How to Perfect your Onboarding Process

Welcome back to Social Sessions! This week Terrah and Audrey are talking all about onboarding, because a well organized and executed onboarding process is key to increasing client retention! This episode is your backstage pass to the meticulous process of setting achievable goals and KPIs with your clients. We talk numbers, yes, but more importantly, we talk vision—a shared trajectory towards measurable success. Whether you're a seasoned social media guru or just dipping your toes into digital waters, these strategies for navigating goal setting, utilizing analytics, and cultivating patience are invaluable. And remember, following us at social sessions. Podcast on Instagram is the best way to keep the conversation going.

Chapters

• 0:00 Building Strong Client Relationships Through Onboarding
• 13:53 Setting Client Goals and Expectations
• 26:08 Establishing Clear Expectations in Relationships

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Have you ever wondered what goes into your favorite brand's digital marketing strategy?

Speaker 2: 0:04

I'm Tara, the founder of TJ Creative Agency and I'm Audrey, the creative marketing director of TJ Creative Agency. Whether you're an influencer, a business owner, a content creator or just an overall creative person, we'll teach you how to create the perfect social media strategy and build your brand online. Welcome back to social sessions podcast. Everyone. Hope you guys had a good week or are having a good week. This week we are kind of pulling back a little bit and we're talking more about the business side of things and we want to talk about onboarding and, specifically, things that we do in our onboarding that make things a little bit easier. Shockingly like if you didn't know this customers are 50% more likely to remain loyal to your company with an effective onboarding process. So a lot of that comes with expectations and getting to know you. So there's there's a few things that I think you need in your onboarding practice that we're going to go over today, but before that, well, I don't have a ton of updates for you guys.

Speaker 2: 1:06

I just wanted to cover one news article and more like one headline, because there really isn't a ton of information about this, but it's that TikTok is testing a new Instagram like photos app, so they're working on an entirely new app. I don't know what the name is. They're just calling it TikTok photos right now. I don't know if that's actually going to be the name or if that's just kind of what they're saying to the public, but yeah, they're testing, they're trying to find timing for everything that's going on, that they're going to launch a new app.

Speaker 1: 1:39

Well, their other app is being kicked off out of the United States.

Speaker 2: 1:45

Yeah, I don't know Actually, well, we're here. Okay, so it says the United States is the country with the most monthly active TikTok users, with 102.3 million monthly users. So I guess it would be a big hit, because I was going to say, like, they still have other countries that they are supported by, which is true, but that's a big hit, like that's a big loss, anyways. So, yeah, they're supposedly coming out with a photos app. It's in testing, so there really hasn't been anything announced as far as, like, when it will be released or if it will ever be released, like who knows? I feel like sometimes social media channels kind of test things and they aren't received well, so they never see the light of day Threads.

Speaker 2: 2:34

Do you get on the web.

Speaker 1: 2:35

It's still there. I see little updates but I'm like, do people actually get on? I mean I don't know, it's very, it's got to be.

Speaker 2: 2:43

I just went on there the other day. I actually had texted Megan to see if she wants to kind of do our threads. We haven't really. She was like, yeah, we haven't really come up with anything in terms of like strategy or the types of stuff that should be going up. It doesn't seem at. The difference to me between threads and Twitter is that like threads doesn't feel comedic at all. Threads feels like kind of an extension of your Instagram, in the sense of people are still kind of trying to build credibility and be known as like experts. So it just feels like people stating facts and stating like opinions versus like. Twitter is the most unhinged platform I've ever seen. Yeah, but I mean you could kind of say that about Twitter too, because part of the giant argument for why Twitter is important is for Like news reporters and journalists.

Speaker 1: 3:37

Journalist, I see a lot of sports too. On there's to for whatever. Like that's where you to go to for sports updates.

Speaker 2: 3:43

People like to live. You know, live tweet things, especially sports. Yeah, yeah, sometimes I'll go on there. I actually I don't have Twitter anymore, but when I used to go on there, occasionally I would like I would do it. If I was watching a basketball game, I'd go and like search it up. If I a didn't see something, I actually will still do this. Sometimes now, like I'll do it from not logged in, I'll just be like like why did this person get a technical, like I missed it and they haven't played the replay? Yeah, I need to know, I need someone to tell me what's going on. So it's nice in that regard. It's like you get real-time updates from real people. Yeah, I agree with that.

