The Most Ultimate of Promotions Possible makes swag for trade shows. They sell it online through a WordPress site built with WooCommerce and use HubSpot landing pages. They are a small business of 2-3 people. Draig is the owner and a pretty savvy digital marketer who knows how to make changes to his sites.
What We Did For Them
We did a lot. Draig had us on a retainer for about a year and we coded a slew of new landing pages for him based on some pretty complex designs. Then we also built a new site in WooCommerce that allowed for people to build, quote and purchase custom enamel pins. The site is pretty awesome and even though he got ticked off with us most of the code that makes that site pop is still there. Draig was happy for a very long time. He had mentioned many times that he has worked with a lot of developers who might start off strong and then disappear after a while. He was happy that wasn’t the case with us…he wrote us a Google Review, HubSpot Review and gave us a Clutch testimonial.
What Happened?
Draig paused the retainer for a variety of reasons none of which were related to our services and wanted to ‘call on us when he needed us.’ Which is fine! We do work in project-based engagements. After he paused the retainer he noticed a *ahem* difference in the level of service in his opinion. Then the COVID19 pandemic hit which we think, with him being in the trade-show promotions business, hurt him a lot and he needed speed to market that unfortunately we couldn’t give him at that time. He felt we didn’t have the same speed, responsiveness and support levels when the engagement changed. He wrote a negative review on the HubSpot Partner Directory…so now there are two reviews in our profile done by him. He sent a scathing email to us saying we were just like every other dev shop he’s ever worked with; start off strong and faded away. He also said he deeply regretted hiring us for these projects.
What We Learned
We learned we need to caution clients that a switch from a fairly-large scale retainer to a totally ‘call you when I need you’ or project-based engagement that the service level will probably change. We could have done a better job of doing right by him and set expectations better. For sure. On the flip side, Draig has told us that every developer he has ever worked with starts out good and then trails off on him. We think there’s a pattern there and that probably has more to do with him than with the developers he’s worked with.