6 Client Retention Hacks

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Jake Hundley

What's the article?

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Cody See

NRF. That's National Retail Federation. Forecast 2026 holiday sales growth. as consumers remain resilient.

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Cody See

I think this is propaganda And I'll tell you why.

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Jake Hundley

Yeah. Come on. consumers remain resilient well according to all of the reddit threads for agency owners uh people are not spending money.

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Cody See

Yeah. No I would not. resilient is not the word I would use. And so. Right at the beginning, the heavy hitter quote that they try to use to... to say this is Um...

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Cody See

The National Retail Federation today released its annual holiday forecast predicting retail sales in November and December. will grow to four. or will grow 4 .2 percent over 2025.

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Cody See

If you ask me... I'm going to say inflation is not far. at all from 4 .2 % this year. Which just means...

They're doing the same as last year.

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Jake Hundley

Yeah, I'm glad you said that because I had looked this up and inflation ah last year. All right. just for purchasing power. is 3 .8%.

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Jake Hundley

Dude. difference so like you're talking about a a matter of 0 .4 percent

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Cody See

Yeah.

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Jake Hundley

And then. And then like how. you can like recognize the pattern too because like in in the same chart in this article It shows that. with 2025 saw a 3 .1 % increase over 2024 in terms of spending.

But then you look at the 2025 inflation over 2024 and it's... The purchasing power is. Uh... I can't find it actually. um 2 .76%.

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Jake Hundley

So... Like.

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Cody See

I like this chart a lot. Actually, I think it's fun because you go back to it shows. 2020 and 2021. There's 8 .8 % and 12 .6 % respectively. And.

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Cody See

I think. That's reflective of what happened when everybody first went into COVID. They're like, yeah, OK, this is weird. We're going to spend money to deal with our lives because we don't know what to do. Then he goes to 2023.

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Cody See

1 .9 And that's, I think the lowest.

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Jake Hundley

It's the lowest on this chart.

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Cody See

since

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Jake Hundley

since 2010.

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Jake Hundley

Yeah. So this is like, it's so indicative of our agency too, because. in 2020. I think we were like everybody was a little bit nervous about how. Their agency would would turn out um With, you know. people who didn't know when they were going back to work or didn't know what's happening in their jobs and things like that.

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Jake Hundley

And it turns out in the landscaping industry, at least. Uh, People like you said had to deal with their lives specifically at home. so landscapers saw a huge increase in and projects and profit. and and revenue. Therefore,

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Jake Hundley

therefore we saw a huge increase in projects and profit and revenue. So. 2020 and 2021 are really good years for us. 21 was the year that we had to implement.

restrictions on how many people we could onboard at one time. And then. Yeah. Then I remember when 23 hit and that was the first time I think like eggs, like a dozen eggs went to, it was like a dollar an egg. I was like, it was crazy.

It was like. That and then I think the egg crisis hit again in like 24, but. But inflation overall in 23, it was wild. And then... consumer spending. really slowed down and that showed in our clients clients and then thus kind of trickling down to us or trickling up to us or whatever.

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Cody See

Yeah, segmentation is really important here. right i mean this is effectively talking about generalized holiday sales. Which. by itself.

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Cody See

In theory, you can call it discretional spending. Right. Very good. just yeah discretionary spending because if it's the holidays these are gifts and that sort of stuff so the assumption is that you're using the extra money. These aren't essentials.

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Cody See

So. um But that doesn't necessarily cross over. to to all agencies. I think if you're doing e-comm. especially for clientele.

that Gives. You know. ah fun products, not necessities at all. then You might feel whatever's happening here more than other places. But if you're doing, for example, e-comm and some sort of necessary.

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Cody See

industry. Right. healthcare or something like that then odds are you don't even feel or notice this stuff as much That's what I would guess.

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Jake Hundley

Yeah. I mean we felt it. I noticed it.

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Cody See

Yeah, in a good way, right?

Well, and not in 23.

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Cody See

No, no, that was awful.

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Cody See

That that is 2023 is forever burned in my brain. Like as as the year of. the year that Money went whack and it never went back.

since then. like i

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Jake Hundley

The way you say that is so weird.

I just don't. i don't understand how money works anymore it's always been broken since then

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Jake Hundley

Yeah. Uh. I'm curious to see any listener listening. I'm curious to see if you kind of felt the same if you were around. you know, pre-2020. Aye. If you felt similar things in 2021.

And then 2023 in terms of growth and then like. a drop off or like a decay. um a decay of growth we saw we never saw a drop in growth. or reduction in growth. We just saw a decay in growth rate.

Um, in 2023 so we still we still grew but even if you weren't around in 2020 and you were pre-2023 Let us know if you're... Your 2023 was a bad year. Um,

Relatively, at least. yeah Um. But. You know what prevents having bad years? All the time.

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Cody See

What's that?

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Jake Hundley

Retention. client retention.

That's true.

which is what which is why here we're here to talk to you. guys about today.

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Jake Hundley

Uh... I struggled with that, forming that sentence.

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Jake Hundley

i I was like, i was like if Please make this make sense. ah So there's ah there's a common thread on Reddit. and really all online forums whether it's facebook or discord or or whatever um It's always how to get clients. I mean, it became like an internal joke with our podcasts. We had that whole series, that mini series about how to get clients.