Speaker 2: 4:23

Anyways, that was a complete sidebar, but now jumping into the actual topic of the episode, like I said, we're talking about onboarding, some strategies that I think you need to use, strategies that we use that really help with, you know, having a seamless onboarding. So, like I said, why does it matter? It matters because, if you're onboarding, first of all, it is like a first impression, right, like you want to come off Professional and you want to make your new client feel confident in their decision with working with you because You're still new to them, they don't know you well enough, you haven't done anything for them yet. They're still potentially a little bit wary, like, did we make the right decision? Because, odds are, if they are working with you, whatever your business is, if they're working with you, they've probably interviewed you and several other agencies, so they had other people that they could have Chose, and so during this kind of onboarding phase, you want them to feel as confident as possible with choosing you. So that's really the main reason you want them to feel comfortable, you want them to feel confident, you want them to feel like they made the right decision.

Speaker 2: 5:37

Yeah, and that all leads back to kind of setting the tone of that relationship right. It's which we'll kind of get into, but it really does set the tone for the relationship between you and this client. So the very first thing that I think needs to be ironed out in the onboarding call and I will say before this, the way that we onboard is we have an onboarding call when we like go over all of this stuff and usually it ends with, like we need you know, these are the things that we need from you. It's usually like we need your Branding, like your branding kit, wherever you have that, whether that's a folder or that is like Whatever. However, you want to get that to us. You need to get that to us, you need to get us your logins, things like that. So there is, you know, a whole list.

Speaker 1: 6:27

We have a. We have a checklist that we've created.

Speaker 2: 6:30

Right, that has yeah, which I will okay go over. I have it pulled up, but that's like a broad overview of our onboarding. It's usually a Call that then kind of leads to quote-unquote homework tasks that they need to do and we also Send them. After that call we send them all of those tasks and everything that we covered in the onboarding in a PDF file. So it's a few pages which, like I said, we'll go over that in a little bit, but a PDF of really everything that we went over, plus that checklist that Tara just mentioned.

Speaker 2: 7:05

Yeah, so now that you kind of have that, that broad overview, the first thing that we always make sure to go over is Boundaries. You have to set those clear boundaries right out of the gate because if you don't, it's so hard to go backwards. Right, like if if you have a client that's walking all over you, calling you all hours of the night and they've been like that for a year, and then all of a sudden you say I actually don't, you can't do that, are they gonna listen? Like probably not, because they're used to you answering the call at midnight and saying, yeah, hold on, I'll get up out of bed to make this post that you need for 6 am Tomorrow. Like, first of all, that's insane. If you do that, politely and respectfully, re-evaluate some things. But also you have to set those boundaries first right, otherwise it gets messy. And so what do I mean by boundaries? I mean when they can communicate with you. How, like, how long should they wait to hear from you? Are your clients going to expect to hear from you within the hour that they text? That's probably not Realistic. Okay, because you're doing things, you have other clients and you need to express that right. If you email us, you know you can expect to hear from us within 24 hours, within whatever that timeline looks like for you. But you need to express that. You need to express what holidays do you observe in your business? Like, maybe you observe President's Day and they don't. So you know things like that.

Speaker 2: 8:35

You, we go over our Referral program with them in the onboarding, we go over the approval process, kickoff timeline, everything like that. All of that is kind of the expectations and the boundaries, which some of these things we will go into in more detail throughout the episode. But that's the main thing is the boundaries, and everybody has different boundaries, right? I'm not going to tell you exactly what to do. Some of them are communication, some of them might be more like the approval situation, which again, we're going to get into the approval of it all a little bit more.

Speaker 2: 9:09

But one of your boundaries as a creative company might be we get to, we get the last say we get because you hired us, because we know what we're doing. And that might be one of your boundaries that you express in that onboarding call is you get one round of edits and then we get the final say on what actually goes live. Yeah, again, I'm not saying that that's the exact boundary that you need to have, but anything like that that might think about the things that might later on come as a shock to your client when there's some sort of conflict or there's some sort of you know you're not seeing eye to eye that might later shock the client. That's the stuff that you need to say in that very first call.

