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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!
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Hi friend, and welcome to the brand strategy podcast. A show created to equip you with the inspiration, encouragement, and clarity. You need to build the brand of your dreams. I’m your host, Bonnie Bakhtiari, brand designer, strategist, and founder of the Illume Retreat from sustainable strategy to heartfelt encouragement. Each episode is designed to equip you with the tools you need to chase after your dreams, because you deserve a brand that empowers you to do what you love, connects with your dream clients and offers a deep sense of fulfillment along the way. So grab a cup of coffee and join me on this journey. Won’t you,
Hey friends, welcome back to the brand strategy podcast, where today we are talking about the magic of surprise and delight marketing in your design business. So today we’re exploring this concept of surprise and delight, marketing, a concept that entrepreneurs online, business owners and marketers have been using for years to explore how once you apply this concept in your design business, you are gonna be able to not only wow your clients, but you’re also gonna be able to improve the quality of your client relationships. You’re gonna be able to generate more organic word of mouth referrals, and you’re going to be able to take action to build the positioning, the really the perception of your brand in your market. And that’s a really powerful thing, especially as a designer and especially as a creative who benefits so much from the relationships that are in your community or, um, from past clients.
So with that being said, surprise and delight marketing is something that I’ve been using really since the very beginning of my business, since I got my start in 2012. And that’s because I always wanted to build a client experience that prioritized to the relationship that I had with my clients, from the get go, I’ve always wanted to make my clients feel seen, heard, and valued. And as a designer, I knew that I had an opportunity passed just the design work that I was creating, just, you know, beyond the deliverables, I was able to focus on how I made my clients feel based on the way that I spoke to them, the way that I set expectations with them, the kinds of results that I delivered and more so if surprise and delight marketing is kind of a, your concept for you. If we’re just breaking it down to the very basics, it is a marketing strategy that focuses on attracting and nurturing your relationships with clients and potential clients by providing unexpected value.
So what this can look like, and you’ve probably heard about surprise and delight marketing through the concept of under promising and overdelivering right. So kind of setting the bar, uh, not low, but setting it kind of at this midpoint, but then going above and beyond. And this is actually something that I love to encourage my students inside the brand strategy school, my signature program for graphic brand and web designers who are on their journey to reach consistent 10 K months by using brand strategy as their super power. I love showing them how they can do this through really simple kind of touch points or anchors that we drop throughout the client experience throughout the project timeline. So, um, thinking about how we wanna show up and how we want to make our clients feel can give us this really beautiful baseline of how we might wanna think about using surprise and delight marketing in your design business and what I love to think about when I’m in really implementing this within my own business.
And over the years, I’ve always thought about not only how do I wanna make my clients feel, but how can I very simply go above and beyond for them. And I will say that this started from a standpoint of just wanting to serve my clients to the best of my ability, but some of the unexpected and really beautiful benefits and outcomes from this have been things like turning my clients into lifelong clients and to clients who keep coming back to me time and time again, as their business grows, uh, turning client relationships into industry friends, turning, you know, one client project into a dozen client projects based on word of mouth referrals, right? The way that you make people feel. They remember that. And by using these simple elements of surprise and delight and just kind of going above and beyond here and there in simple ways can be incredibly powerful in cementing you and your business in the mind of your client.
So whether they find that they want to hire you again in the coming months or the coming years, or they have an industry friend who needs your services and your top of mind to them. So they share your name in that space. This can be a really simple way to improve the quality of your client experience without actually spending any money or doing anything wild. There are lots of different ways that you can actually implement surprise and delight marketing throughout your client experience. And I like to think about it in terms of throughout the client project. So throughout that timeline that you have in your business, whether you’re creating a visual identity for your client, or you’re building out a custom website, or maybe it’s, uh, you know, anything kind of a combination of the two or maybe something completely different, it’s an a LA carte sort of project, whatever sort of timeline you’re working with.
I like to look at it and think about where are some organic places where I can work in a little, something extra, a little element of surprise, or a little opportunity to go above and beyond expectations. And actually I find that the timeline itself is one easy way to do that. So for example, when you are creating the timeline that you’re sharing with your, your client to keep y’all on track with the work that you’re doing, you could say, Hey, I’m gonna send over the mock up for, let’s say your website. I’m gonna send over the website wire frame on this day. Well, if you’re thinking about a simple way to go above and beyond, could you build that timeline in a way where you’re giving yourself a little extra cushion? So you could actually deliver that wire frame a day or two early when your client isn’t expecting it, and this is not required, but it’s a nice little surprise to show up in your client’s inbox a day or two early, nothing wild.
Doesn’t need to be like a week in advance, but just in a simple way to show up and say, Hey, I’m so excited to share this with you. I was able to work ahead and share this wire frame with you today. And here’s my presentation. What that does is it shows your client that not only are you such a pro you’re, so on top of it, you’re even, you know, getting ahead of the timeline a little bit, even though, you know, and I know that that was always the plan, but they’re also able to see progress towards whatever that final deliverable is when they weren’t expecting it. And it’s a little thing. It doesn’t cost you anything, except the, you know, a little bit of extra time worked into your schedule. So you can meet that earlier deadline. But what that does is it cements this thought in your, in your client’s mind of, wow, I love working with this person.
Wow, I’m so excited. This made my day I’m, this lifted my mood. I’m, you know, so thrilled to be able to, you know, make progress on the website, wireframe even ahead of schedule. That’s just one simple way to do it. You could do it in, in another really low cost way. Like I’m kind of, you know, peppering some, some little unexpected surprises throughout your client project. Like something as simple as just popping a postcard or a handwritten note in the mail and sending it to your client midway through the project. Maybe when things are losing a little bit of steam, that can be a really thoughtful little surprise or at the end of a project. When you’ve wrapped things up, you could send a little greetable or any kind of simple gift, even just a virtual gift card, maybe to their favorite local coffee shop.