And what... Well, not really what we've come to find out, but I think what a lot of you will come to find out is that client acquisition is not the problem. ah retention is the problem. And.

If you can't retain clients, then your entire business model is just. Client acquisition. And then you'll never grow from there. So what usually happens once you like nail down an acquisition problem is you start to find.

Reddit threads. where you start to ask yourself questions like this. There's a Reddit thread that's churn is higher than ever. And I believe. I'm not sure if we covered this one in the premium and and the premium version as like a community dive thing, but it's pretty short. So I'll i'll just read it here.

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Jake Hundley

Um, the The title of his turn is higher than ever. ah Anyone else seeing a ton of churn lately? A lot of clients just seem to be burned out and want to pause. I am losing clients left and right and not really signing new ones either.

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Jake Hundley

This is probably the worst it's been since starting in 2017. This is nine months ago, by the way. so it's It's not in the 23 range. We're still in 2026. Um,

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Jake Hundley

I literally don't know don't even know what to do or how to find how to find new clients right now. but in the same but on some sales calls, even strong referrals. And even they are, quote, on hold for now, e etc.

I'm working. I'm wondering if it's just me or others having a harder time signing and retaining. new clients. um i I mean, I think if you just take the... Are you having a hard hard time finding clients? Because like literally everybody is having a hard time finding clients, allegedly.

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Jake Hundley

It's why are you having a hard time retaining them? i think that's the I think that's the... the question you should be asking, because if you can retain. your client base. your acquisition strategy can be as slow or as fast.

As. you need it to be

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Cody See

Agree. I mean, I

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Cody See

my My brain went to a different place. and I'll mention some, I guess, share some thoughts on that because I think we're at a weird place in time right now. But of course, naturally, retention is the thing that...

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Cody See

just kind of sidesteps the problem entirely. Like if you figure this out, then these other things you don't really have to deal with. But if you're looking for reasons or what's going on. My.

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Cody See

Mm-hmm it's justified i'm not going to say full tinfoil hat because there's legitimacy to it But I think there's two. Big trends. that are happening right now.

that are making an impact on people's businesses. um If you're established, I think they generally equal out. If you're not established.

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Cody See

or if you're not keeping up. one factor might be influencing or hitting you more than the other. So those things are. adoption of AI and who's keeping up. with that in general. It's introducing volatility.

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Cody See

And clients are going out and doing things on their on their own that they never used to or used to be willing to go and explore. And that's... A big volatility. That's a factor. right And that could hurt retention right now at this moment.

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Cody See

Or just... your bottom line. The other part of that. is The power of brand. because if you are established brand then i think you have some staying power that new agencies don't so if you're newer and you're heavily focused on acquisition and you're having a hard time i'm not surprised at all that doesn't There's no shock there.

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Cody See

Uh, You can't. Fake. the the power of brand at the moment because it's established. The LLMs are learning. in a way how to catch up or keep up with the way like Google's become very sophisticated with their algorithm. ends. uh,

Everybody's trying to figure out. how the llm still works And. The one thing that you can't fake with that is how long you've been around. So. I. Those two things I think hit people in different ways depending on your position.

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Cody See

Bye. ah Yeah, I think those are those are legitimate things, but the way around it all. is. Keep your clients.

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Cody See

Just keep them.

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Jake Hundley

Yeah, unfortunately for you guys, we have six ways To, to. I teach you how to keep your clients if you don't already know how I mean, there there's six ways that like we.

recommend meant that we've kind of like ah had meetings about internally and i've talked about internally um And then in the premium version of the podcast, ah we're going to go into specific things that we're doing in our agency um related to these things.

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Jake Hundley

um Like one of the things that we're going to talk about is. ah Let's see. Automate communication. for example. So. The more you can automate the communication, we'll get to it. But then in our agency. In the premium version, we're going to cover...

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Jake Hundley

the exact things that we're looking to implement. in the near future to then automate that communication, but also have that aid in client retention. And then additionally, in the in the premium version, too, we're going to go over like.

red flags in which clients are about to churn. Um, Because they either don't understand your value or. there's a miscommunication issue. so um That should help with your retention as well.

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Jake Hundley

um I'll start it off with a... A few notes um before we get into it, but we interviewed Jordan Brannon with Coalition Technologies. He's ah he's an eight. an eight figure he owns an eight-figure agency um I'm going to try to find this episode real quick. Podcast, just to reference it.

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Jake Hundley

for all of you. For all you listeners. i mean Five seconds, five. 4. Three. Two. One. Oh.

Here it is.

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Jake Hundley

Episode 154. Ha ha. Got it. it was I had to go to the agencygrowthpod .com and then podcast all episodes and then just control F Jordan.

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Jake Hundley

i but yeah episode 154 it's lessons from an eight-figure agency owner um I think in the opening teaser. I have in there a section about like.

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Jake Hundley

him talking about improving retention. And I thought that's their primary goal at their agency. And he was explaining how retention feeds um MRR. It increases upsells, it improves operational efficiency, avoids the labor of onboarding and offboarding, creates more predictable revenue, and reduces costs and labor tied to a focused sales strategy.

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Jake Hundley

So george Jordan's philosophy is if they can improve retention by 2%. Everything above improves and so does the overall profitability. And I'm talking about like two percentage points. So the retention is like.

you know. 85 i'm not talking about going to like 87 i think it's two percent of like 85 percent's like 85 point. you know, 5 % or something like that.

