We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Michelle Taylor a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Michelle, appreciate you joining us today. Getting that first client is always an exciting milestone. Can you talk to us about how you got your first customer who wasn’t a friend, family, or acquaintance?

My agency, before it was an agency at all, began as a side hustle while working my full-time marketing job. While there are thousands of nonprofit organizations in the US, the nonprofit world is small. After working collaboratively with other nonprofits in my area, I began offering freelance support to organizations I knew were short-staffed in marketing. Sometimes that looked like designing a flyer or shooting photography for a fundraiser; other times I was managing social media accounts and creating content. I will always be grateful for those first clients who believed in me and gave me a shot to get started.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Hello there! I am Michelle Taylor, CEO and Principal Consultant of Taylor Brand Consultant. I got my start in marketing and communications as a freelance writer for print publications and social media strategy for nonprofit organizations. As I followed the entrepreneurial tether to launching my consulting agency full-time, I initially focused on social media management and content creation. As I worked with more clients, grew my skills, and began to amass a consulting team, I saw the disintegration of client marketing teams as key roles became and stayed vacant.

This observation led me to offer interim consulting as my team began filling key positions in consultant interim capacities. What started as a beta test of sorts has become our specialty and principal service. While we still offer traditional marketing and PR agency services, my team has become interim experts who specialize in driving progress and supporting teams during periods of transition.

I am proud of the innovative solutions we offer our clients and the support and resources we offer to business owners through our social media and email communications.

How do you keep in touch with clients and foster brand loyalty?

As a service-based business model, client relationships and brand reputation are everything. In terms of consistent stewardship, we have a monthly newsletter diving into relevant topics and resources. This newsletter has a high open rate and we regularly review analytics, gleaning which topics and resources were the most interacted with. To show appreciation, we send a gift to every client at the end of each contract, as well as holiday cards and gifts to our full past and present client list.

Where do you think you get most of your clients from?

Lead generation is always the question, right? While the answer for most may be yes, my answer is ‘somewhat’. I would say 90% of our qualified leads and new clients come from referrals, so our focus is always less on gap strategy and laser-focused on retention and saturation of existing market segments.

If I’m not looking at referrals, my second best source of new clients comes from traditional market research and outreach through Linkedin or email.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.taylorbrandconsulting.com
• Instagram: @taylorbrandconsulting
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michelle-taylor-2b4653152/