How to Increase Sales and Sign Clients Using PR

Learn how to increase sales and sign more clients using public relations techniques.

Listen to the podcast on this subject here.

In this blog, I will review four tactics you can use to increase sales and sign clients by leveraging PR wins and tactics. 

In my experience, more people are generally familiar with PR being beneficial in expanding reach or what we call “top of funnel”. Top of funnel refers to activities carried out to create awareness about a brand, person, or product. Here’s an example:

Person A was unaware of you or your brand. You then have a PR win – such as a press feature – that enables them to learn about you; they decide to follow you on Instagram – love what you post – and sign up for your newsletter. They are now officially in your audience or network and depending on how you have your marketing structured, they could be quite literally in the first stage of your marketing funnel. Either way, they have progressed from not knowing you at all to choosing to be a part of your community. 

So while most people understand one of the primary purposes or benefits of PR is expanding reach and top of funnel, a large majority aren’t as familiar with how to extend the shelf life and return on investment (ROI) of PR beyond the initial reach win.

In order to understand how to increase sales and sign clients using PR, we must learn how to leverage PR beyond the initial top of funnel win. Here are 4 PR tactics that effectively extend the shelf life of press. 

PR Tactic 1 – Promote Your Win

The first way to leverage a PR win to increase sales and sign clients is to share the win, aka promote it. Share the win across your social channels – Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, etc. Send it out via your newsletter. Post about it in community threads or networking groups you’re a part of. Some shy away from promoting PR wins because they’re afraid of coming across as “braggy”, but if you want to make more money, you have to move past this.

The more you share and promote your win, the further the given win’s reach expands. Also, bonus – the more eyeballs or shares a given piece of press receives, the healthier an article’s SEO becomes (aka Google will push it up in rankings). The better the SEO, the greater the potential for, yet again, further reach.

Tactic 2  – Update Your Assets

The next tactic is to make sure you are updating your assets post feature.  Here is a list of core assets you should update after each press win: 

• Your website → from a press page, to any logo slide shows, etc. (P.S. If you don’t currently have a press page, it would be a good idea to create one if you are trying to increase your sales.) 
• Your media kit
• Your bios → i.e. if you were just featured as an expert in Forbes, make sure that is highlighted in your bio!
• Your Social Profiles →  Consider adding big wins to your social profiles and bios (such as LinkedIn and Instagram). Utilizing “As Seen In” language can be incredibly effective at helping you stand out and establish credibility. 

Ultimately, let your PR win help solidify your credibility and authority. Whether you’re a product-based business, service, or otherwise, external third-party endorsement can play a large part in helping establish buyer trust. Buyer trust is a critical component in increasing sales and signing clients. 

Tactic 3 – Integrate The Win Into Your Sales Process:

Tactic three is to utilize press wins as an asset in your sales process to provide value. Here are a few ways you can do this: 

Example 1: Did you recently write a how-to byline for Adweek? If you are a coach or agency owner and just got off a sales call with someone who clearly needs help with their messaging, send them an email follow-up post-call extending the resource. This provides value AND shows them that Adweek thinks they’re credible (so maybe they should too!) 

Example 2: Looking for ways to reengage a dry or dead lead (someone who stopped responding or ghosted you?) Send them a “this made me think of you” email with your latest press win – make sure the win itself provides some sort of relevant value. In fact, spell out the relevance directly in the email. 

Example 3: If you have a product-based eCommerce business, do you have an abandoned cart email marketing sequence? If so, consider integrating the fact that Cosmo Magazine Awarded you “X” in one of the physical follow-up sequences. That credibility drop might just give buyers the extra vouch of validity they need to press purchase. 

In summary, allow yourself to get creative in how you integrate your press wins into your sales process. 

Tactic 4 – Repurpose and Reshare:

Don’t “one-and-done” your PR win promotions. While promoting a given win directly after it has gone live is important (see Tactic 1), to extend its shelf life, make sure you are repurposing and repromoting it far beyond the initial drop. 

I want to give you a personal example here. I co-authored a byline for Create & Cultivate with the co-founder of my second company Ready Set Coach in 2021. It was on ‘5 Numbers you Should Know When Launching a Coaching Business.’

About 4 months after the article had gone live – which was great for generating top of funnel (in fact, we booked multiple sales calls just from that one piece),  we decided to use the topic of that article to create a new list-building freebie. Specifically, we made a mini e-book, credited Create & Cultivate for publishing and endorsing the piece, and gave the public the opportunity to access the content in a longer form way. This breathed new life into the win, built our email list, and allowed us to highlight the fact that a major media outlet had published and endorsed our teachings. 

Here are a few other ways you can repurpose a press win down the road:

• Post a Throwback Thursday post on social media
• Create a new graphic to share on IG 
• Discuss one key takeaway you had from the piece in the form of a tip or educational share 
• Repurpose the win into a new freebie (like I did for the Create & Cultivate piece)
• Write a blog post about the win – or highlight the win in a blog post in a relevant way
• Produce and share a quarterly recap report highlighting your PR wins
• Add the win to your marketing materials (similar to Tactic 3)
• Include the win as an extra line in your email signature 

The sky is the limit here really. 

I have seen clients benefit from a PR win more than 10+ years old. So even now if you’re thinking of that “once upon a time you were featured in” piece, it’s time to think about how you can give it new life to help you increase sales and sign clients.

Wrapping Things Up

I’m a huge believer that PR and press can make you money, and I know from years of experience that it can be directly tied to the bottom line. It all comes down to understanding HOW to utilize a given win, both when it goes live, and far beyond. 

If you want help creating a custom PR strategy that converts, feel free to reach out on Instagram @theprbar_inc or check out THEPRBAR inc. Bar Menu.