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Cody See

You know, the weird thing is like I do ads and I do math. End. I got a C in stats. in college and that was the only college math course i took so anytime these things come out every time i'm googling this stuff never stays in my brain so if you guys need any confidence that you can go and do this and you're bad at math you're It's me.

Here I am.

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Jake Hundley

Do you know and what's funny is you're the math guy in the agency which is hilarious but you know what i do you know what i got in statistics in college

I got 105 % in that class.

I bet you did.

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Jake Hundley

Yeah. I love statistics. That was one of my favorite classes.

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Cody See

Now accounting, I'm here for it.

Oh, I got a C in that one.

Right. Easy, like.

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Cody See

That's easy math. But once it gets complicated and you're doing percentages of percentages, I'm like, man. I'm gonna have to... cook on this.

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Jake Hundley

Yeah, so so in this example, because I'm going to talk about a percentage points. which are different than percentages, right? So going from 50 to 52%. is two percentage points, but it's like 4%.

you know. Um, Actually, no.

I think. This is a yet again, I would be Googling this.

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Jake Hundley

Yeah, so its I think it's 4%, yeah. um So anyways, ah okay. yeah What's my next note here? So, okay.

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Jake Hundley

um Another thing, another... Note that I put in here too, is that like hitting 50 K and um MRR is like for the first time does not make you a $50 ,000 per month agency.

unless your retention numbers can prove that. I feel like that's a trap that people fall into of just being like, oh yeah, we're we've been in ah in business for 11 months and now we're a $50 ,000 MRR agency.

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Jake Hundley

It's like, no, you're not. You hit 50K.

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Cody See

You're a 50K. MR.

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Jake Hundley

Yeah, monthly revenue.

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Cody See

you're not recurring. What?

You didn't earn the second Aria.

you don't have the recurring part Yeah.

You got to go and get it.

right repeat it for a few months and then congrats you get the all

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Jake Hundley

Yeah. yeah e That's funny. like Aye. So retention is the name of the game in any agency that's worth anything. So. um I'd want to give it an example too because like I still feel like i can talk we can talk about this and beat it to death. but if people don't understand why retention is more important than acquisition in terms of numbers and profitability.

then I don't think it'll ever ring true to anybody. So I have an example here and it's based off of our own retention numbers and our own churn rate. And why, if we focus on retention.

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Jake Hundley

ah then versus acquisition, ah then we can. be even more profitable. So um are I calculated this from 2024 to I used like the end of year numbers, so I might do it again.

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Jake Hundley

um at the end of at the end of this year, between 25 and 26. But our year-over-year retention rate is 70%. And we have a growth rate of 17%. So like just for easy math.

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Jake Hundley

If we have, which we don't, if we have 100 clients. um we would plan to lose 30 of them, but we would gain 47 of them. year over year. Right. So our growth rate being 17 percent. I know that's not correct math. Right. ah a hundred over 117 is not. 17 % growth rate, but This is different. uh Easy math. we're just we're just we're just we're just I'm simplifying it here.

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Jake Hundley

So. um If we have 100 clients, we plan to lose 30. So we'd go on 70, but we'd gain 47. So year over year from in... 2024. right we'd have 100 or yeah 100 clients and at the end of 2025 we've had a lot we'd have 117. So on paper, that just looks like we just gained 17, but you don't see that we had also lost 30. So we gained 47.

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Jake Hundley

Um, if we improve So that makes our retention rate 70%. Now, i'll i'll cover I'll talk briefly about why. that's actually what our numbers are because Yeah. In the landscaping industry, it's very seasonal. People would drop off for the winter. They're less likely to come back in the summer. or the spring.

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Jake Hundley

ah because cash flow for them is tight during that winter. so um That's something we're working on Evergrow 3 .0 to kind of keep them and carry them over to 3 .0. um However,

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Jake Hundley

Bye. If we improved our retention rate to 80%, so instead of... it being 70%. ah Now we'd only lose 20, but because we didn't adjust anything with the acquisition strategy, we'd still gain 47 clients. I mean, that's shit that was just normal.

Right. So we're not improving acquisition. We're still gaining 47, but we're losing 10. ah fewer clients. ah what that translates to is actually a year-over-year growth rate of 41%.

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Jake Hundley

So instead of... So basically, instead of being 117 at the end of the year, we would have been 127. at the end of the year So it would be that much more explosive in growth. So without adding...

Anything. labor, onboarding costs, etc., we'd nearly double our growth rate just by preventing. 10 clients from churning.

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Cody See

I think there's an emotional component of this, too, that people don't really. eat think about when you're acquisition focused. And that's like your forte or your strength and you.

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Cody See

lean into that because That's what you know. You don't realize how much easier and how much less effort it is. It's adjusted. fix. Something. for somebody that you've already won.

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Cody See

right like I don't know why. It's it's like. i don't know Maybe it's because... all of the internet focus is on acquisition and the excitement surrounding it.

Bye. It'd be cool if people just got excited about. doing less work.

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Jake Hundley

I think it's harder for people to reconcile what like, like.

Quantitative. Uh...

behaviors of. retention versus like acquisition because you get a new client and it's like the the new revenue the new net new revenue hits your bank account right but like

acquisition or retention. There's like not really any quantitative value with it until they leave. and There's only negative, there's like and only negative.