Speaker 2: 9:51

Yeah and then going into Number two, which is the communications methods, which we kind of talked about just a second ago. But really, what I mean by that is where are you going to be talking to your clients? Are you gonna email them? Is it okay for them to text you? Because there's a lot of people who do not want Text right, like some people, that feels unprofessional or it's harder for them to have a work-life balance.

Speaker 2: 10:18

You know your company better than and you know yourself better than I do, so you get to make these, these methods, but like, maybe it's slack, maybe it's, like I said, maybe it's email, maybe it's text, maybe it's a phone call, whatever. That is what's your main way of communicating with the clients. And then, on top of that, like I said, when can they expect to hear back from you? Are you gonna respond within 15 minutes or is it gonna be like a four-hour delay? Neither is right or wrong, as Long as you express that to the client, because if they have the expectation that, oh, they need to get back to me, they work. If your client, if this new client, has the expectation of they work for me, they need to answer to my calls. That's when it gets into Rocky territory. You need to make sure that that expectation is you are a client of ours, we are a operating and working business. When you text us, we have other things we're doing. It might take four hours to get back To you, right? All of that needs to be communicated so they don't end up feeling either neglected or feel whatever, but hurt about things. It's also what, like, are you gonna respond on the weekends? They need to know that because here's the thing that I've noticed a lot of these clients, like they are working their jobs during the day, as they should be, so they don't text until 6 pm, 7 pm, saturday morning, again, sometimes it's okay for them to do that, as long as they know you're not going to respond during that time, right. Like it's okay, they can technically reach out to you at any time that they want. Obviously, like you can't really dictate their ways of communication, but you can dictate those expectations of okay, if you do text me at 7pm on a Thursday, you're not going to hear back from me until Friday morning, right? So as long as you express those things to them, that's really the important thing about this communication. So they really know you know, like I said what to expect. The last two, I think, are all of these are important, but these last two, I think, are potentially the most important.

Speaker 2: 12:33

And number three is managing client expectations. So this is the really, really big one is you need to, in that very first onboarding meeting, once they have signed the contract with you and you are about to start working with them and onboarding them as a client, you need to manage those expectations, and by that I mean you need to express that A this takes time. If you're assuming you're a social media manager listening to this, this is going to take time. This is not going to be an overnight success. In fact, like it might take you six months to a year to maybe hit the numbers that you want to hit right. So you need to be able to reiterate that importance of a realistic timeline, because if you let them have these expectations or these timelines that they've made up in their head, you're always going to fall short of that, because if they want to, let's say, gain 10,000 followers in the first month that you work together, they're going to be inevitably they're going to be let down after that first month, because I would guess 99% of us are not going to make that happen for them, because that's just not really how it works. So you need to be able to say this is going to take time, give them a more realistic timeline.

Speaker 2: 13:53

Like in, a lot of this is going to look like conversation. This part is going to look like conversation. It's going to look like what are your goals? This is the perfect time to have that conversation with them. What are your goals? Okay, let's say maybe it's more conversions. And then it's asking them and writing all of this down. It's asking them what are your numbers at right now? Or you can do this right after the call and you can, you know, look it up once you have the logins and that can be kind of your baseline starting point.

Speaker 2: 14:23

But figuring, out what are you at right now? So let's say they say conversions, they say our biggest goal is we want more sales through social media. And you can say, okay, let's look at your numbers together. What are your website clicks like right now? It's determining, actually. Let me rewind it. Let's say a client, a new client. You say what are your goals? Let's say they answer you back and they say we want more sales, we want more conversions from social media.

Speaker 2: 14:49

That's when you say, okay, let's look into some KPIs, let's see what exact metrics we're going to track in order to prove that success or see that success. Right, and it might be website traffic. So maybe you asked them to go on Google analytics, right? And you say what is your traffic from Instagram right now? Let us know. And then we're going to go into your Instagram and see what the website clicks are like and if they have like a link tree or something like that, look at all of that. Jot all of that down now. And then, after you have that information, after you have those numbers, then you can say, okay, let's set a realistic goal, let's set a numerical goal so that we can actually track this. And let's say, let's say they have, I don't know, 15, 15 people coming from Instagram and we'll say, okay, in three months we would love to make that be like 70. That's pretty doable, right, if you are making the type of content you make your strategy, things like that and you can tell them, convey that to them.

