If you’ve worked with us at Teal, you know that building strong client relationships is incredibly important to us and they’re built with care and intention. I’ve worked with clients who need support with a quick landing page, to multi-year engagements on brand strategy, website redesigns, and long-term digital marketing. In all of these projects, it’s important to foster trust and build a positive (and fun!) working environment. But successful projects are a two-way street—so how do you stand out as a great client?
Know Who You Are and What You Want.
Providing effective feedback starts with clarity. If you’re not grounded in your organization’s mission, vision, and goals, it becomes difficult to articulate what’s working, what isn’t, and why.
Before reviewing deliverables, take time to reflect on what your organization is trying to achieve and what success looks like for this project. When feedback is rooted in a shared understanding of priorities, it becomes more constructive and actionable.
Knowing who you are as an organization and who you are not helps keep feedback aligned with your goals. This clarity also makes it easier to involve the right voices at the right moments, ensuring feedback adds depth without pulling the work in competing directions.
For example, Women’s Suffrage National Monument Foundation (WSNMF) came to Teal looking for a rebrand, website redesign, and digital marketing. From the very beginning, the team knew who they were – their mission was to recognize an extraordinary moment in history to honor women’s fight for the ballot, communicating this story through both language and visuals. Because they knew exactly who they were as an organization, the process of bringing their brand and messaging to life was extremely cohesive. Feedback on deliverables was centered on tweaking things to ensure historical accuracy, but never brought their mission into question.
P.S. if you want a BTS look at our work with WSNMF, read our case study!
Be Honest.
This might sound obvious, but honesty is incredibly important in a client/agency relationship. You’re allowed to dislike something, miss a deadline, or need more time!
We spend time with you during the discovery phase to get to know your organization, your goals, preferences, and how you operate, so we can be the best partners possible. That said, we know unexpected things can come up during an engagement, whether that’s shifting availability or because you just didn’t like a design.
That is okay. What will set you apart as a good client is if you can tell us you don’t like something, and why. As a project manager, my favorite clients are the ones who meet their deadlines and communicate early and honestly. But my favorite ones are also the ones who want to hop on a quick call and let me know that their team needs more time for feedback. We’re flexible and will make the process and timeline work for your team, but that early communication is critical.
Providing honest feedback on deliverables is also incredibly helpful. This ties back to knowing who you are as an organization. Instead of “I really like the purple,” what adds depth to your feedback is, “I really like the purple, because it represents loyalty to the cause, and also feels very powerful.” Or, “I didn’t like the blue, because it feels cold and doesn’t represent the warmth of our org.”
We do our best work with direct feedback! By being clear and honest early, we can make updates or pivot quickly—instead of getting too far down the process and needing to roll things back.
Trust the Process…and us!
Trust your Teal team! We are a team of expert designers, developers, SEO & digital marketing strategists, and project managers who love what we do, and believe in your mission and work. We’ve been doing this for 16+ years, rooted in strong processes that adapt and flex for each project, and we’ll be your partner each step of the way. You’re the expert in your field; we’re the experts when it comes to your digital space. Partnering with organizations with a conscience is in our DNA and we can’t wait to work with you.
Picking an agency can be difficult – you’re jumping into a potential long-term relationship! Know that at Teal, we’re committed to building a partnership. We’re intentional, we communicate often (trust me, overcommunication is something we’re proud of), and we want you to have fun working with us. In return, we want you to feel true to yourselves—to be honest, share what you’re thinking, and know that we’ll bring your vision and work to life.
