketers master negotiation, it helps create better value for their current and future clients. Clear communication can define roles explicitly, making for clearer objectives.
Negotiation helps you build mutually beneficial relationships that may scale your business to work with even bigger brands, level up your skills, and ultimately make more money.
Matt says
Few years ago after I hired a consultant and accepted his suggestion, we managed to get more clients when we increased our prices and changed our target audience. The service was valuable, but maybe over priced at that time. However, for some people more money always means more value.
Salem says
As usual, real human activities are the main thing. We all know the benefits of digital marketing and the improvements that it brought, but all comes again on human to human relation. Our communication, negotiation skills are the ones that bring us customers and make them stay loyal.
Thomas says
I learned the hard way that you have to be very clear with your clients about the scope of work and availability. Before I was answering every call and was available to make any change that client asked, but I actually was very frustrated because of that. Now I have very clear contracts about this matter and value my time and work more.
Monika says
Thanks for the share! I believe active listening can be one of the most important factors when it comes to negotiating. Business owners often treat negotiations like a sales pitch or presentation Sometimes this can work, but two-way communication will always be more successful.
Salem says
We can say that digital marketing and all digital marketplaces are working just like real markets, so, negotiating skills are must-have and must know.
Petr says
The power to recognize clients’ needs and to make them happy, the same as making your wallet full is the most difficult thing out there. Negotiating skills are
one of the crucial capabilities needed to bring the digital marketing process back to the individual level, that is, to personalize it.