36. Retain more clients in your DFY services, membership, and digital products

In this episode, Samantha digs into one of the most underutilized sales strategies in the online business world: retention. If you're spending all your energy chasing new clients while your existing ones quietly slip away, this episode is for you. Samantha covers the copy and strategy moves that keep clients in your membership, coming back for your products, and hiring you again for done-for-you work — because former buyers are 67% more likely to purchase again than a brand-new lead.

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Transcript

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Hey friends. Welcome back to Copy and to the marketing podcast where I teach you how to write copy that sounds like you, but converts better. My name is Sam. I'm the founder and lead copywriter at Nomad Copy Agency, and I make it my goal that every word that I write is designed to convert I find that too often we shy away from sales. When really that's what our businesses are all about. Our businesses are here to make us money to support our lifestyle and a statistic that I have known for a long time, but keeps coming across my radar recently is that former buyers are 67% more likely, or two thirds more likely to buy from you again than a new client. It has long been said in sales and marketing that it is cheaper to keep a client than to get a new one. And I tried pulling statistics and they were either outdated or didn't seem correct for the online business space. But ultimately. What you need to know is that all of the data points to it being less expensive to keep a client than to get a new one. So we're gonna talk today about retention, specifically, what copy you can write to retain people, and honestly, when we talk about copy here, what I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna give you a bunch of ideas on how to retain clients for your memberships, your done for you services, and for your digital products. And these ideas, you can write the copy around. We can ideate on the copy around them. In fact, you can hire me to help you write the copy around them. Any, can you write this for me, hour A VIP day, or by joining copy on demand where I work with you all year long? To help you write copy that sounds like you, but converts better. So today is all about retention. Yes, I will give copy tips throughout, but really this is just a series of ideas on how you can retain your clients so that this summer you are focusing more on keeping your favorite folks to work with rather than having to seek out new clients. So we're gonna dig in with some copy, some strategy, and I'm just gonna ramble and hopefully a bunch of these ideas stick with you. So first things first, A lot of people have memberships. In fact, the last couple years I have said that memberships are the new courses when I say membership, I mean anything subscription based. Whether this is a community that you're hosting on, say Slack or school. Or a membership where you're delivering something specifically to your people, which would be similar to my copy on demand. Now recently I looked at my retention statistics for copy on demand, and when I started Copy on Demand three years ago, I wanted to be the cool girl on the block. I didn't want to have a minimum commitment. I wanted people to come and go as they pleased, which was great until I found myself launching four times a year. Bringing in a handful of new people each time I launched, but also losing a handful of people every single freaking month. So what I realized was that three, three and a half years ago, when I started Copy on Demand, my retention on average was about three months. Then I created a three month minimum and people, it boosted my. Retention rate to about four and a half, five months over the course of the next year. Then I said, you know what? I am so stinking sick of this. I am going to write into the sales page and into the messaging and the copy that it is a minimum 12 month commitment to be in copy on demand, and guess the heck what? Now my retention is at about 16 months. So I have four Xed, my retention rate in the last couple years based on a simple copy fix. And I'll tell you this, it has not affected my launching in that more people have joined every single time I've launched Copy on demand. When I thought, and I had it in my head, that going from a three month minimum to a 12 month minimum would ruin my enrollment rates. It did not, but it did come down to a messaging strategy, so I made it very clear that you get me in your back pocket all year long, that it's not just something that you join for a quick launch or for a few pieces of feedback, but that it's something that you become a better copywriter over time. So that's my first tip for memberships, is to use your copywriting to increase your membership minimum, and it will increase your retention. What this has done for me is actually, it's not at all about what it's done for me. It's about what it's done for my clients is that they get way more attention. I understand their businesses more deeply. I get to see the evolution of their businesses. So they get more attention and actually become better copywriters in their businesses. It also frees up my time so that I'm not launching all the stinking time because I'm not constantly trying to replace people that I have lost to churn. And churn is normal. I hold nothing against the people who left. It's just I made it available for them to leave whenever they wanted. Versus not just getting quick fixes, but really creating long-term habits. So it is better, yes, for me as a membership owner, but more so it is better for my members to have the ongoing support in their businesses so that it's not just something they quickly take action on, but a habit that they create and they get way more comfortable over time selling in their business. They also get all of like my strategic brain and all of that throughout Copy on demand. So when you have a membership and you. Increase your minimum time in your membership. Keep that in mind that there are benefits not just to you, but to your clients, and those should be the pillars of your messaging. When you make this increase in a minimum time spend in your membership is making sure that your messaging reflects the outcome for your people. Other ways that you can increase retention in your memberships is to make people feel really seen. So my membership doesn't have a social component at all. Most people don't know who else is in the membership. However, a lot of them happen on school or other, like more social communities where there's a forum and people are chatting and sharing ideas and it's a benefit to the membership. Absolutely. So I would leverage this to do shout outs and also track people's progress. So this is kind of a twofer that you need to be collecting data. But you also need to be talking to your people. And then third, you need to be social within your membership. So for example, I have a client who has a membership specifically