Bridget Willard | SaaS Marketing Agency

Author: Bridget Willard

  • Get Paid: You Have to Follow Up on Payment

    So you did some work. How do you get paid from your clients? Here are a few of my tips.

    In no way should this be considered legal advice. If you need that, please consider my friend Rian Kinney and eCommLegal.

    My Collections Background

    Collections is where I started in my adult career back in 1991 when I worked at a Trucking Company. I was trained by my late husband who was an amazing businessman. Many of the techniques came from him. So, thanks Mercier.

    As the Accounts Receivable and Collections Manager for Evans Roofing (2001-2006), I was proud of my record. I had less than 4.6% of my receivables over 45 days.

    When I started my own business in October of 2017, I began offering a service on my secret menu. I will do collections for your WordPress agency for 20%. I had quite a few successes.

    How do you bill clients?

    In this case, my first question is how do you bill clients? For myself, and my former employer who is an advertising agency, I do no work until I get paid. So, that solves a lot of collections issues right there. I don’t bill by the hour, I bill by the service.

    Don’t be afraid of the Phone Call

    Call and ask for the Accounts Payable department. Be polite. Ask for help. Take notes. Accounts Payable professionals know that a list of accounts and their due dates is called an aging. You can say you’d like help getting it off the aging or getting it paid. I’ve had better success asking to get an invoice off of the report. 

    “Can you help me? I’d love to get this off of our aging? Did you receive the invoice?”

    [bctt tweet=”Asking for help is not a sign of weakness; it shows empathy and fosters connection. ” username=”BridgetMWillard”]

    Getting Paid By Clients Requires Prevention

    Not everyone can pre-bill work. In that case, I believe in prevention. Let’s get the billing done in a way that prevents confusion and mistakes.

    Mistakes were the number one reason why we weren’t paid on time at the roofing company.

    1. Do you have a contract? If you don’t, contact eCommLegal.
    2. What is the correct billing address?
    3. Who is the billing contact? It may not be the same as the development contact.
    4. What are the terms on your invoice? Is it prepaid, due on receipt, net 15, or other?

    “But a well-written contract can be your best friend if worse comes to worst. While you could rely on your emails, a more formal contract will solidify the details of your agreement and take care of any potential ambiguities. An official contract will also be easier to interpret and refer to in the case of a dispute.” Pressable

    Getting Paid Requires Sending an Invoice

    It sounds crazy but you’d not believe the stories I’ve heard about people jumping the gun on client work without sending an invoice. While you’re at it, be nice. Thank the client for the work. It makes a difference.

    Make sure your invoice is as clear as possible referencing the agreed-upon scope of work. It should have your contact information (phone, email, mailing address). If your work will be above $600, send them a W9 at the same time. This ensures the accounting department will not hold up your payment because they don’t have the required paperwork.

    “The first thing we noticed in the data is that when it comes to invoice payment terms, being polite really matters. A simple “please pay your invoice within” or “thank you for your business” can increase the percentage of invoices that are paid by more than 5 per cent!” Freshbooks

    Getting Paid By Clients Requires Follow Up

    You’re not a jerk because you’re following up on your invoice. The squeaky wheel gets the grease. Don’t be afraid to make phone calls.

    Are you using accounting software like Freshbooks? It should have an aging feature and notification. Once an invoice turns 15 days old, it’s time to start contacting the client. It’s possible that the invoice from your accounting software didn’t hit their inbox (spam, junk). So be polite and ask them if they received the invoice.

    Sometimes Getting Paid By Clients Requires Escalation

    If this is true, you can hire a collections agency, a billing party, or reach out to people like me who do this on the side. Sometimes, a client needs to see a filled-out small claims notice. Sometimes, you need to stop work. We did that all the time in construction. It’s fair to protect your boundaries.

    Once an invoice is 30 days old, I start to escalate the language. Also, I keep records of when I talked to someone (via email, phone, chat, etc.) and what their response was. This helps so that you’re not rattled when they said they cut the check.

    You may also consider physical mail.

    [bctt tweet=”Physical mail shows that you are serious. You have no idea if their email is working or if they’re no longer employed.” username=”BridgetMWillard”]

    Also, cutting a check is easy. Mailing is is a different thing altogether. Don’t be afraid to ask for clarity. “Are you the right person to speak with regarding this account?”

    Don’t Be Afraid of Small Claims

    When it gets bad (90 days), I send a copy of the small claims form that I filled out. That way the client knows I’m serious. If it’s much more than small claims allows for your state, you can either consult your attorney or CPA. It may be cheaper to write it off as bad debt at that point.

