The Flip Phone in a Smartphone World: Why I Might Have Just Fired a Client

As well as messing about with bikes and maxi-scooters, and pretending I live the occasional high life on the Costa del Sol (fat chance), my day job is as a freelance web designer and "digital marketeer." What a completely pompous, pointless sounding title that is. It’s total bollox, but it pays the bills, so I digress.

In my marketing role, I work with small firms to help them get the most out of their online presence. Most of my clients aren't exactly tech-savvy, so they usually just let me get on with it and do what I know is right for them.

But some... some are not only tech-clueless, they also haven't a foggiest how the online world actually works in 2026. Despite that, they have some very rigid ideas about what they should be doing every month. Sometimes, as a freelancer, you have to try and drag them kicking and screaming into the modern age, even if it means you might lose a well-paying gig. This is one of those stories.

I reached that point again. You know the one. You’re sitting at your desk, looking at a client’s brief for the coming month's campaign, and you realise that if you yet again just do what they’ve asked, you’re essentially helping them set fire to their own cash.

The temptation is always to just shut up and take the cheque. Especially when it’s a long-standing, decent-paying client. But there comes a time when "just doing your job" starts to feel a lot like professional negligence.

I’ve been working with a firm stuck in a 1990s marketing loop. Their approach is basically: "Here is a product, it costs X amount, please buy it." In this day and age, that isn't marketing; it’s just white noise.

I’ve spent months (years, actually) trying to explain that the world has moved on. Search engines aren’t just looking for keywords anymore. AI is looking for authority. If your website looks like a dusty brochure and your blog reads like a sales catalogue, the internet is going to ghost you.

I even built them a demo website for free to show them what was possible. They nearly pulled the trigger on a new, all-singing, all-dancing site, but then their "existing web company" (the blokes who presumably enjoy being paid to do sweet FA) whispered in their ear that everything was fine. So, they stayed with the status quo.

"We don't get much business from our website," they told me, "so there's no real point in investing in a new one." I tried to point out the glaringly obvious oxymoron there, given they pay me a nice sum every month to drive traffic to the bloody thing, but the logic was lost on them.

So today, I decided to play the nuclear card.

They sent me the usual monthly brief: "We’ve got a great deal on product X, please buy product X... NOW!" I promptly binned it and put together the campaign I knew they should be doing. No "Buy Now" buttons, no blunt sales pitches. Just pure, authoritative advice that proves they actually know what they’re talking about.

I didn't ask for approval. I knew they’d knock it back. I just published the first element of the campaign, a blog post, straight to their website and set it to "live." I then told Google the new content was up and to get indexing it.

Before getting on with the rest, I fired off an email. I told them what I’d done and sent them the link. I told them straight: we are playing the long game now. We’re going to build some real authority in your sector, and we aren’t doing any more "please buy from us" campaigns. And if you don’t like it, I’m out.

I honestly thought I’d just talked myself out of a nice monthly retainer. But I figured I’d rather be fired for being right than kept on as a "yes man" while their business slowly vanishes from the search results. If you’re going to be an analogue company in a digital age, don't be surprised when the world stops calling.

I sat back and waited for the fallout.

The reply came sooner than expected, but it wasn’t what I thought: "We love it! It makes us sound really professional and on the ball," they said.

"YES! I KNOW! IT’S WHAT I’VE BEEN TELLING YOU FOR TWO FUCKING YEARS!" was the response I had to delete from my drafts. A simple "Great, I’ll get on with the rest of the campaign" felt like a more balanced way to handle it.

So there it is. Two years of trying to faff about and convince them, when all it took was for me to ignore their instructions and just do it anyway.

What was it Henry Ford said? "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." Or something like that. The point is, I’m the expert (allegedly) in this relationship. Instead of trying to convince the client what they needed, I should have just given it to them. Because, well, that’s really what they’re paying me for.

There’s a message there for all freelancers. Stop asking for permission to do a good job.