Legal Marketing Blog

Setting Expectations

A whole lot goes into creating a website and online marketing strategy. There are also a lot of factors involved in measuring the success of a project. Did we meet client expectations? Did we get the project done in time? Does the website get more traffic from the web? Most importantly does it drive Patients and Clients into their practice? I always try to set realistic expectations.

Setting the right expectations upfront can make or break any project. You must clearly communicate everything they can expect throughout the course of the project. At page 1 we have a team that is handpicked for every project and we must let our team know exactly what’s expected of them, what they should be designing, building, or writing. If your team doesn’t have a clear vision of what they’re doing, or if our client doesn’t understand what we need from them, our project will inevitably fail. If we build something that we like but don’t take in consideration of the client’s needs or never discussed their vision, we will fail again wasting valuable time and resources. Also, make sure everyone is clear about what’s next, and that they have everything they need.

Setting expectations isn’t difficult, but it does take time and knowledge. We need to marry our knowledge and expertise with the client’s wants and needs. We get a lot of people so hooked on imagery of a site but imagery alone does not do well on the search engines. That’s where our knowledge and making crystal clear expectations with the client about what they’ll be getting, up front.

We use a questionnaire form and a few surveys upfront to start setting expectations and getting the clients creative juices flowing. We always encourage the client to ask questions if they don’t understand something. This initial step seems to be long and tedious but it’s laying the foundation of the project for many months to come. You need to take this time to clarify unknowns and draw out hidden objectives.

Throughout the project it is this initial pre-work and staying consistent that will make or break a project. I can’t emphasize enough the important of communication is and butting everything on the table before you just dive in. In most projects things change as you go but by not setting these expectations these changes won’t be slight they will be complete overhauls, wasting time, money and resources. Do the easy stuff consistently and the hard stuff won’t be so hard, and you’re almost always guaranteed to keep clients happy and successful.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 15th, 2010 at 2:37 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.