    Don’t be afraid of small claims. Most states walk you through the process online. Decide if you want to set your own personal boundaries. It’s okay. Really. I promise.

    What’s the worst that could happen? You lose a client — a client who doesn’t pay.

    [bctt tweet=”Don’t be afraid of small claims. It’s about setting your own boundaries. It’s okay.” username=”BridgetMWillard”]

    I’ve been to Small Claims twice when I was in roofing and won both times because of the contract. The judge said, “Did you agree to this work? Did they do the work? Did you pay? Then pay.”

    Breathe. Bad debt happens.

    Bad debt happens to us all. It’s a cost of doing business. But if you can stay under 5% bad debt, you’ll be golden.

    1. Make sure you’re sending the right invoice to the right person.
    2. Believe that you do deserve to be paid.
    3. Do not let the client bully you (scope creep).
    4. Stop work until you are paid. Be polite, but firm.
    5. Decide if you want to keep that client.
    6. Continue being awesome.
    7. I believe in you.

    Below are some boilerplate examples you may use. Please use them. Get paid. Pay your vendors. Succeed.

    Example Collections Emails

    15 Days

    Subject: Following Up on Invoice [Invoice #] from [Your Company Name]

    Body:

    Hi [client name],

    I’m following up about Invoice [Invoice #] in the amount of [dollars] that was due [date]. Did you receive it?

    Please let me know if you need anything further to process payment.

    Kindly,

    [Your name]

    30 Days

    • Start calling the client if you haven’t already.

    Subject: Past Due Invoice [Invoice #] from [Your Company Name]

    Body:

    Hi [client name],

    Can you help me?

    I’m following up about Invoice [Invoice #] in the amount of [dollars] that was due [date]. It has been more than 30 days which is concerning.

    When I emailed you on [date], you said that [whatever the reason was]. Is this still the case?

    I’d like to get this invoice paid.

    Kindly,

    [Your name]

    45 Days

    • Start calling the client if you haven’t already.

    Subject: Severely Past Due Invoice [Invoice #] from [Your Company Name]

    Body:

    Hi [client name],

    I’ve written to you a few times about past due Invoice [Invoice #] in the amount of [dollars] that was due [date].

    Unfortunately, we’ll have to stop working on this project until your account is caught up.

    Kindly,

    [Your name]

  • Fruit Requires Patience – Marketing on Social Takes Time

    When planting your marketing seeds, you can’t expect fruit immediately. Fruit, like marketing on social media, requires patience.

    I recently purchased a strawberry kit from Target. The “growing medium” had to be prepped, the seeds planted, and it should be watered regularly. Furthermore, during the first year, the plant shouldn’t be allowed to bear fruit. Whoa.

    “In the first year, pick off blossoms to discourage strawberry plants from fruiting. If not allowed to bear fruit, they will spend their food reserves on developing healthy roots. The yields will be much greater in the second year.” The Old Farmer’s Almanac

    I can’t expect this plant to have “results” in a month. Yet, so many people expect dramatic results with social media marketing or product marketing in a month.

    Gardening and marketing both require patience. You must plant your brand awareness seeds. You need to phase the growth. You must do the work to ensure its health — in the long term.

    Watch my IGTV video below for more and let me know if I can help.

    https://www.instagram.com/tv/BvNO1Fvnb9X/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet

     

     

  • In Marketing There is No Magic — Just work

    Magic. Magic awes us. Magic deceives us. Marketing tools are awesome. But they don’t do the work for you. If you want effective marketing for your business, pay less attention to magic tricks and more on the work.

    Do the Work

    I used to say there is no dream without the work. It’s true.

    So often our work has long term results. It’s no different with strategy. To craft a strategy and then wait for results takes faith — faith in the process, faith in the forecasting, faith in the tactics. 

    What does the work look like? Well, that depends upon your goals and budget, of course, but here’s a list off the top of my head.

    • Follow accounts that align with brand goals.
    • Share content from brand’s strategic partners.
    • Share content that aligns with brand goals.
    • Curate guest bloggers.
    • Write posts that engage the audience.
    • Interact with said audience (this means on blog comments, social media shares, etc.)
    • Be on the lookout for trends that will affect brand.
    • Advise clients based upon trends, industry news.
    • Interact with brand in their preferred form of communication (email, Slack, etc.)
    • Create and manage content calendar.
    • Check for replies and engagement during waking hours (6am – 10pm).
    • Be available for consultation on integrating social with whole marketing and product plan.

