Client acquisition is the lifeblood of any business, but this applies in particular to the PR industry, where building and maintaining solid client-facing relationships is vital.
For this reason, it’s important to understand how we can keep reaching out to more clients in the constantly evolving landscape of the PR world.
If you are a company in this very competitive and demanding industry and would like to learn more about this topic, then this article is for you.
Defining client acquisition and its importance
When we talk about client acquisition, we refer to the process of identifying prospective clients who could become active, paying ones—and, ultimately, stick around for the long haul. Client acquisition efforts rely on acquisition marketing strategies that can attract and convert the right leads.
Acquiring new clients is paramount if you want to grow your business, establish your brand, sharpen your competitive edge, and keep thriving in a demanding, ever-crowded marketplace. If your PR business has a steady flow of both new and retained clients, you are in a much better place to face any potential and sudden changes and challenges in your industry.
But with the future of communication technologies leading us more and more towards digital-based relationships, how can you make sure that you achieve this?
Client acquisition: the top channels to use
There are lots of different channels that you can leverage if you want to acquire new customers as a PR firm, but the main ones include the following:
- Website
- Blog
- Email marketing
- Social media
- Customer service
Below we will examine how you can leverage these channels in the best possible ways.
The seven best client acquisition tips to try
1. Improve your SEO
When building your client acquisition strategy, don’t underestimate the powerful connection between PR and SEO, because with a strong SEO strategy, you are automatically in a much better position to gain higher visibility and reach a much larger audience.
Think about it. The vast majority of people these days turn to the internet whenever they need something. From a small kitchen appliance to the services of a PR agency, Google and other search engines hold the key to success and visibility.
So, conduct an in-depth SEO audit and analysis that takes into consideration elements such as:
- Most common keywords
- Meta content
- “Evergreen” content
Then, use those findings as targets for your digital content marketing, by incorporating the right keywords, creating great metadata, and producing web content that remains high-ranking for years to come, whether you are writing about dog food, skincare products, or digital services like Google Sheets ClickUp integrations.
2. Start a blog
If you thought that blogging was for foodies, fashionistas, and travel-obsessed people, you need to think again. As a PR agency, you can hugely benefit from this great marketing tool. However, you will need to put together a strategy first.
Take a look at what some of your most successful competitors are already doing, blog-wise—not to emulate them, but for inspiration only. What topics do they seem to write about the most? What are their clients most engaged with, in terms of blog content? Could you do something similar, but targeted to your own audience?
Then, identify a person or two within your team who could be in charge of writing blog content. Don’t worry if they mostly work from home—by implementing the right PC remote desktop solutions, they will still be able to log into your firm’s systems at your head offices whenever they need to create and publish content.
And remember: whenever you write a piece of content, you’ll need to keep referring back to the SEO findings from the previous section, so that content has a better shot at ranking highly on SERPs.
3. Step up your email marketing
The links between PR and marketing are not up for debate, so your next tip for acquiring new customers should reflect that. In particular, you should incorporate email marketing into your overall strategy.
As a PR agency, it’s likely that you already have a ton of email contacts, so why not put them to good use? These, in fact, may not always be actual clients: in many cases, you will find that they are people who subscribed to your website but never took any action or did any business with your firm.
If, on the other hand, you are just starting out in the PR world and have close to zero email contacts, you can still build an email list from scratch. There are many ways to do so, from driving paid traffic to a webpage to placing a lead magnet on your website homepage that entices people to leave their email address in exchange for a “freebie”.
Whichever way you go about it, the bottom line remains the same: a solid email marketing strategy can genuinely help you reach a wider, more interested audience. Start with a monthly newsletter where you showcase your most recent achievements, inform your readers of anything exciting happening at the company, and launch deals and promotions.
If this takes hold nicely, you could consider expanding the scope of your email marketing strategy or sending more frequent emails.
4. Launch a referral program
Referral programs are a fantastic and very low-cost way to grow your business through client acquisition. They are also extremely simple: all you need is a bunch of loyal existing customers who are willing to recommend your PR services to other people in their industry.
As part of the referral program, you could entice your clients by offering deals and discounts, or other types of rewards that you think might be of interest to them. Referral programs, therefore, not only help you reach out to more potential clients, but they also encourage repeat purchases from long-established ones.
5. Boost your customer service
Boosting your customer service is essential in the competitive PR industry, and leveraging innovative tools like Person Search can greatly enhance your interactions with clients. Person Search allows you to access comprehensive contact information, social media profiles, professional history, public records, and online presence of individuals. By incorporating Person Search into your customer service strategy, you can personalize your interactions, anticipate client needs, and provide a more tailored customer experience.
As a PR firm, the way you communicate with your client is always scrutinized. Therefore, to attract a larger clientele, it’s imperative that you review your customer service strategies and work out whether there’s any room for improvement (hint: there almost certainly is).
For example, have you considered implementing some of the newest cloud-based telephony solutions? These tools can help you dramatically enhance the way you interact with your clients.
You’ll want to strive for near-perfection, as it’s all too easy to lose clients in your industry if you don’t demonstrate how much better you are compared to your rivals. But there’s more.
Not only will a great customer service strategy help you to win new clients: it will also allow you to retain them in the long term, thanks to higher loyalty and satisfaction.
6. Consider partnering with industry influencers
The power of influencer marketing is indisputable when it comes to increasing your brand’s visibility. But have you ever considered that teaming up with a relevant, successful influencer could help you skyrocket your client acquisition, too?
When you join forces with someone who has a similar audience to yours, you can instantly access their followers and, by doing so, boost brand awareness and visibility—both essential aspects when it comes to acquiring new clients.
7. Create and share video content
Ask anyone about the most engaging, educational, and entertaining type of content, and the most common answer will almost certainly be “video”. Yes, video marketing has been on a steady rise for years now, and it’s showing no sign of decline.
One of the main reasons why video is such a powerful marketing tool is—you guessed it—because it helps companies to gain more qualified leads and up their conversion rates, while simultaneously increasing web traffic and brand awareness.
When putting together your PR video marketing strategy to acquire more clients, remember that diversification is key. This means that you’ll want to produce a few different types of videos, publish them to a range of different channels (from your .au domain to your social media pages) and keep rotating among them on a regular basis.
For example, you could plan for one educational, one entertaining, and one informative video per month. In your educational video, you might want to show your audience how to do or achieve something that’s relevant to the PR industry.
Your entertaining videos could simply revolve around social media challenges or fun and unexpected parts of the job as a PR agent. Informative videos, on the other hand, should provide interesting information about your brand—think about, for example, live videos, Q&A streams, and behind-the-scenes clips.
The takeaway
Your PR strategy is incomplete if it doesn’t include ways to boost your client acquisition. In our comprehensive guide, we reviewed what client acquisition is, why it’s so important for businesses in the PR industry, and how you can enhance it.
From email marketing to blogging, from influencers to video content, there are lots of different ways to skyrocket your client acquisition. And now you are ready to give these a try!