And then it just hurts.

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Jake Hundley

associated value right So like. Um, which is something which is thing we'll talk about in the premium version of of no new news no No news is good news. being a fallacy.

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Jake Hundley

Um, Because then you start relying on that and then you realize that the only news you get is going to be bad news. So. Uh, So that's year-over-year growth. um and And that's going from 70 % to 80 % retention. or in other words, 30 % to 10 % or 20 % churn.

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Jake Hundley

uh So. For us, the challenge ah the challenge for us is getting to getting clients to stick with us for the winter. when cash flow is tight for them and there are so there are basically two ways we could do that so number one is we could be more ingrained operationally I...

where they can't. just simply pause us. If it's marketing related. then it's easy to look at the numbers and say, well, we're not taking on any clients right now, like for the clients because they're in the winter. So why would we invest in marketing? Now, you could probably. make a make a case for that but in a lot of situations as a business owner you're just not willing to do that so if you can find a service to like ingrain operationally to where it's like

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Jake Hundley

Even if you, if you cancel this over the winter, it wouldn't be smart. That's one way to do it. And that's kind of where we're going with Evergrow 3 .0. The other part of it is we can narrow our qualifications for our prospects because our what we've noticed too is our clients with...

that are bigger like a million dollars plus in revenue um They don't pause during down seasonality. They have an allocated budget and they will drop things to like the minimum amount. Therefore, they don't churn.

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Jake Hundley

And. And.

Yep. That's a goal to work towards.

and

Yeah.

Mm hmm. So we could do that. um which would be nice. I still want to.

I just mean work towards getting the bigger accounts.

Yeah.

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Cody See

like it's It's not even bad. helping the smaller guys it's just that you know but there's Have a nice day.

Yeah.

There's a risk built in.

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Jake Hundley

There's like. I don't want to say there's less predictability because there is predictability in them leaving. Like you'll be like, well, we know like you're going to pause in the winter. I. But there there's more stability. I should say, in like the medium-sized clients.

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Jake Hundley

I still don't like, ah so I'm still not a big fan of whales. Like just because they're. ah Just because we're saying like...

being more like picky. or narrowing our qualifications for prospects with bigger clients who have like million dollar plus revenue budgets like that doesn't mean that we're charging them more that just means that we know there's more stability in what we are charging will last for the winter.

or last through our down season. And so that. that that is a ah path we're looking for the problem is is's like we don't do any outbound marketing or sales at all so we were kind of

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Cody See

We haven't tried.

yeah we have not tried once because we haven't needed to so we're kind of at the mercy of whoever comes to us and it it has been improving over time in terms of the number like the types of clients we're getting

Yeah.

Yeah.

Um, Which is great.

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Cody See

you know the funny thing is we haven't even tried the pseudo stuff Like I think. Email marketing for people that have inquired with us. is It doesn't feel. like outbound. Right. Cause it's like you. You got us first.

you know we're just trying to

Yeah.

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Cody See

Say hi. again

Mm hmm.

And. that wouldn't be cake. We just, we've never had to touch it.

Yeah. we Haven't done email marketing really at all. uh might have something like one email blast to our database knows it Uh...

Yeah, we do it to our existing clients, but yeah.

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Jake Hundley

in the last eight years. Yeah, for news service announcements and things like that. Which, again, is another thing we've got to work on for client retention. We've got to do more of that. Um, Okay, so I want to talk about our month over month retention. So this our month over month retention is 95%.

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Jake Hundley

with a growth rate of 6%. So you might asking yourself you might be asking yourself, like how is your month-over-month retention 95 % if your year-over-year is 70 %? Because what we're calculating is the averages. average retention rate from March to April and April to May and May to June and June to July and so on and so forth.

um is usually like a hundred percent everybody stays on month over month. The problem is everybody drops off completely. at like November or December. It's like all those people that were dropping off. So on average, the month over month retention rate is strong. If we didn't have that cliff at the end of the year.

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Jake Hundley

our overall retention rate will be way higher year over year. So ah I put it into another perspective of this. So like if we had the same, like in the same 100 client example, if we improve retention rate by one percentage point.

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Jake Hundley

So instead of 95 % month over month of retention, we went to 96 % month over month retention. We'd save 12 clients per year. Right. It's just it's basically one new client or one client every month.

So. If we're going to lose 30 per year. Unnormally, increasing month-over-month retention by only one percentage point. would only have us losing 18 per year.

[00:25:24:03 - 00:25:26:22]

Jake Hundley

instead of 30. So we'd see a year-over-year growth rate of 43%. So even higher than the previous example of 41%. so By focusing, I'm like, okay, how can we save? 1 % more clients every month.

[00:25:38:29 - 00:25:40:10]

Jake Hundley

we're improving our growth rate by 43%. And we did, we, there's no additional offboarding. There's no additional onboarding. There's no additional sales efforts. There's no additional marketing efforts. There's no additional any efforts.

[00:25:42:27 - 00:26:00:20]

Jake Hundley

except whatever it it goes into retention especially if you can automate it which a lot of the things that we're talking about for our retention strategies. are going to be automated because that's the type of agency we are.

[00:26:02:15 - 00:26:13:09]

Cody See

Well, I mean, it's not. It's really well suited for it. See you. just the the strategies in general like Keeping in touch with somebody does not. have to be hard.

