I recently caught up with a senior client who informed me that we had in fact been working together for nearly ten years. When I got up off the floor after passing out with shock (and the passing of time! I had thought that it was about four!), it made me realise not only that time flies when you are having fun (!) but also that at Westgate, this is not at all unusual.
In all areas of the agency, from PR to design and digital marketing, we have many, many client relationships that have been managed and nurtured for long periods of time – in fact when I dug a little deeper, it seemed that our average client relationship actually lasts for about five years as a minimum.
This made me enormously proud. In such a competitive, fast paced environment, to keep on delivering high impact, creative results consistently year on year, simultaneously delivering real commercial value for the client, is no mean feat. Which begs the question – why do our clients stay?
I would say they stay because we invest ourselves so much in their relationship. Not only with our professional skills, always trying to ensure that we are delivering the most relevant and creative solutions for their marketing communications requirements but also because we have always tried to see things from the client's perspective.
Many of our clients will tell us that we work with them as an extension of their team and this fact makes us enormously proud. When they say this, we know that we are doing our jobs right.
The other key factor in maintaining long term relationships is to constantly challenge both ourselves and the clients. We never sit on our agency laurels and we always treat every activity review as a chance to introduce new ideas and strategies. You need to keep things fresh – creating the client agency equivalent of a marital "date night" is a must.
I can honestly say that everyone on the Westgate team really cares about doing a great job and surpassing clients' expectations. Sometimes, a simple fact such as this can be the driver to keeping clients coming back for more.