for wedding photographers, and she's also a coach for wedding photographers. So when she sees a photographer go from having three weddings all summer to having 15 weddings the next summer, she can shout them out in the membership. So what she's doing here is she is checking in with her people often enough to collect data. And then also making them feel very seen, heard, and supported within the membership. This isn't necessarily copy, but it could become copy that she uses for a nurture email, a launch email, or an update within the membership so she can repurpose this information in both places, but along the way she's increasing retention because her people feel like they're a part of something. I reference a book a lot, it's called Identity Marketing by Veronica Romney, and the premise of the book is that people want to feel like they're a part of something and when you can give them an identity within something and say, you are a member of this, when people feel like they're a part of something, they adhere their identity to it and they stay with it longer. Another thing that you can do to increase retention inside of your memberships is to turn your members into affiliates. This also goes along with the identity marketing piece, that if people feel like they're so much a part of something that they want to tell other people about it and they start making money by sharing it with other people as an affiliate, that they will be more likely to stay in because it seems like something that has a stronger ROI for them, and it's more closely tied to their identity so they will stay. So there's a couple of ideas for you. This. Summer for your membership. Now, next up, let's talk about products. What can we do with copy and how to retain product buyers? Because product buyers tend to be one-time buyers. They come in, they purchase a template or a PDF or a one-time service from you, maybe even a small course from you. How can you keep them in? My first thought here is you can add copy inside of your course or inside of your product, either in the product itself, if it's a download or if they have to access a portal to be able to get it, add copy within that, that tells them another way to purchase from you. This can be an upsell, a downsell, a done for you service, but if they are already there to receive value from you, give them another opportunity to receive more value from you. I saw this in an offer that I recently purchased, that I purchased a one-time offer. It was kind of a course thing, but when I logged in, the very first thing that it offered was and get one-on-one support every single month by joining the membership where you will get all of these calls, help implementing my brain on your business, et cetera. So the first thing I saw when I logged in. To the thing that I had already purchased was an opportunity to continue working with them, not just positioned as a buy more stuff from me, but it was positioned as an opportunity to get more value. So that's opportunity Number one inside of your products is to position other products. Inside of the product. Outside of the product itself, we can use other copy, like targeted emails. And again, this is copy and collecting data, but let's say that when people purchase offer A from you, they get added to a specific list. Typically, you're gonna have a delivery sequence inside of your email service provider. This delivery sequence is gonna say something like, Hey, here's your thing. This is also an opportunity to say, and don't forget to grab this upsell or down sell, you will forever have people tagged so that you can retarget them for having purchased that single product. So within your purchase sequence, you could have upsells and downsells that say, because you grabbed this, your next problem is going to be that buy it here. So for example, if somebody purchased my launch emails sequence, that tells them every email that they need. To have a successful launch, it would be very normal for me to say, and here's the checklist, but do you want the emails templated? Because here they are. So that's how you can use these targeted emails to target people who already have an interest in this example, launching to give them more value around helping them write emails for their launch. Think about how you can do that with your digital products. Again, there's upsells and downsells in those emails as well. And I think something that we often forget is product updates. So for example, I had a product a few years ago that was all about CTAs or calls to action. I realized that there were some outdated concepts in there. So I rerecorded the training that went with that offer and sent it out to all of the people who had downloaded it in the past and said, Hey, I made some updates here. You've purchased this in the past, wanted to let you know. Click here to grab the updates. And then it reengages them and reminds them that they have purchased from me already, and it gives me the opportunity to position a future product. So that's memberships and products. Here's the real juicy one, is your done for you services? How do we retain done for you clients? Because if you're a photographer. For, let's say you're a brand photographer. A brand photographer is probably going to meet with their person once every couple of years. One of my friends is having her brand photos done here soon. The last time she had a brand photo shoot was eight years ago. If you're a designer and you design someone's website, maybe a few months down the road somebody's gonna have a sales page or something for you, but. Once people have their website, the chances of them needing another website designed are pretty slim. Or for me, as a copywriter, if I write for somebody's launch, hopefully it goes so stinking well that they don't need me again for another year or six months until they decide to launch something new. So how do we as done for you service providers, retain our clients? I've got several ideas. The first is a maintenance retainer, so there's an opportunity to, especially if you are a designer or you work in kind of the tech space, is to take somebody after a project and say, Hey, but this is gonna be kind of difficult to maintain. Lucky for you, you can keep me on. I will spend two hours a month making sure everything's working. And if there are fixes that need to be made, I will find them early and implement them for you. And have people jump into some sort of membership where they've got access to you, they get an email or an update from you once a month. That could be a maintenance retainer. Or if you're in SEO, this would also be something that you could do after a project that says. This isn't just something that you do and it exists forever. Things break and that's outside of anybody's control. There are updates made, the internet or trends change. Just keep me on deck so that you don't have to bring me in for a huge project when everything's broken five years from now. So they see it as preventative maintenance plans. You could also move them over to a membership if you have a membership. So