[00:26:14:18 - 00:26:19:11]

Cody See

Right. like you can you can do really easy so why do you think facebook has a birthday reminder Right. Like.

[00:26:21:28 - 00:26:25:22]

Jake Hundley

I still don't tell people a happy birthday on Facebook.

[00:26:25:22 - 00:26:30:07]

Cody See

I know I don't do it either, but it exists and it makes people's lives easier.

ah

[00:26:32:00 - 00:26:36:25]

Cody See

You can be like, oh, it's their birthday. I'm going to tell them happy birthday like that. There's a reason Those things are are made to be easily available and accessible to you. And... It's because it makes engagement easy.

[00:26:42:04 - 00:26:59:11]

Jake Hundley

Yeah. Speaking of making it really easy. The first high-level solution I have for this. is literally just manage expectations. Like before they even become a client. So we've we've got.

We got six here, right? One, two, three, four, five, six. Yeah. Six. So number one out of six, manage expectations. so Uh... As with anything, like this is. the simplest. thing to do so like um if your prospect wants weekly updates or like weekly calls or weekly anything either be prepared to deliver them or tell them you don't do that.

[00:27:06:28 - 00:27:24:15]

Jake Hundley

So like I know this can be harder for newer agencies, especially if you're trying to focus on acquisition or if you're just if you had a bad previous year and you're trying to like. Step your game up and get more. Um.

[00:27:26:29 - 00:27:32:13]

Jake Hundley

you You have to understand like what you're willing to do and what you're willing not to do, especially as it relates to your price. So. Your pricing should reflect whatever those expectations are. If you're priced lower, I'd say probably like under $1 ,000 is just arbitrary.

[00:27:42:15 - 00:28:06:07]

Jake Hundley

uh you probably shouldn't be meeting regularly if you're a first world agency. ah company, a first world based agency company. So like Australia, US, UK. Things like that where the cost of living is expensive.

Um, Now if you're charging $2 ,500 or more for like one service like SEO or just like $2 ,500 a month just for paid ads, just to get in just just as the entry point.

[00:28:07:09 - 00:28:09:22]

Jake Hundley

people are probably going to expect a regular meeting. Um, i think I think this is like a generalization about. What people expect for what they're what they're paying for now? ah You.

[00:28:18:05 - 00:28:32:12]

Jake Hundley

you also own your own agency so you can do whatever you want. Like if you're really good at what you do and that's very well known. you you you can more than like you can absolutely decline. Doing regular meetings at $2 ,500 or plus Bye.

[00:28:33:15 - 00:28:38:17]

Jake Hundley

it's important to know what kind of the general population expects when you charge a certain rate

[00:28:44:13 - 00:29:04:15]

Cody See

I think it's kind of changed most recently I think if you... Well, it's still regular. Just the frequency of regular has changed at the price point. I think people at the $2 ,500 mark are doing quarterly.

because they want to transition out of this monthly at that price level. And then if you want if you want monthly. than you're looking at like. Time and all. 3500 and above I've seen a lot more people. Boop. doing that and moving into that.

[00:29:04:15 - 00:29:09:26]

Cody See

I don't know how I feel about it. i just It's an observation.

[00:29:11:00 - 00:29:33:08]

Jake Hundley

we You know what's weird? you know what's weird to me though is that like i've always felt that way ever since like 2015. Like. when we worked at Mudd. Like, I... We would charge people like $2 ,000 a month for SEO and they'd want a monthly meeting.

I'm like, no, I don't want to give you i don't want to give you that.

Yeah.

And I was just a client or the account manager or whatever. So when we started our agency and we were charging $500 a month, I was like, no, I'm never meeting with these people.

Yep.

[00:29:36:08 - 00:29:47:04]

Jake Hundley

Not once. And then even if we increase our prices to $1 ,000, I still don't want to do it. Um, So. the amount of labor it goes into like prepping for a meeting and reporting on it and answering questions and doing a follow-up just on that one meeting. It's like, it's just not.

worth it. It just takes so much out of the labor that you have to actually do the work. Um,

[00:29:49:09 - 00:29:50:26]

Cody See

Yeah. If you're doing that, charge for it.

[00:29:52:11 - 00:30:07:25]

Jake Hundley

Yeah. And like people like if. I get all the time where people will say like, Hey, I want to, I want a monthly meeting. and Like that's what I got on my last agency, but they're coming to us and we're charging six 50 a month for SEO and Google ads management. I can say, well, we don't offer that. And if you want that, find another agency. I mean, I say it nicer than that.

[00:30:09:03 - 00:30:20:13]

Jake Hundley

But. Like.

Yeah.

But like you can't you can't come to us, pay a third of the price, and then expect the same delivery. it That's not how it works. And I think most people are. understanding and acknowledging of that.

[00:30:22:12 - 00:30:25:23]

Jake Hundley

So. ah Number two. ah Automate communication. So. The key here is just staying in your client's brain. Like communication doesn't have to be difficult. And I think we said that just a little bit earlier too. Like it could literally be.

[00:30:39:20 - 00:30:41:28]

Jake Hundley

I remember at when I worked at Leverage Lab. Um, My boss, Carrie, was really good at this. um She would like, and she was never like the hands on keyboard person that would. deal with. like i don't know dashboards breaking or um campaign mismanagement if if there was any or campaign questions If that had to like come to me or have it had to like.

