What PR pros can do when clients are wrong

In every customer service job, you hear the same thing: “The customer is always right.”

In marketing, it can be easy to fall back on this saying. You want the client to be happy, so you do things their way.

The problem is, the client isn’t always right (despite what your old boss at Hollister said).

The truth is, your clients hired your agency to produce results. They want to meet their marketing goals, and felt confident that you were the partner who could help them.

Despite this, clients can often request projects that will not help them meet those goals (and they might not even know it).

We’ve all seen it happen: A client’s goal is to increase website leads by 10 percent, but he or she wants to allocate their budget to creating a print ad.

You believe the client’s budget would be better spent on content marketing, so what should you do? When this occurs (and it will), your agency must be there to act as an adviser, even if that means saying “no.”

Saying “no” is never easy—but as a marketing expert, it’s your job to advise the client on what will produce the best results (and what won’t).