for example, if somebody were to come to me for a large project, and typically that's gonna be a website or a launch, but after their launch, they're gonna have all sorts of new clients and new problems. They are great problems to have. So after somebody does a project with me, I could move them into my copy On demand membership. I have a friend who's a designer who. Basically has copy on demand, but for design where she does somebody's brand, but then says, I know that six months from now you're gonna want stickers, and then two months after that, you're gonna need carousel posts for Instagram, and then you're gonna need this, that, and the other thing. So why don't you just join my program that way you've got me on retainer, or you've got me basically in this membership so it could go either retainer or done with you so that I am at your beck and call when needed. So if you're done for your services, you could do a maintenance retainer or move them into your membership. This is also great if you can offer them a discount and make it an easy yes for them, especially if you just delivered really great work. Another way to do a membership would be to do a credit system so people could pay a certain amount each month, and if they don't need you, then that adds up to another project down the road. So a credit system could be a great way for you to retain and continue making income, even if you're not delivering on those projects right now. Another thing to do is simply ask for the sale. So you can do this by normalizing. The membership or the maintenance offer and just say, Hey, most people after they work with me do this. But what you can also do is ask for a completely different sale by saying something like, Hey, working on your website was great. I did notice that your sales pages needed some work. Would you like to add another VIP day later this month? And we can judge these sales pages so that you've got them done well before your fall launch. That could be a copywriter that could be somebody in systems and processes. That could be a designer, that could be somebody in SEO. You may uncover that the people have a completely second business, or that their partner has a second business. Ultimately, what I want you to hear is that you can just ask for the sale or ask for the next sale or position yourself at least for a sale down the road, because most people don't just have one website or one sales page. There's a heck of a lot of stuff underneath it. And if you're being a true thought partner, it never hurts to at least offer it or open the door even if your people don't decide to walk through it right now. So retention might not be an ongoing thing, but it might be just another sale down the road. But again, if you were a delight to work with, those people are almost twice as likely to work with you again. And final thought here for done for you is to. Benefit both you and them by sharing their successes. So it's great as a service provider to be able to turn an excellent client into a case study, but what you can also do here to stay top of mind for them and be a true thought partner is share those successes publicly in a way that helps them drive new traffic to their site or potentially get great future clients. By sharing success stories, you're giving yourself and them authority points on the internet, whether that be in short form content in podcasts, or creating a blog post or case study that drives traffic to both of your sites. People love knowing the people behind the business. So when you share these success stories, it helps people see what working with them and what working with you might be like. So there's a lot of ways that you can increase retention. In your memberships, you can increase your minimum membership time. You can do shout outs and engagements to help people feel like they're more a part of something or get them to sign on as an affiliate, where they really feel like they're so grateful for the membership that they're in, that they become an ambassador of it. With products, you can retarget them with specific emails. You can upsell and downsell into products and create new products that tie in super well to the products that you've already offered. Especially if you're going back and judging your offers, you're showing that you're continually improving them, and that your next offers are also going to be good because you're staying on top of your stuff. And then within your Done for You offers, you can do things like share success stories so that you both get additional visibility. You can create maintenance retainers, you could upsell or downsell them into something like your membership. After you've done Done For You work, you could create a credit system. And honestly, at the end of it all, don't be afraid to ask for the sale. If you have done incredible work, people will want to work with you again. If they don't. Hire you to do another project for them. They'll at least know that you are open to doing more work and are more likely to share your work with other people, which kind of brings us right back to sharing their success stories. You make it really easy for them to show off how great you were for their business. It is cheaper to keep a great client than it is to do all of the marketing and spend the time and the money to get a new client. Think of it this way, if you run a 100k year business and you retain just 10% of your clients for a second project, that's another 10 grand a year. I know a lot of people that can do a lot of things with 10 grand a year. That's a trip to Disney. That's paying off your car. That's an additional vacation that's taking some weeks off next year and having the funds to be able to not worry about work. So don't be afraid to ask for the sale. Put the systems in place that increase retention and increase your brand awareness and increase your own visibility amongst people who have already purchased from you. And see how that changes your business. Again, I'm a copywriter, so I write a lot of the words that go around selling to people, but those sales often mean keeping people in your orbit and in your ecosystem. It also means that I have my hands in a lot of parts of a lot of different people's businesses, so don't take these strategies lightly. Just because I'm quote unquote not a strategist, doesn't mean that I don't advise on these strategies and see them working for people over and over. If you want my brain in your business, you can reach out to me@nomadcopyagency.com slash contact or reach out about copy on demand. It is my ongoing membership with a 12 month minimum where you get my brain on your business. A lot of times we make big changes in your business in the first few months, and then you've got me in your back pocket all year long. So that you instill what you know and get in a habit of selling better, selling more, and being really repetitive in your messaging so that people can't wait to work with you. If you have questions, reach out on Instagram. You can find me at nomad dot copy, or reach me at my email at samantha@nomadcopyagency.com.