[00:30:44:04 - 00:31:08:04]

Jake Hundley

go to somebody else internally. um She didn't wait to go internally to get the answer first and then respond as that account person. She would literally just respond and say, um i I can.

[00:31:10:28 - 00:31:15:18]

Jake Hundley

I don't want to have this in here. maybe but Maybe I put it in the premium, but I'm going to give it to you guys anyways. um She would literally just respond and say, ah ah Hey, ah client confirming receipt of the email. I'll get back to you.

[00:31:17:03 - 00:31:48:22]

Jake Hundley

X. on this like whenever in certain time of day or or day a week or whatever and so that she's always like setting the expectation of, hey, we have I got your email. And then it just, it's not going to get understood. And then here's when you're going to actually get an answer by.

And if they you don't have the answer by then. Then you follow up before you have that answer, before that date comes, and you just say, hey, sorry, it's taking a little bit longer, but you're staying top of mind. um When you're forgotten about or put on the back burner, you're likely to get cut.

[00:31:56:07 - 00:32:21:14]

Jake Hundley

So. i just remember like if you're if a client is paying you money And then. they totally forget about you. And then at some point they ask themselves, oh yeah, I'm paying for marketing. That's not a good thing. They should always know they're paying for marketing. They should always know they're paying you for something.

because you're staying top of mind and that every new lead that comes in, they should be thinking about you.

[00:32:22:29 - 00:32:39:00]

Jake Hundley

Period. So. Uh... And then in the premium version, well come I'm going to cover a lot of the automat client automation things that we're gonna that we're doing to stay top of mind for our clients. so ah But whatever you can do to automate. ah Client.

Communication. Great. Just don't annoy them. Just just don't go overboard. Uh,

[00:32:40:01 - 00:32:47:02]

Cody See

Yeah. It keeps getting easier. Like, this this is... the easiest of that it has ever been. So. You guys can do it.

[00:32:48:05 - 00:33:13:26]

Jake Hundley

Yeah. ah Number three. Make reporting simple. This is like the biggest one. This is like the biggest. One of the biggest takeaways for client communication, I think that you brought.

as the non-client communicator. This is the one thing that you did for our agency. so Bye. At mud. our SEO reports for so long. They're ridiculously long. I mean, they were to things like bounce rate and things like that that just don't even really matter in terms of what business owner cares about.

[00:33:14:29 - 00:33:21:06]

Jake Hundley

So. I put in a note in here and see if you agree with this, but I put one page per service offered. if you can.

[00:33:22:25 - 00:33:29:26]

Cody See

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I... One pagers in general, you just never know who's going to. Feudal Horde. Right. Of course. cater this to your clientele.

[00:33:31:11 - 00:33:49:11]

Cody See

I'm a big believer and one pagers in general. So if you have... You know? like multiple services and then they want that be able to to be able to look at that per service then That works. Yeah.

[00:33:53:24 - 00:34:27:17]

Jake Hundley

Yeah, I... ah The problem is is like, so like, yeah, if you do Facebook ads, for example. you have a page that's just Facebook ads and the things that matter on there. And it's not like cram full of information to hunt for things. It's literally like maybe like four rows.

with like big, like make things big. And the way that you do that is is you have to prevent information overload so because you have to understand that businesses only care about profit and dollar signs.

So like if, if what you're doing is not contributing to that. Then. it doesn't matter your report doesn't demonstrate the value that you're offering in terms of the ah roi they're getting so If. Your report. can't demonstrate that.

[00:34:29:06 - 00:34:36:13]

Jake Hundley

clients will lose confidence in you. And when they lose confidence in you, the churn. So. your report needs to needs to elicit high confidence from you that you are generating them generating them an ROI. So if you're into SEO, Traffic is not one of those things. Nobody cares about traffic. It does not convert to dollars. What converts to dollars is conversion. Now, if if you if if your report can show a relationship between traffic and or increase in traffic and increase in conversions.

[00:35:16:18 - 00:35:38:16]

Jake Hundley

then that's what you want to show. But. so going uh our traffic increased but our conversions dropped And saying like, oh, it's a good thing because traffic increased is not.

is does not instill confidence and into a business. ah So. Keep that in mind for our reports for like Google ads, we focus on cost per lead primarily. And then. ah a cost per.

We have cost per click on there only because clients like to see it. ah And it it brings up questions, too. Sometimes, like, why is our cost per click so high? And you have to be like... Don't worry about it. Cost per lead is low. That's what the goal is here.

[00:35:40:04 - 00:35:45:24]

Jake Hundley

Um, And then one other metric we share on there and and this is this is probably the most confusing metric for them, but it's impression share. for But for us, I have to explain to them impression share tells us what your opportunity is to spend more.

[00:35:47:03 - 00:35:55:19]

Jake Hundley

So. If you like the results you're getting and you see a low impression share, we could... to technically spend more. to get the same results that you're getting. So.

[00:36:00:26 - 00:36:12:14]

Cody See

Yeah, I think that everything on there doesn't necessarily have to be. self-explanatory. as long as it is Representative. of what needs to be shared.

[00:36:14:15 - 00:36:39:04]

Cody See

Can I think you're good? Um, But. Yeah, the trap, no matter what the trap is. Oh. Somebody asks a question about this because they want to know more details.

