The US Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the median pay for digital marketers at $132,620 per year, or $63.76 per hour. Yet so many digital marketers are earning much less for their skills and efforts. Learning new skills such as optimizing for mobile and voice search or leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) could help a struggling digital marketer get ahead.
However, by far the most important skill you can learn to boost your impact is to improve your negotiation skills. Negotiation workshops designed for digital marketers can support your quest for a fulfilling career. Here are some important tips for digital marketers shared by professionals from Negotiation Experts.
Improve Your Bottom Line
Your digital marketing business has an end goal. Often, the end goal is to grow and make profits. How you negotiate with your clients can be an important factor in pricing and selling more services.
As a skilled negotiator, you can avoid losses by attracting better clients, premium rates, and consistent work.
Create Opportunities
As a digital marketer, you may start off offering one service. Being known as the guru of one service can be great. However, when you grow your offering, your reputation may limit you to a particular set of clients.
Clients seeking multiple services may only hire you for your known service. They are then likely to seek one or more other service providers for their needs. It’s important, therefore, to let clients know your service offering in full.
Negotiation workshop students often complain that it’s hard to expand beyond a niche. This is especially so when you’ve already made a name in it. As a skilled negotiator, you can use your reputation in one niche to sell services in other areas.
As you grow your competence in other services, negotiation skills support your pitch as an all-around expert and create opportunities in terms of cross-sells and upsells. You can then confidently pitch to clients for blogging services as well as social media marketing, for example.
Improve Service Quality
When you communicate well with clients, you can readily identify the client’s business needs. You are more likely to create high-quality services that bring long-lasting solutions.
For instance, your client may initially request content marketing services. However, you might realize their business can gain more by combining content marketing with search engine optimization.
When you lack persuasion skills, suggesting extra services may sound like you’re trying to squeeze more revenue without offering extra value. Expert negotiators have the tools to showcase why extra services can provide better results for clients.
Enhance Your Competitive Advantage
Digital marketing is a competitive field. You’re facing off against other professionals in your region. You’re also competing against a global field of experts. By attending workshops and collaborating with negotiation experts, you can learn how to position your expertise as better than your competitors’ offerings. Workshop training encourages researching your competition and promoting your unique selling points.
How skilled you are at negotiating can be the difference between a client signing up or looking elsewhere.
Attract Investments
As a business owner, you may need more funds to grow, improve your skill sets, acquire new talent, or buy better equipment. Growth needs additional financial input. Rather than plow back your profits, you can work with investors to accelerate growth.
For example, digital marketers working for nonprofits can enhance their persuasion skills to attract more donors and achieve higher grant amounts.
Earn Respect
As a digital marketer, you are more likely to attract and retain clients if they respect your services and work. Clients also tend to value your work more if they respect you.
Expert negotiators earn respect by creating rapport and delivering on promises. So, it pays to know what promises you can make and to avoid those you can’t deliver on. Remember, you can respectfully walk away from work that’s beyond your skills. You can also decline pay that’s lower than your skills command.
Boost Your Confidence
Confidence conveys a message to clients that you know your skills. This reassures clients that you’re able to deliver on your promises. When you’re confident, you are better placed to reject offers that are too low. You’re also more able to make justifiable counteroffers.
Confident marketers usually attract and retain the best clients. In contrast, a lack of confidence can create doubt about your value proposition.
Create Win-Win Situations
As a service provider, your focus is not only on your own bottom line but also on the business goals of your clients. Use your negotiation skills to better understand a client’s needs. Then, use your technical and soft skills to add value.
Create packages and contracts that emphasize client success. When you focus on client success, you’re far more likely to move further toward achieving your own success.
Conclusion
With the growth of digital marketing, more marketers are offering services to a global market. Your negotiation skills are important for getting ahead, growing your skills, and attracting clients. Work on creating value for your clients, and in exchange, you can claim higher value for your services.
