One way for getting new clients is a recommendation from old ones

New clients and new cooperations are like a fuel for growth of the agency. One way for the realization and getting new contracts is taking part in competitions that we like to call “pitches” or “tenders”. Besides of potential growth of income, those competitions are actually an opportunity for overcoming new challenges, professional development and strengthening reputation. Within our regular #VoxPopuli polls, this month we tried to find out how clients see PR agencies and what is important for them while choosing an agency.

You don’t know until you try it

We posted our poll on Instagram and the results showed that more than a half of the participants (60 %) are not using agencies for public relations. Surprisingly, 73 % of the participants do not want to cooperate with an agency. On the other hand, 88 % of the participants who had cooperated with a PR agency had positive experience. For 60 % of the participants, the ability of PR agencies to provide “the look from the outside” is crucial for the cooperation. In addition, 40 % of the participants believe that the most important advantage of PR agencies are their resources.

Recommendations and references are very important

When it comes to choosing PR agency for cooperation, the answers were very similar. Almost 90 % of the participants prefer agencies which have good recommendations. While choosing an agency the quality of the communication proposal is more important than financial offer. Moreover, 89 % of the participants thinks that one of the very important factors while choosing an agency are also references in the same industry. We also asked our followers is the size of the communication team important to them – 44 % of the participants said that it is important to them, while 56 % of them thought that the size is not crucial.

PR agencies should be “one stop shop” partners

Except on the Instagram, we checked opinion of our followers on LinkedIn. Almost all participants (95 %) think of PR agency as a partner and often involve them in development of their communication strategies.

Some participants also emphasized that it is important for them that the agency covers different areas of the communication, which supports the principle of an agency as the “one stop shop”. In the last question of the poll, participants needed to choose between two very important segments of service, consistency and innovation. That question shows some differences in followers’ opinions on Instagram and LinkedIn. On Instagram, two thirds of participants give advantage to innovation, while LinkedIn users give advantage to consistency of the service.