So then you keep building out the report to get more information based on the time that one person asked one thing. And then you get the freaking report. That's... 19 pages because you just expanded on something that somebody asked once and it's like well they asked because you're the expert i'm not saying that you have to give them to that forever and always moving forward

[00:36:39:04 - 00:36:45:04]

Jake Hundley

Dude.

My...

Yeah.

My knee-jerk reaction when somebody questions something on the report is remove that thing from all reports.

[00:36:48:17 - 00:37:40:00]

Jake Hundley

Yeah. Like one thing I really want to remove from all of our reports is ah the organic keyword tracking. from Search Console. Like, I hate it. I hate it so much. Because they're like, well... because there's really no good way to kind of like. bucket all of the keywords? Like lawn care company, lawn care services, lawn care near me. Those are three different keywords. And then lawn care plus whatever city they want to target, it's another keyword. So how do you bucket all the things and then like list all the all of the things they want to track?

in like and then and then manage all those. or You have to bring in like. the most like dramatic changes whether it's like rank increases and then it's usually like their brand name or like a competitor brand name or some weird search console thing and all it does is bring up more questions and the next thing you know i'm writing a 3 000 word essay in an email of like about like the theory of seo And...

[00:37:42:26 - 00:37:48:17]

Jake Hundley

uh so i'm like i just want to remove this completely like are you getting more leads yes okay be quiet That's it.

yeah

[00:37:51:15 - 00:37:55:02]

Jake Hundley

ah All right. make Make reporting simple. So we also plan to. ah Like. ah So like I said, we primarily... report on leads generated. That's what we care about. I.

[00:38:03:09 - 00:38:15:17]

Jake Hundley

Evergrow 3 .0 will focus on like marketing qualified leads. So not just like all leads generated, but actually qualified leads. And we'll be able to know that just based on the new tracking that we're going to implement with this and then our new lead dashboard.

[00:38:18:28 - 00:38:29:17]

Jake Hundley

Um, But we can't do that right now. All we see is like numbers, just numbers and from Google Analytics of how many people have submitted a form, how many people pressed. call on like the or how many people called from you know a mobile link But we don't know how many ah how much of that is spam in the reporting.

[00:38:30:21 - 00:38:49:20]

Jake Hundley

So there's a lot of times where we can kind of put our our foot in our mouths by saying like, oh, numbers look really good, but they could have just had a really high spam month and us have no idea. but there's no way for us currently to report on the marketing qualified leads uh, without.

[00:38:52:00 - 00:39:13:29]

Jake Hundley

this new format So. Um, ah But then eventually we also plan on bringing like tracked revenue into the dashboard from leads via CRM or QuickBooks integrations or whatever they use for billing. And so. we'll be able to... uh really not just focus on leads but also focus on revenue from a service perspective and i think ah that would be huge for retention for us.

[00:39:15:22 - 00:39:19:26]

Jake Hundley

Uh... Okay, we're almost done. Two more. So number four, number number five, ah respond quickly. I think I said this and I like. I mentioned it in... um automated communication.

[00:39:21:07 - 00:40:10:01]

Jake Hundley

or automate communication. but uh oh yeah this is where it was yeah this is the exact as example i gave over so it was a grant grant glance over this even if like you're the point of contact and then you and like you don't have anybody else to go and go to internally to solve something like if a client asks you a billing question and you're like oh this is kind of like a detailed response Just respond to them and say,

Hey, I'm looking into this right now. ah give me a like a Give me the rest of the day to to get back to you. That's better than saying nothing. For the rest of the day. I am terrible at this right now Like. i'm I'm really bad, but.

I. That's really all it takes. And as long as you're getting a response to the client. Quickly? That's all that matters. Bill, appreciate it. ah Last one.

[00:40:12:03 - 00:40:16:25]

Jake Hundley

I had a different name for this but then you changed it so I figured you'd cover it.

[00:40:18:27 - 00:40:23:27]

Cody See

This one?

Yeah, the Oh, no, no, no. No, that's the premium version, right? No.

Yeah, yeah, you're good Cheers.

[00:40:28:01 - 00:40:32:15]

Jake Hundley

Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, I got it. Okay. I got it Okay, um integrate operational services not tied to ROI. So. uh what a lot of marketing agencies do to communicate their value.

[00:40:33:25 - 00:40:55:27]

Jake Hundley

Which, again, all of this is really getting value. is Aye. Actually, one of the one of the next episodes I want to do is about how to communicate value effectively so your clients can understand.

i The same like value language you're speaking. Um, So I'm struggling to talk today. I don't know why but

you're doing great

We're going to get through it. Thank you. ah

[00:41:03:05 - 00:41:05:19]

Cody See

I like this one a lot. This is like one of my faves. Just because I. i really you've said it before too you're like you like running things like the mafia like I do. Doesn't that like.

[00:41:08:19 - 00:41:16:10]

Cody See

Everybody does, right? you're Like, no. Not everybody, just you.

i Yeah.

[00:41:18:19 - 00:41:22:29]

Cody See

And ah this is one of those things where. Like people do it. um There are better and worse.

[00:41:25:12 - 00:41:30:12]

Cody See

ways to do it is maybe a way to describe it. I. People can't. People bake all sorts of things in their contracts. Right. If you want to say the.

