Episode 234: The Magic of Surprise + Delight Marketing In Your Design Biz

Have you put any though into what more you could be doing in your client experience to take it a step further? Let me introduce you to one of my favorite marketing strategies for existing clients—surprise and delight marketing. By creating an up-leveled experience for your clients, you’re building lasting client relationships and creating a built in referral source for your business. What Is Surprise & Delight Marketing? Surprise & delight marketing is a strategy that focuses on attracting and nurturing your relationships with clients and potential clients by providing unexpected value. An easy way to do this is by under promising and overdelivering. I love to teach my own students to use surprise and delight marketing through really simple touch points or anchors that we drop throughout the client experience and project timeline. Benefits of Surprise & Delight Marketing Serving your clients with intention will always have benefits—that’s why surprise and delight marketing works so well. A few benefits I’ve seen come from surprise and delight marketing include: * Turning clients into lifelong clients* Turning client relationships into industry friends* Turning one project into dozens of projects* Referrals to industry peers How to Implement Surprise & Delight Marketing into Your Client Experience Through a variety of ways, you can implement surprise and delight marketing into your business so that you’re always providing value or experience to your clients. Over the years, I’ve foound that some of the easiest ways to incorporate surprise and delight marketing are very simple. First, consider that concept of underpromising and overdelivering within your project timeline. If you can give yourself a little extra cushion in your timeline so that you can deliver ahead of time, it’s a nice surprise to your clients for you to show up a day or two early in your deliverables. You can work this in from the beginning to where you were always planning to deliver early, but to your clients, this is a nice surprise! Additionally, you can drop some unexpected surprises throughout the project and at the end, like a postcard or gift. These thoughtful ideas will show that you appreciate your client, the work you’re doing for them, and that you’re thinking about them. Lastly, these surprise and delight experiences can go beyond the work you’re doing for them. You can make introductions to your industry peers that you trust who could either help take the project further or could be a great connection for them to know! Join The Brand Strategy School If you are wanting to explore some of these surprise and delight concepts more within a community and the safety of a group of like-minded designers who are walking a similar journey and who get what it’s like to be a designer, then I invite you to learn more about joining the Brand Strategy School! We’ll be cheering you on and looking at how you can leverage brand strategy as your superpower to charge more for your services, plus explore how you can lead and guide your clients like the total pro that you are. LEARN MORE FOLLOW ALONG Brand Strategy Podcast