Detouring disappointment

Burnout is in part, a result of repeatedly paying the disappointment tax in creative services. What does that mean - and how do we avoid it in the future?

If you work in freelance content creation or the creative services industry in one way or another, you’re likely familiar with the circumstances and emotions that arise when it feels like you’re on the same page with a client, only to find out you were on different continents entirely.

When we feel we’ve done all we can to stay organized, intentional, and in alignment with our clients from the jump, learning that they’re anything but satisfied is a one way road to burnout - and it’s something I like to call the disappointment tax.

As professional communicators, feeling like we’ve miscommunicated with a client is one of the most frustrating things we deal with - especially when we’ve gone out of our way to thoroughly document every meeting and ideation session.

The disappointment tax can transcend far beyond professional settings - and I’ll certainly get to that in future writings - but today, I’m going to be discussing how it applies to freelancers, contractors, and even in-house digital media creators. When it comes to managing relationships up, down, and sideways, the context for this particular discussion doesn’t particularly matter.

Even decades of communications experience becomes null and void if your client doesn’t know how to ask for what they need.

In most organizations, the content creator (and by content creator, I am referring to anyone who leads or participates in the management of an entity’s copywriting, social media, branding, campaigning, etc.) may have the most direct line of communication to the C-suite or most senior person at their respective organization. For many freelancers, you are warm to the idea of meeting with a business owner, influencer, or non-profit director on a weekly or bi-weekly basis - and the direction of that entity’s content relies heavily on what is discussed and agreed upon in these candid and often sprawling conversations.

As creative people, we deal in sprawling. We see every twist and turn in our idea-generating conversations as an opportunity to brainstorm. In my experience, this is where we start to create opportunities to diverge from the “end results” your client or CEO might have in mind. So, where is your client coming from? This is where we need to put on our strategy hats as freelancers (and business owners, or department coordinators).

Understanding the kinds of campaigns and big ideas that your client thinks are totally cool is a great place to start, even if doing something similar is totally impossible.

It’s important to remember that we are all consumers of marketing, and it’s pretty much inescapable. But that also means that oftentimes, our client’s brains have set expectations for what a campaign or social media feed should look like long before they even know how to articulate it themselves. But the expectation of an equitable or similar end result is there nonetheless.

While we know the design and copywriting lingo inside and out, your client or client contact may be assuming that you’ll, say, take their mission statement and turn it into a year-long drip campaign that looks just like one from a massive corporation with a marketing department the size of a small town.

The gap between what a client wants and what they know how to communicate is where our disappointment tax lives. In order to avoid it - or at least have it happen less often - we need to understand our client’s motivations and frames of reference for what they find valuable - and figure out what exactly it is we’re “imitating” before we ever reach the starting line.

Many clients don’t realize what they’re really looking for is strategy - and that this is not the same breadth of experience as someone who executes on an existing marketing plan via copywriting services, graphic design, and the posting of said content. That isn’t to say that you don’t likely have tons of strategic experience to share - but one could easily burn through an entire alloted month of billable time establishing a strategy before ever even reaching the articulation phase.

Separating content that drives sales from content that builds engagement from content that purely exists to demonstrate an identity or core value is a great place to start.

I think it’s safe to say (or at least I say this to my clients) that most digital content falls under one of these three categories. And the most important one to get clear on from the start, unless you’re an e-commerce integration expert, is that 99% of social media is not going to be responsible for generating sales. It’s bad practice, and it often results in unsubscribes, less engagement, and less public trust.

By no fault of their own, we commonly find that our client’s focus or ideas about what will create success for them is completely disconnected from what's going to benefit their business or organization - especially specific to what can realistically be achieved on social media. Ironically, it can get really tough to advocate not only for  yourself, but for somebody else’s business or vision once you’re fairly certain you know where it is you should be starting.

Here’s the kicker on not paying that disappointment tax: even if they say they don’t care, make your client review, at a bare minimum, the copy that you plan to use for each piece of content, the goal of that unique communication, and how you plan to measure its success.

Be friendly (and firm) about the fact that not every piece of content will have a “benchmark” for achievement. Make sure your client understands that this focus on creating solid posts or blogs that only exist to look good and build identity, frees up time for more strategic posts based around generating engagement - as opposed to sales.

So I’d love to hear from you - have you figured out your own ways to navigate preventing disappointment when pitting analysis against identity? Are there other ways in which you’ve paid the disappointment tax with a client or supervisor, and did you learn from it

You don’t have to share - but we all know there’s enough work, disappointment, and confusion out there for all of us. - SBB

In the podcast version of this installment, I tackle managing client expectations across varying levels of experience, generational divides, and neuro differences. Listen to it here.