[00:41:36:15 - 00:41:56:00]

Cody See

uh, societally agreed upon sleazy ways. then it's going to be... you know. Uh... Owning domains.

that are your clients that you purchase for them and then they're locked in and can't take them away Same thing with the website. Right. really just owning accounts in general, a lot of people, that's that's one that they will do. I think it's nuanced, right? I mean...

[00:42:03:23 - 00:42:09:21]

Cody See

a lot of that's reflected in pricing too but that's That's kind of one of the ways that... in general. At least the popular opinion online is that people will say.

[00:42:10:26 - 00:42:34:20]

Cody See

Yeah, we don't like that. The client's doing everything, bla blah, blah, blah. It's not that simple. I disagree, but that's That's the dominant narrative. I think... The better way.

is exactly this, embed yourself into the operation. so that When they think. Like if you're a marketing agency, right? They think, oh, I want to pull ah pull the plug on marketing. And then they go, oh, no.

[00:42:36:03 - 00:42:41:01]

Cody See

They do more than marketing.

Yeah.

[00:42:42:16 - 00:43:01:12]

Cody See

and they just realize in that moment but all this other stuff that you do. that They were. mentally categorizing. as marketing that is definitely more operations.

that they can't just pull the plug on. That's awesome.

nice

You can do it all sorts of ways. Bye. I'm a big fan. I'm a believer

[00:43:01:12 - 00:43:23:23]

Jake Hundley

Yeah. ah Like an example for us would be like website management and maintenance. So like if like we, since we rebuild like 95 % of our client websites or build them from scratch. They can't just.

cancel us completely unless they want to move their website away from us onto their own host and in most cases they don't want to do that because they're they're not fit to to manage that on their own

[00:43:23:23 - 00:43:38:25]

Cody See

Well, that's the thing, right?

Um,

[00:43:40:14 - 00:43:43:25]

Cody See

is They own the site. we say you own the site it's yours go do whatever you want with it and then you tell them it's like it's It's like having a flat tire. in your driveway or something and they're like you you can take you're like okay but i don't know how to fix i'm not I'm not equipped What?

[00:43:45:04 - 00:43:48:08]

Jake Hundley

Yeah.

to do this And then they, you know. There's the wreath. That's the point. Anyway.

Yeah.

Yeah.

[00:43:50:08 - 00:44:58:23]

Jake Hundley

Yeah. So I like. clients can't just not pay us because then we like okay you want to live on our servers and then you want to not pay us for marketing that's great but we can put you on like a like a maintenance plan to keep things live and operationally running and like that might sound like well they're still churning from marketing but they're not churning from us like they're still getting an invoice from us they're still on our like active client email list they're still you know getting those emails and we're still staying top of mind so when we come back in the spring or whenever the down season is

We're still there. They're still our clients, not churning. we're still generating revenue from this from this client. And so. a lot of what everywhere 3 .0 is is embedding ourselves deeper into the operations but not as a way like obviously not as a way just to be in operations but as a way to provide actual like really good value to the point where they don't want to cancel us and i think i think that's like the difference between

people who are just trying to like take over their ah crm with like a high level dashboard or something versus people who actually or agencies who actually want to provide so like so value that's so good.

You. wouldn't not want to keep it around. and And that's really what we're focusing on. so ah even if marketing was shut off in in the winter.

[00:45:02:29 - 00:45:14:19]

Jake Hundley

we still have an operational thing to switch to or transition to in the winter that can absorb ah what would have previously been canceled. So. Um...

[00:45:17:05 - 00:45:21:05]

Jake Hundley

Man, I think... And that's it. I think that's all six. So just to recap. All six points. ah Manage expectations. Uh, automate as much communication as you possibly can.

[00:45:28:05 - 00:45:36:18]

Jake Hundley

make reporting as simple as you possibly can and in a language that your clients understand. Respond quickly. even if it's not an answer to something and it's just setting expectations of when you're going to respond.

[00:45:43:18 - 00:45:58:18]

Jake Hundley

Amen. uh wait i only have five here one two three four 5. I'm gonna do that oh wait hold on okay sorry there's a fifth there's a sixth one and i'll cover it when i finish this wow this is so disorganized uh integrate operational uh services not tied to roi Um...

[00:46:01:10 - 00:46:12:08]

Jake Hundley

So. you know, try to try to get into the operational um Uh,

operational. systems, I don't know, of your clients versus just focusing on marketing that's tied to ah ROI. um the one The last thing, the sixth one that I wanted to put was match match the message to the medium. So if ah if if you have something important to say, don't send it over email.

[00:46:23:23 - 00:46:34:18]

Jake Hundley

Call them. Um, I know it's hard for me to pick up the phone sometimes and just call, but I... What I found is that the majority of our clients in our industry would rather you call them.

Um, or talk to them on the phone. So.

Yeah.

[00:46:37:11 - 00:46:39:12]

Jake Hundley

Bye. Cool. All right. Well, everybody ah in the premium version. ah We're going to go over a client trend red flags. So when you know a client is considering leaving you and then also.

[00:46:40:14 - 00:47:02:19]

Jake Hundley

ah what we're doing for automated communication specifically. And then. um What we're... kind of integrating operationally. Uh,

for services that aren't tied to ah ROI. So. um if that interests you we'll see you over in the premium version otherwise Everybody else? we'll see you later

[00:47:04:10 - 00:47:11:23]

Cody See

See ya.