How do you stay in touch with potential or previous clients? How long has it taken to actually start working with someone after your initial reach outs?
How to stay in touch:
Following up is important. So just sending them an email that has your contact info because most likely they lost it, you know? And asking if you can put them on your email list so any time you have a show, you can make sure they’re included. Kind of always be in the peripheral so when a project or an idea comes around, they’ll say, Oh, I know someone.
[I keep track] in an Excel spreadsheet. Any time I get a contact I just add it in. And there’s a couple of different categories, like, is this a funder or is this an interested collector? Then I just copy and paste them into the email Bcc. [I reach out but] probably not enough. But definitely before any show or before any big project. I do want to tell them what’s going on and let them know a little update on what I’m interested in and pursuing.It’s easier with people we’ve worked with because we’re just checking in every quarter or every other month, that kinda thing. It’s just remembering to stay in touch with people who’ve been involved.
We probably could do a better job of digitally marketing to people but we do a lot of product that we send to people — water bottles, beer mugs, face tubes and belts — just to kind of keep the chain going all the time.
Then once a year we reach out to new ad agencies. We bring in our reel and sit down in a room with 10 to 30 people and walk through what we do, what we offer and how we can help them. And that works sometimes. It’s hard to build a relationship that way, but we definitely do that.
We do have strategies and goals. We want to travel once a month to meet clients face to face. I have a goal of meeting six new clients a year. Things like that, pretty basic strategies. We’ve seen good results that way.
In general the one advantage that we have is that when we’re reaching out to brands and agencies it’s pretty likely that someone on the other end has heard of us and is like, Oh, I’ve seen your guys’ stuff. So people will take our call. Whereas I think if they’ve never heard of you, they probably won’t take your call.
It’s still hard for us. We’re still reaching out to people and trying to introduce ourselves and get a relationship. But it is easier once you have a known brand.
How long it can take:
[On the results of sending out his annual zine called Papercut to current and potential clients:]I don’t think it’s an instant thing like, Oh this is amazing let’s hire you right now. I feel that people will get it and sit on it for a while. It could be a couple of months or it could be two years later until they’re like, Oh, now the right job or project has come up.
It’s been from a couple of weeks to up to a year, in my experience.