Speaker 2: 15:57

Let's say, the goal for the next three months is 70 people coming to your website from Instagram like a month, versus the 15. That's fairly doable and it also keeps them from like really reaching for the stars and saying, okay, within this first three months we would love 500 people. Okay, that's maybe not as reasonable. So that's why it's important for you to have this conversation with them and kind of set those numerical goals so that they have those expectations right.

Speaker 2: 16:26

Because if you just have the goals, conversation of this is your goal, this is how we're going to track it. It really leaves that up to their imagination. They can think the highest number possible like dream, dream goal. That's what's going to be in their mind, unless you tell them ahead of time this is, this is the smaller goal, the more achievable goal, and then we'll build on that. It's not to say we're never going to hit that 500 mark, but it's saying that's probably not where we're going to get in the first three months, right? So having that conversation is really really, really important. Of the timeline and those expectations I also think it keeps them from being let down.

Speaker 1: 17:08

I also think this part is probably the hardest part of an onboarding is just really pinning down. For a social media agency, it's a lot harder to get those numbers, whether it's from the web designer or the person that runs their website, or whether they've added the pixel from Facebook or whether I mean it's really hard to gather, get that information. So I think something we've learned from trial and error is like this is probably the most important part, because this is where you're able to prove your worth and prove that social is working. When you don't have those numbers, when you don't have that access, it is really hard to prove to them that what you're doing is making a difference, and so I would say this is number one, like one of the most important things that you should do in an onboarding.

Speaker 2: 18:03

Yeah, and to be clear, the number that Tara is referring to is like the website traffic conversions number, because if they were to say their biggest goal, they say we're pretty good on sales, our biggest goal is really brand awareness and to reach new people. Those numbers we can get all day long, so like that's pretty easy stuff. But specifically for conversion, that's where it gets a little bit trickier, because it usually does have to do with a third party resource. It's usually not something you can find directly through the platform.

Speaker 1: 18:34

It's like training their team to, or their paperwork to have even a questionnaire that says where did you hear about us? I mean, it's really hard to get those numbers accurately if you don't set the tone in the beginning.

Speaker 2: 18:51

Yeah, and just determining and that's all part of that conversation of determining those numbers that you are tracking. So, in like, like Tara said, if they do say conversions, then you can have that conversation of okay, how are we going to track that? Is it going to be your website traffic? Is it going to be from your Google Analytics, whatever that is? Once you determine that, then it's like okay, then you have to either A report that to us every month or you need to give us access to that third party situation, whatever it is. You have to determine that right out of the gate, how you're going to get access to that.

Speaker 2: 19:25

Yeah, I also think this is the time to really reiterate patience.

Speaker 2: 19:31

Like I said, the timeline is going to look different, those expectations are going to look different.

Speaker 2: 19:36

But recognizing and I think the hard part here is that a lot of these clients, these new clients especially if they've never worked with someone in social media the hard part is that they come in with these really, really big goals, right, and the hard part is not saying no, you're never going to achieve those goals because you don't want them to feel defeated right out of the gate with working with you, like you don't want them to be like, oh my God, like they can't even help me get where I want to go.

Speaker 2: 20:04

I don't know why I hired them. Like that's not what you want. But you want to say, okay, that's an achievable goal. It might just take a while to get there. Like this might not even happen the first year of us working together because it's such a slow build, because it is organic, and then you know that turns into can we do the paid ads? Can we do blah, blah, blah, and that's a whole other conversation. But you do have to find a way to kind of bring those clients back down to earth and give them a realistic kind of vantage point of what this partnership is going to look like, without completely making them feel defeated.

