Guide Your Clients to Safety Using the Right Choice [VIDEO]

For someone who’s not a marketing or creative expert, assessing creative work can be quite nerve racking. They’re typically spending a lot of money on something they might not fully understand, and if they choose the wrong option, approve the wrong campaign, or even make the wrong criticism, that can throw off everything. There’s some pressure there, and that can make a creative presentation hard on everyone.

That’s why the experts – your agency’s creative professionals – need to take command.

Take your client on a journey

Your client can’t just understand your concept on a rational level. If you’ve done your work correctly, it shouldn’t work only on that level anyway – your primary foundations should be in emotion and feeling and experience. Simply telling the client what you want to do can work if your client trusts you implicitly, but if they’re more discerning you’ll have to do a little more. You’ll have to take them deeper into the concept.

Experiential presentations put your client in the shoes of their prospects. They get to see what it is that their clients will see, in essence. This doesn’t mean that you need to have a full ad campaign completed and ready to go before you present a concept. What it means is that you build something that has the look, sound, and feel of what you’ll eventually create. What it means is going beyond the boundaries of a PowerPoint presentation and doing something that makes your clients really feel and experience where your campaign will go.

[pull_quote text=”GREAT WORK DESERVES GREAT PRESENTATIONS”]

React to your audience

One of the worst things a presenter can do is refuse to be flexible. There’s no excuse for not preparing, but if you’re going in planning to memorize a speech and deliver it word-for-word, just powering through any obstacles, you’re not likely to be able to sell your work to your client.

Pay attention to your audience. Watch their body language and their non-verbal communication. When are they all taking notes? Who’s crossing their arms or legs? Who’s fidgeting? Who’s making eye contact and nodding? Who isn’t? It’s important to know who’s reacting to what, and how. That way you can adjust your approach if certain parts of the presentation aren’t catching on, or emphasize the parts that your client receives well.

Another thing to consider is your personal presentation and appearance. If you’re presenting to a high-powered law firm, you probably shouldn’t roll into the meeting wearing a t-shirt. If you’re meeting with a more casual client, don’t overdress. You’re presenting to your client, not a vacuum or yourself. You should do what you can to play to your audience.

Explain how you got here

The creative process has a lot of twists and turns. Sometimes the final concept you end up presenting is a long way off from where you started out – and it could be a long way away from what your client is expecting. That’s not a bad thing. But when you present it, if it’s something totally different from what your client is doing now, or different from what they thought they were going to be getting, they need to be ready for that.

Prepare a client for what they’re about to see by taking them through your process. It doesn’t have to be long – a minute and a half should do it. Talk through the leaps you took in getting from point A to the final concept, and explain the motivations behind what you’ve done. If they know you have reasoning behind your decisions, and it makes sense, your client is far more likely to buy in.

Build the guarantee of safety

No marketer can guarantee that every campaign will work. No creative professional can guarantee that everyone will like everything they create. But explaining your process, responding to reactions, and helping the client to understand how their prospects will see the finished product all go a long way towards making them feel safe approving your concepts. If you can present your creations in a way that makes your client excited to say “yes,” then you’ve succeeded.