Everyone thinks that they know marketing. But, only the ones who are in it know the reality!

As some YouTube videos and some random blogs suggest, running marketing campaigns is not as simple. Sometimes, you can run a marketing campaign, but you cannot measure the performance. Or, you just run the campaign for the sake of it, and now you do not know why no conversions or leads are coming in!

And well, once you start your marketing agency or start working on freelancing gigs, you will find a ton of people who want to run marketing campaigns for them. Be it running social media campaigns or working on video ads, sometimes creating websites or landing pages and sometimes just writing content for their SEO needs.

Here is where you need to decide whom to onboard and whom not to. Interestingly, as a new entry in the market, you would love to focus on generating revenue first. So, you onboard a couple of initial clients, and then you subtly realize that the focus you kept was wrong.

But, here are some of the clients you would love to avoid:

The client who knows everything

The “know-it client” is an interesting personality. The brief they will give would be steps that you would pitch and the consulting you would give. But, the knowledge scale would be at an impressive level, but the execution levels would be in minus.

This kind of client would be eager to give you work but on their terms only. If you suggest something, they will ask you to do that in their way only. They are good at generating that initial revenue, but they will find issues in your and their work and keep overthinking.

Most probably, you would end up working with them for a couple of months and then either of the parties would drop out themselves without any long discussions.

The confused client

The confused client is one of the most interesting personalities to work with. They know that they need your services. However, they do not know how much money they want to spend, they do not know the difference between marketing & sales, and they do not know what returns they want from the campaigns.

Interestingly, once you take the client’s work, you will keep trying to figure out what they want, how they want, and when they want. The billing cycles would get messed up regularly. The client would have an attitude of figuring out on the go. This means, there is no direction for him/her to follow or no goal to achieve.

With this kind of client, you would end up losing your energy and the project timeline would become as long as taking a walk to the moon and back.

The client who just eats, sleeps, and walks ‘DISCOUNTS’

When you go to meetings to close these types of clients, they would share their huge dreams about becoming market leaders. But, when you work on the commercial parts, they would end up eating your time and ask you to recalculate and give discounts as if they were your in-laws.

Simply run away from this kind of client or be prepared to play word games with inflated pricing and then offer huge discounts. But, giving discounts then would become a huge obstacle to your growth. All the future clients would come in a similar pattern and you would keep counting discounts while they start enjoying your services.

So, if your clients are great or fall under these categories, make sure to have a clear conversation with them regarding the KPIs and outputs they should expect from you. Missing the communication part would destroy your financial plans and campaign effectiveness as well.

So, how was your experience onboarding your first client for a marketing project? Did you encounter any similar clients and how do you avoid them?