For marketing, advertising and PR firms, the relationships built between the company and clients are critical for driving repeated business, sustained growth and positive word of mouth. Maintaining these vital relationships is becoming increasingly difficult due to a fiercely competitive market where clients are looking for higher engagement, lower costs and better quality products and services.

The good news is that maintaining strong relationships with your clients is well-known to promote high retention rates and better revenue. One study found that customers who form a strong emotional connection with a brand have a 300% higher lifetime value compared to consumers who failed to build a relationship. For agency leaders, it’s important to have strategies in place to build and foster strong, long-lasting relationships with your clients.

Related: How to Make Your Clients Love Working With You

1. Set clear expectations and deliver on your promises

One of the best ways to build a relationship with your customers is by always delivering superior products and services. However, accomplishing this starts at the beginning of the relationship by setting clear expectations on what they can expect. Being transparent about the intended outcome, delivery timeframes and communication helps avoid any frustration that might come from misunderstandings or misaligned expectations.

For new firms, it’s especially important to impress your potential clients. Unfortunately, too many companies make big promises that they can’t successfully deliver. By overpromising, you set your customer up for potential disappointment. Instead, always offer realistic expectations with the intention of over-delivering. The customer will be impressed when you are able to deliver the marketing campaign in three weeks when you originally set an expectation of 25 business days. You might even throw in an unexpected freebie or perk that they weren’t expecting. By always keeping your promises and over-delivering when possible, you’ll build a relationship based on trust and will be recognized as a reliable business partner.

2. Focus on creating value first

Selling your services is an important part of growing revenue for your business. However, focusing solely on what you can get out of your customers could be sabotaging your ability to build strong relationships with your clients. Instead, focus on first providing them with value. This starts well before you sign your first contract. When clients see tangible value and benefits immediately from working with your business, they are more likely to reciprocate by remaining loyal customers to your company.

3. Communication, communication, communication

Sustaining an ongoing relationship with your clients requires connecting on a regular basis, even if they aren’t ready to purchase from you again. The problem is that many companies focus on connecting with their clients only when they want to make a new sale. This isn’t an effective way to build strong customer relationships because it can be perceived that you only care about them when they have something you want (i.e., their money).

Taking the time to check in with your clients on a regular basis is a great way to maintain a strong relationship. This also helps eliminate tension and remove the defenses that come up when every contact ends up being a sales pitch. These check-ins can be in-person meetings, phone calls or even a simple email.

It’s important to understand that no two clients are the same. Finding ways to tailor your communication to their preferences and needs lets the client know that you understand their needs, challenges and goals.

Related: 4 Tips to Forge Winning Client Relationships for the Long-Term

4. Own your mistakes

From time to time, your agency is going to make a mistake or upset a customer. That’s unavoidable. You’re going to miss a deadline, deliver an advertisement that should have never made it past the quality control process or drop the ball entirely. How your business responds to these issues can make a huge difference with your customers. Owning the mistake, being transparent about what happened and proactively working on a solution, lets them know that you care about resolving the issue.

Delivering difficult news or discussion challenges is never easy. By demonstrating your willingness to address challenges head-on and find mutually beneficial solutions, you’ll strengthen your client relationships and position yourself for long-term success.

5. Learn from failure through continuous improvement

Sometimes, you’ll lose clients no matter what your business does. This can be painful, especially if it’s a major client that generates a significant portion of your revenue. While the goal is to retain your clients, there is a silver lining to client turnover. As frustrating as it might be, always try to part ways on good terms. You never know when they might decide to come back to your business. A good way to do this is by offering them some form of value on their way out. For example, if you operate a digital marketing firm, you show good faith by supporting their transition to the next agency.

Also, taking the time to understand why they are leaving can highlight opportunities for improvement. Over time, taking action on these lessons can greatly strengthen your processes and ensure you avoid any roadblocks to building and sustaining long-term customer relationships.

Related: 5 Ways Your Agency Can Improve the Client Experience

Acquiring new customers is not only challenging, but expensive as well. It’s much more effective to spend time retaining the customers you have. By building strong customer relationships, entrepreneurs can protect their revenue and position their companies for growth and success despite operating in the competitive world of marketing, advertising and PR.