    Mimicking Social with Automation

    We love to hate Big Brother, data mining, and lack of privacy but in marketing we like to buy tools that simulate social interaction.

    Building a business outside of your first circle (your friends) requires blogging then a push to social (content marketing) plus engagement on those profiles (relationship marketing). There is no way you can do this with only tools.

    You wouldn’t buy a hammer and think you could build your own house.

    Why wouldn’t you also hire a professional to build your brand?

    Good marketing is more than tools you can buy.

    When you work with a professional social media manager, you get boots-on-the-ground insight that helps shape and modify your marketing plan to meet your business goals.

    You’re not getting automation.

    Sure tools can do things like help get impressions.

    Having impressions isn’t the goal of social media. A brand can have a lot of impressions for the wrong reasons (broken code, offensive tweet, etc.).

    The goal of social media is to engage an audience and gain or maintain affinity.

    In-House Teams

    So you have in-house people to implement a strategy. Great. Do they know which tactics will be most effective? Aside from posting, how will they do with replies?

    A person can implement a tactic but without understanding the why of the overall strategy, it is easy for the implementer to go astray. Blindly following trends, being distracted by the Kardashians of the Internet, and inside jokes are just some of the ways social can go wrong — quickly.

    The Brand’s voice must be protected in every social post. This means that the implementer must think out the effects (both good and bad) of any action before it is done. On social media, this thought process lasts seconds, if not minutes. Thoughtful engagement and relationship building is key to building a successful brand — that builds a business — in the long term.

    This is why it is important that a brand contracts with a professional social media manager or trains thier in-house staff.

    Both my very good friend Robert Nissenbaum of tso.media and I are available to train in-house teams.

    Marketing is a Business Expense

    Regardless of how you choose to market your business, it is a use of resources and, therefore, an expense. To grow your business beyond the near future, you will need to decide how best to use those resources — outsourcing a marketing professional or training in-house staff.

    A necessary evil? Maybe. It depends upon if you want to grow your business.

    I’ve been managing social media for businesses for over ten years and watched them grow. Is yours next?

  • On Leading the Make WordPress Marketing Team

    With the recent announcement that my friend Joost de Valk has been appointed the Marketing & Communications Lead whose role includes leading the Marketing Team, this is an ideal time for me to retire from my role on the Make WordPress Marketing Team.

    “Secondly, Joost de Valk ( @joostdevalk ) will take on the role of Marketing & Communications Lead. You might know him as a long time core contributor and plugin author. His role will be to lead the marketing team and oversee improving WordPress.org, related websites, and all its outlets.” Matt Mullenweg

    Leadership in the WordPress Project is meant to ebb and flow. My good friend and mentor Andrea Middleton gave a great talk at WordCamp Cincinnati describing it as a bazaar where people come in and out. You should watch it.

    As a single woman who is self-employed, this is a good opportunity for me to spend my billable time on something, well, billable, and doing much-needed client work.

    Leadership is Behavior Not a Title

    I am ridiculously proud of the work that I’ve done over the last two years building a marketing team that was previously lacking momentum and motivation. I built a team of eight Team Reps. We have published over 50 pieces of content including the About Page for 4.8, a Case Study for Rolling Stone, and the Trac Quickstart Guide. We now have 202 people on our Trello Board. That’s up from maybe a dozen people at Contributor Day WCUS 2016. By the time I was leading at WordCamp Europe in 2017, we had 30 people.

    It’s the job of the leader to see who is participating and what their passions and skill sets are. I’m proud of the Team Reps I’ve recruited and the company culture we have created in Slack — someone is always being warmly welcomed as soon as they join the team.

    I picked up Dwayne in Atlanta, who along with Yvette who I got in Paris, have set up and managed our Trello board and tasking system. Dwayne has been my right-hand man, scrum master, and collector of tears. Yes, there were tears. It was a tough job leading a Marketing Team with no front-facing publishing ability besides the Marketing Blog and WordPress.TV. Together, we formulated a vision that would be successful and be a good use of the highly-qualified marketers that were donating their (very expensive) billable time to this beautiful project.

    Jen has been my SEO editor and champion for the team, always welcoming everyone and helping at Contributor Days. Maedah has been a great rep, always helping with notes and eventually being the one who publishes them. She and Yvette do that now.

    Mike has taken on the initiative of high-level projects like Five for the Future and interfacing with the Growth Council and their projects. Harry has been a great project manager, setting the week’s agenda, and has taken over leading the case studies that David Skarjune began before he retired. Siobhan joined us after Nijmegen and has been trained by Dwayne to lead the weekly meetings in addition to taking on an editorial role.

