As a social media marketing agency, you’ll likely encounter a difficult client from time to time. Even clients who are usually fine can have their demanding moments. What matters is how you deal with them.
You need to employ all your experience and expertise to identify the early signs of a rocky relationship, so you can course correct. The situations will differ case by case, but knowing how to deal with difficult clients effectively is one of the most important skills you can have.
Ready to learn some tips and tricks? Let’s kick things off by looking at the types of difficult clients you might encounter as an agency.
Types of Difficult Clients
Difficult clients come in all shapes and sizes. It’s important to be familiar with the various types that exist, so you know how to spot them:
- The micro-manager🔍: This person just can’t leave you alone to get on with your work. They need to stand over your shoulder every step of the way. Hypercritical.
- The ghost👻: These people are usually super enthusiastic in the beginning and then they disappear. Need a sign-off or some feedback, but you’re getting nothing back? You have just encountered the ghost.
- The budget-squeezer💸: It’s very difficult to make someone’s dreams come true with a limited budget. This client has big ideas but tight purse strings. Good luck.
- The scope-creep📈: These come upon you unexpectedly. They need a little edit here, some flexibility there, and suddenly you’re miles away from the original brief and doing much more than you agreed to. Over time and budget.
- Indecisive🤔: Indecisive clients can be the most difficult of all. They don’t know what they want, so you don’t know what they want. Repeat.
- Aggressive😡: This person comes in guns-blazing. They don’t care what else you have on the calendar. They want their work finished, and they want it now.
So, if you’ve identified that one or two of your clients fit a certain type, how do you handle them? That’s exactly what the next section covers. However, we recommend following the same process with all clients, as it can help prevent most awkward situations.
How to Deal with Difficult Clients if You’re a Social Media Agency
1. Set up a Meeting to Make Your Client Feel Heard
The first thing you need to do if you feel rough seas ahead is schedule a meeting with your client. Often people get frustrated because they feel like they’re not being listened to or understood. If you allow them to get their issues off their chest you can often avoid more explosive problems that develop over time.
2. Establish Clear Engagement Terms
Making sure everyone is on the same page should be the first order of business. When drawing up the terms for your agency-client relationship, you need to ensure nothing is left unsaid at this crucial stage. Proper preparation helps to keep the relationship healthy and weeds out potentially difficult clients.
When clarifying expectations, you should:
- Encourage the client to be as specific as possible.
- Make sure all deal breakers are stated in the contract.
- Put together a detailed timeline.
- Discuss housekeeping tasks such as approvals, edits, points of contact, etc.
To manage approvals and feedback efficiently, using a tool like Gain can make a world of difference. Gain allows you to create an automated content approval workflow, ensuring that feedback is centralized and easily accessible. Clients can leave comments directly on the content, and you can track changes and approvals in real time, preventing confusion and delays.
Gain’s features, such as automated reminders and an activity and approval tracker, help you stay on top of the entire process. Once each person has signed off on the work, Gain automatically moves the content to the next person, and you can include as many rounds of approval as necessary.
Additionally, Gain’s visual content calendar lets you see all your marketing efforts, not just social media posts, in one place. You can view a month’s worth of social posts at a glance, drag and drop to reschedule, and label important dates. The calendar can also be easily shared with your client or stakeholders, giving them full visibility into your schedule.
Difficulties with clients often arise because they feel out of the loop. With Gain, you can include them every step of the way.
3. Stay Calm and Empathetic
The next step is all about managing your emotions. It’s super important to approach your client from a place of calm. It’s easy to get upset when people are stressed and up against deadlines.
What’s important to remember is that everyone wants the same thing—a satisfactory resolution for all parties. Try to understand your clients’ pain points and meet them where they are.
4. Handle Feedback Gracefully
Criticism is never fun. That being said, it’s an essential part of the business. Feedback and collaboration are how we get to one end product from two entities, the client and the agency.
Even if it isn’t easy to hear, try your best to embrace feedback. Stay cool and professional. Encourage constructive criticism and be ready to offer alternatives. You want to service your client to the best of your ability and maintain the relationship.
Here are a few scenarios and suggestions on how to deal with them:
🎬 Scenario 1: Vague Criticism
The client says, “It doesn’t feel right,” without giving specific feedback.
🔧 Solution: Ask clarifying questions like, “Can you point to an example or provide more detail on what’s missing?” Offer options to guide them: “Do you prefer A or B?” This helps direct their feedback and avoids endless revisions.
🎬 Scenario 2: Client Criticizes Your Strategy
They feel the content isn’t producing the expected engagement or leads.
🔧 Solution: Refer back to the agreed strategy and goals. Explain that social media often requires consistent effort to yield results, and offer to tweak certain elements based on performance metrics.
🎬 Scenario 3: Client Feels Unheard After Multiple Revisions
Despite multiple revisions, the client insists their feedback hasn’t been incorporated.
🔧 Solution: Revisit the feedback together and walk through how you’ve addressed each point. If something was missed, acknowledge it and offer to adjust.
5. Know When to Walk Away
Although the goal should always be to keep the client, there are inevitably times when it’s simply not going to work. If you can’t find a way to work effectively together, it’s just a bad fit and you should both look for a better one.
It’s important to know when it’s time to part ways. To do that, look for signals that the relationship is beyond saving. Try to ensure that the feeling is mutual so that no one feels blindsided by the difficult conversations ahead.
To end things professionally:
- Try your best to meet the client face-to-face.
- Gently explain that you both are no longer benefitting from the relationship.
- Draw up a final task list to take care of any unfinished business.
- Suggest an alternative (for example, another agency better suited to their needs).
Even if you’re secretly walking away from this meeting jumping for joy, be as respectful as possible. You don’t want to burn bridges or tarnish your reputation.
The Bottom Line
At the end of the day, you and your business aren’t going to be everyone’s cup of tea. Every social media marketing agency encounters difficult clients with seemingly impossible expectations. The key to navigating these tricky situations is how you react.
Equip yourself with the tools you need to be prepared. Gain helps you manage any type of client with easy-to-use social media management tools and seamless collaboration features. Sign up for free today and discover how much easier it is to handle even the most demanding clients and their social media campaigns.