Speaker 1: 20:42

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 20:45

And then I think the last part that is going to be really really crucial to this relationship that you're building is determining your systems and timelines, like letting them know how this is going to operate. Because if you are just like okay, like send us your stuff and you know we'll talk to you later, and then you're sending stuff like day of you're like hey, can I post this today? Like, or if on the other side of things, you're not sending anything for approval, that might look incredibly unprofessional to this new client and that might be an issue you need to. If that is the way that you're working, whatever, if you aren't on the fly type of person, good luck. But also you need to express that, however it is that you are operating, you need to express that in that meeting. So for us it's typically a two week timeline. You can expect the calendar, like for me, for example, my one client. She can expect a calendar every second or bi-weekly on a Wednesday or Thursday. It kind of depends. That needs to be approved by that Monday when it's going up. That's my personal timeline with this client. Typically it's really similar within our agency it's two weeks. The day of the week in which it goes out is kind of different by the content creator, by the client. But letting them know okay, this is when you're going to receive a calendar from us, you're going to receive the content from us, and then, on top of that, saying you need to then have those content edits sent over or the approval sent over in 48 hours, in 72 hours, whatever that again, you are determining the timeline. But you have to say that to them, say I need these edits done by this time and on top of that you have to. This is something that I think a lot of people struggle with. We have struggled with ourselves.

Speaker 2: 22:42

You have to communicate how many rounds of edits they get, because you are going to eventually run into a client who constantly you send out edits, you send out the content, they send back like two edits. Then it starts going live and they say, oh, actually, like something, this needs to be changed or like I don't like this. You have to say you get one round of edits or you get two rounds of edits. That's it Like once it's up. It's up because that's when it really starts to mess with us as social media managers, especially if it's already up. Like you guys know how tedious it is and how annoying it is to then take that down. It takes a section out of your day that you did not plan for. You take that down, you make the edits, you send it back, then it goes up and it's just a pain in the ass and it throws everything off. So you do need to have that communication with you know how many rounds of edits they actually get and really driving that home Right Whenever the edits are done, those are done, like I need you to, and sometimes you'll have to send that an email Just a reminder like, once this is done, this is what's going up. Okay, so just be sure to really look over the content, things like that, but also the timelines in terms of what they can expect.

Speaker 2: 24:00

After this onboarding meeting right. What are the next steps? And that's, like I said, where that outline kind of comes from, where that checklist comes from that we send over. First is to give you kind of an update, Our timeline. A acknowledge that you read this. It's kind of almost contractee, but acknowledge that you read this.

Speaker 2: 24:25

Two, send us a folder with all of your brand assets. Three, send us all of your logins for whatever the platform is that we are working on. If it's Facebook and Instagram, then there's like kind of a sub check. That's like make us an admin on your Facebook so that we have access to those types of things. Three send us any of your content, which could be Dropbox, it could be Thebox, it could be a shared album, it could be Google Photos, whatever it is. Send us the content that you do have and then accept any invites. So for us it might be a later invite, it might be a Canva invite, something like that, but accept any invites that we send over that's the main thing from our checklist and then from there we'll get started on making the content, send over the content calendar, and they should have a pretty good idea of then what that's going to look like, because you went over the timeline, because you went over the systems in which you operate in.

Speaker 2: 25:27

But all of that, I think really the key with all of this onboarding is communicate, communicate, communicate. They need to know just so much transparency. They need to know how you're doing this, when they're going to receive things, by who gets the final edits, how they can communicate with you really like, if anything, over communicate. So those are the main things I think with onboarding. Like I said, it's a lot of that communication, it's a lot of expectations and just setting those in place so these new clients don't end up either disappointed or whatever.

Speaker 2: 26:08

You just don't want them. Essentially, you don't want them to leave that meeting with a different idea than what is actually going to happen. You don't want them to leave even outside of content. You don't want them to leave that meeting thinking I can call or text them at any time and they're going to respond to me whenever, because then inevitably, when you don't do that, they're disappointed. So it really boils down to everything. You just want to make sure that you two are on the same page of how this relationship is going to work. So that's that on onboarding. I hope that was helpful for you guys. That's really all I have. If you liked this episode, I would love it if you rate and reviewed the podcast. Would love it if you shared it and make sure to follow us at social sessions. Podcast on Instagram. Yes, cool, we'll talk to you guys later, later, bye, bye, bye.