A super simple way to say, Hey, I so appreciate this opportunity to work with you. Your business has been so valued and I am so excited to cheer you on and see how your business continues to grow. Now, I want to encourage you that this is not, I know I’m talking about kind of some simple ways to utilize surprises, like marketing through things like gifts or, um, you know, adding extra value, but that’s really what it comes down to. It’s a simple thing of in ways that are unexpected adding additional value that your client was not anticipating. And with that being said, other simple ways that you can think about how you want to maybe maybe experience even more benefit and more value would be looking at your existing contacts, your existing community, is there a referral or a connection that you can make that will help your client?
You’re already working together. You already know the ins and outs of the project. Do you know someone who might be a good fit who could help them take this further, or maybe you’re chatting and you hear that they’re gonna be working on, uh, you know, some kind of project in the future and you know, a good vendor for that, right? It takes you like just a couple seconds, maybe a couple minutes at most to add that into an email, or to mention that on the call and say, actually, I’ve got a really great contact. I’ve got a really great person who can help you with this. Would you like for me to connect you again, surprise delight, doesn’t cost you anything. And what you’re doing is you’re showing your client just how much you care and how committed you are to their success. So when we’re thinking about how to leverage this inside your business, I really wanna encourage you to think about how this can impact the relationship and the quality of the relationship that you are building with this person.
Like I said earlier, one of the unexpected benefits that I have experienced by implementing surprise and July’s marketing, especially through the method of, of under promising and over delivering has been that this has generated a lot of really incredible new client relationships, thanks to word of mouth or those organic client referrals. And in the years that I’ve been working with designers inside the brand strategy school, I’ve seen time and time again, that for so many of us, right, those word of mouth referrals, that industry kind of connection. And that community means so much to us and is such a powerful way for us to not only serve our current clients, but also to secure new income and to work with new clients and to take on new projects in the future without us having to go out and market ourselves more without having to go out and hustle on social media to find those people.
And I think that’s really powerful. That’s a great way to honor your time and your energy. It’s a great way to focus on, you know, building an actual relationship with the clients you’re working with and securing the opportunity, the possibility of future business with their networks, with their industry, friends in the future. So we could honestly like make this the longest episode ever, just talking about all the different ways that surpris and light marketing could show up in your design business. But I wanted to kind of keep this short and sweet today, just to start to get you thinking about what could this look like in your design business? What’s something that could be kind of low effort, low cost, but high reward for you. It’s not gonna take you a lot of time. It’s not gonna cost you anything. It’s not gonna, uh, you know, be something that adds more to your already overflowing plates, but the payoff, the results, the growth that can happen from it is worth it to you is valuable to not only you, but also your client.
So with that being said, I hope that some ideas are starting to spark for you. And you’re starting to think about what this can look like. And if you are wanting to explore some of these ideas more within the community and the safety of a group of like-minded designers, who aren’t walking a similar journey and who get what it’s like to be a designer and who are cheering you along every single step of the way, then I invite you to learn more about joining the brand strategy school, where together, we’re looking at how you can leverage brand strategy as your superpower to charge more for your services, how you can lead and guide your clients like the total pro that you are. And you can captivate your IO clients using simple, tried and tested marketing strategies that work so together. If we are walking through the brand strategy process that I teach inside the brand strategy school together, you are going to be experiencing the support that will help you not only elevate your process as a designer using my done for you brand strategy method, but it’s also gonna be so easy to guide your clients through an elevated experience with some of these thoughtful surprise and delight marketing tactics sprinkled in throughout it using the workflows and the systems and processes that I share inside this program.
So with that being said, if that would serve you well, you can go to beat is for Bonnie design.com/brand strategy dash school to learn more and you can join us today. And with that being said, if you have any questions about this concept of surprise and delight marketing, or if you wanna talk a little bit more about what this could look like in your design business, my DMS are always open. So feel free to head over to Instagram. That’s the easiest and fastest way to get ahold of me. And you can find me at Bonnie joy, Marie, and I will look forward to chatting with you then friend, as always. I’m so grateful that you’re a part of this podcast and community. I’m so grateful that you’re tuning in and that you are benefiting. Hopefully I hope that you’re benefiting from the content that I share here on the podcast.
And I’m grateful that you’re a part of this community because your support, when you tune in, when you rate review and subscribe, when you share about the brand strategy podcast with your industry friends, or in your, uh, masterminds, your network groups, it enables us to share this message with more designers and creative entrepreneurs who are pursuing their unique definitions of success. And it ensures that we’re able to focus on taking intentional action that actually serves us well, not just busy work, not just, you know, kind of the latest like bro marketing tactics, but actually taking action in a way that is going to support you and help you and honor your time and your energy and ensure that you’re moving towards what success means to you, whatever that means. So I’m grateful for you is what I’m trying to say. and as always, I’m gonna be cheering you on from Waco.
Thank you so much for joining me today, friend, before you go, I would be so grateful to receive your feedback on the brand strategy podcast. If you enjoyed this episode or the podcast in general has helped you grow your brand. I’d really appreciate it. If you left us a review in iTunes, your positive reviews enable the brand strategy podcast to continue to grow and reach like-minded creatives. Just like you. Thank you for all your support and encouragement as together. We pursue building brands with purpose and intention until next time I’m cheering you on from Waco.
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