    All of them have helped us build a handbook and partner with the design team to create a brand and style guide to help guide how the team functions.

    I am confident that we have a working and well-oiled machine. There is good infrastructure and leadership for this transition with Joost. Since Joost has been a major part of the Meta Team, the Marketing Team is now in a position to help contribute to front-facing projects on dot org.

    Would I do it again? Yes.

    Whether or not Team Rep or Team Lead is the appropriate title, I’m proud of my behavior and if asked to do it again, knowing what I know now, I would absolutely do it again. I am proud of the high-level strategies, work recruiting, and relationships that I’ve built in order to make this project be as successful as it is, given the handicaps it had, in a short period of time.

    Retiring from the Team Rep role does not mean I’m leaving the community or the project. I believe in the WordPress Project. I believe in the WordPress community. I believe in the people that I have met in this project. At my core I believe in the mission of WordPress to “democratize publishing“ and “give a voice to the voiceless.“

  • A Case Study: Marketing Consulting with Jocelyn Mozak

    From time to time, a case study becomes a good way to reflect on results for both you and your current and potential clients. This is my first for one of my very good friends and I’m proud that she’s also a client.

    https://twitter.com/JocelynMozak/status/1084120768240181248

    The Client

    I met Jocelyn Mozak of Mozak Design at WordCamp Seattle last year. Her Portland, Oregon based business is going well and she often presents and coaches on systems and processes that help other businesses. However, she wanted to build up her brand awareness about her coaching program and training for speakers and wasn’t sure how that could happen with Twitter.

    The Challenge

    Jocelyn was all-in on Facebook. That’s where her tribe was. That’s where her clients were. That’s all she focused upon. But after sitting down at an impromptu lesson I gave to Robby of Beaver Builder at WordCamp Seattle 2018, she was in.

    I could sense her excitement and that was contagious.

    She DMd me. I invoiced her. Caldendly appointments were made. Once the Zoom call began, I had a chance to change her mind about Twitter. People who know me know how much I believe in it as a tool.

    https://twitter.com/JocelynMozak/status/1062393906279649280

    The Consultation

    The first call was the test. Test of the coach on the consultant. Could her audience really be elsewhere except her beloved Facebook? How could she connect with people who might like her coaching services? Once I began to teach her about lists, however; I think she saw the way she could grow her influence.

    One of the things I enjoy (I know, it’s supposed to be about the client) is that during a consultation I can give specific rather than generic examples. So, for this call, I suggested that she create a list of WordCamp speakers starting with those slated to speak at WCUS. This allows her to spend time engaging with her peers in the speaking world and continue to build those lists. Since she is an avid speaker at a variety of conferences, the light bulb went on and she went to work.

    Look at those lists!

    After that, we briefly discussed hashtags and their purpose as well. I’ve personally seen her engage more on Twitter in our circle of friends and watch people tag her to get their attention.

    The Second Call

    Okay, Bridget. If you can do that for Twitter, what about LinkedIn. (Quote for dramatization).

    Yep. We set up another call over Zoom (she likes to record them) and we went through specific use cases on why she should be there.

    Who is her audience? Women leveling up their careers and speaking engagements.
    Where do those people spend their time? LinkedIn.

    It made perfect sense.

    The Results

    I’m stoked with the results. I knew Jocelyn was sitting on a gold mine.

    Twitter:

    Jocelyn tweeted only 17 times in October with 1,880 impressions. In November that number went up to 220 with 40,200 impressions. December was 276 tweets and 48,300 impressions. I’d say those are impressive results.

    LinkedIn:

    After Jocelyn put our plan into action for LinkedIn, the more professional network, she’s had a 60% increase in profile visits.

    Look at that increase!

    Google Analytics

    Google Analytics is the ultimate in metrics. The whole point of social media is to build brand awareness so that people will visit your site. I love that her traffic has dramatically increased from Twitter (54%) and LinkedIn (2000%).

    Love the green numbers!

    The ultimate result, to me as a consultant and teacher, is her newfound excitement for platforms that can help her build her own coaching business to a new level.

    Bridget’s Twitter coaching has been transformational. I used to use Facebook exclusively and avoided Twitter at all cost. After a single session with Bridget I understood exactly how to wrangle Twitter and make it work for my business. Now Twitter is a key part of my social media marketing. I’m building relationships and growing my online visibility. I even, I dare say, prefer it to Facebook somedays!

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