After months of testing and teasing dozens of modifications to its original burger, McDonald’s is now revealing one massive change that customers will notice — the size.

In a Tuesday call with analysts, McDonald’s Chief Financial Officer Ian Borden announced that the chain will be testing a larger burger this year in select markets.

“As we look to further build on our leadership in beef, our team of chefs from around the world have created a larger satiating burger,” Borden said during the call. “We’ll be testing this burger in a few markets later this year ensuring that it has universal appeal before scaling it across the globe.”

Related: McDonald’s Is Completely Changing Its Burgers in 2024

This isn’t surprising news for McDonald’s, as Borden hinted at the UBS Global Consumer and Retail Conference last month that he believed there was a “significant” opportunity to create a larger-sized offering and noted the chain has attempted to do so in the past.

In the mid-90s, McDonald’s attempted to create “premium” burgers with different toppings and offerings (such as the Arch Deluxe, for example), instead of simply making a larger patty.

“We tried to get after this opportunity for a number of years because we thought the opportunity was about premium burger,” Borden said last month. “We weren’t successful.”

It’s been a long time coming for the chain, which laid out a massive growth plan in December that included creating a new version of its burgers with an estimated 50 modifications. The changes were first tested in Australia and select West Coast and Midwest markets in 2023.

Other changes included swapping the Big Mac’s sesame seed bun with “buttery brioche” and each burger coming with more of the cult-favorite “special sauce.”

McDonald’s reported positive Q1 2024 earnings on Tuesday, a 2% quarterly jump in global comparable sales growth, which marks the chain’s 13th consecutive quarter of comparable sales growth.

Related: McDonald’s in Connecticut Goes Viral For Astronomical Prices

“As consumers are more discriminating with every dollar that they spend, we will continue to earn their visits by delivering leading, reliable, everyday value and outstanding execution in our restaurants,” said CEO Chris Kempczinski.

McDonald’s was down just over 8% as of Tuesday afternoon.

It’s no secret that Gen Z is entrepreneurial, with research showing that the majority would take a social media creator job over a standard 9-to-5. Nearly half are going the extra mile by starting a side hustle to be able to afford “the normal stuff.”

Now, new research shows that trade school could also play into Gen Z’s entrepreneurial aspirations, especially with rising AI capabilities and growing education costs.

According to a January National Student Clearinghouse report, vocational community college enrollment has grown 16% since 2018. Growth was concentrated mainly in cities and suburbs, which recorded 3.5% and 3.7% respective increases in students opting for trade programs.

Related: Most Americans Don’t Think Higher Education Is Worth the Cost — But This State-By-State Breakdown of College Graduates’ Salaries Tells a Different Story

Last year’s version of the report found that enrollment in programs across the construction, culinary, and mechanic trades increased 19.3%, 12.7%, and 11.5% respectively from 2021 to 2022.

“We’re seeing that 75% of Gen Z is saying they are interested in being an entrepreneur,” career coach and The Ramsey Show co-host Ken Coleman told Fox Business. “They want to work for themselves… trades offer a quicker, cheaper path to being able to work for themselves, create jobs for other people, and plug into—which is the real backbone of our economy—small business.”

While students were choosing trade schools in higher numbers, fewer were deciding to go for a four-year undergraduate degree.

A separate April report from the National Student Clearinghouse detailed that the number of students completing undergraduate degrees dropped by nearly 3% in the 2022 to 2023 school year — continuing an overall decline from the previous year.

Related: The ‘Bizarrely Authoritarian’ U.S. Education System Inspired This Husband and Wife to Co-Found a ‘Genius School’ for Future Entrepreneurs and Leaders

In an NPR article published last week, Sy Kirby, a 32-year-old who owns a construction company, said he knew early that he was going to choose a trade school — and he has no regrets.

Kirby chose to work at a local water department when he was 19 years old rather than go to college, he told NPR. He calls Gen Z the “toolbelt generation,” a term also used by The Wall Street Journal.

“I was facing a lot of pressure for a guy that knew for a fact that he wasn’t going to college,” Kirby told NPR. “I knew I wasn’t going to sit in a classroom, especially since I knew I wasn’t going to pay for it.”