All relationships, whether professional or personal, are based first and foremost on a level of trust. This is the foundation of any successful partnership, and building a rapport with clients based on trust is one of the most crucial aspects of long-term success in public relations. After spending a decade working in media relations across the architecture, design, construction, engineering, and real estate industries, these are some lessons I’ve learned to create stronger long-term partnerships between an agency and its clients.
Consistent Communication & Transparency
While (most) clients don’t necessarily require a play-by-play of your efforts, what you’re working on should never be a secret. Mostly, clients care about how you’re pitching their content and want to collaborate on the strategy. Taking the time to fill them in, whether via emails or conference calls, can go a long way toward increasing their trust and level of comfort with ongoing outreach efforts. When it comes to updating clients, I always adhere to a guiding principle: treat it as a conversation, not just a transaction. Our discussions should focus on collaboration, brainstorming, and exchanging ideas. It’s about bringing forth new concepts to explore and discuss together.
Update emails or phone calls should allow you to connect and collaborate to get clients excited about the strategies you are putting in place to accomplish their goals. While the content and frequency of communication are crucial, the manner in which it’s conveyed is equally important. Over the phone, a controlled and confident tone can communicate excitement. However, nonverbal cues are also vital; gestures like smiling, making eye contact, and nodding demonstrate attentiveness, agreement, and eagerness to move forward and put ideas in place. Remember, client communication is about sparking dialogue and conversation and should flow—if they zig, you zag! As you present your points, keep a close eye on what resonates most with them and which aspects of your continued communication yield excitement.
Through consistent communication and transparency, you build a foundation of trust that fosters long-term partnerships. Effective communication is a two-way street, and by encouraging feedback and listening actively, you can tailor your approach to create more successful outcomes and enduring relationships.
Honesty & Empathy
As you build a specific client relationship and foster a greater level of trust, your clients will begin to view you as an extension of their internal team. In this way, having hard conversations with clients becomes far easier. While it can be stressful communicating that a specific pitch, topic, or initiative wasn’t successful, clients appreciate direct feedback that helps pragmatically inform future efforts. Additionally, if something goes wrong, bring it to their attention with solutions ready to make sessions productive and future-oriented.
No matter the level of established trust, it’s important to remain empathetic in your communication. This helps clients feel heard during challenging conversations and reinforces the idea that you’re both on the same team, working together towards a shared goal. One example of these strategies in action involved our efforts to secure exclusive media coverage for a client’s architectural project. After communicating the opportunity with the client, going through the interview process, and passing along relevant information to our media contact, the publication ultimately decided not to move forward with the exclusive. In determining how best to communicate this difficult situation to the client, my team was open and honest, acknowledging the level of frustration that they must be feeling, apologizing for the inconvenience, and promptly outlining our ideas for the next steps. Despite initially being discouraged, the client appreciated that we proactively provided solutions, and after moving forward with expanded outreach, we secured another exclusive placement in a priority publication. This incident served to increase their level of trust in our team significantly, as they now trust us to give hard news while keeping practical solutions to reaching our broader goal in mind.
Education and Expertise
When it comes to helping clients understand the reasoning behind our recommendations and strategic thinking, teams should realize that simply telling your clients the overall strategy won’t be effective in building mutual respect and trust. Helping clients to better understand the tactics being utilized while educating them on the reasoning behind your ideas makes the process more collaborative as a whole and better communicates why we make certain decisions. Understanding our process beyond the surface-level is an oft-forgotten but absolutely essential means of enhancing trust.
For example, one of my teams was tasked with securing a desired press placement for a new initiative. Despite our best efforts, the pitching strategy we outlined didn’t land with the media contacts we had initially anticipated. In response, we overhauled our strategy, outlining additional angles to leverage for outreach and targeting new reporters. To the clients outwardly, it could seem discouraging to shift gears, and might be perceived as a problem with the project’s key narratives. But, due to our willingness to educate them about the PR process, and the constant necessity to shift and reconsider potential story angles, we were able to alleviate their worries and put together an updated strategy that yielded several high-level placements in target outlets. Moving forward, they continue to trust us to make the right decisions in terms of reassessing and pivoting content as needed because they understand our process.
Adaptability & Flexibility
Part of making these relationships more resilient involves building on the existing level of trust when it comes to the aforementioned necessity of adjusting strategies to accommodate changing needs or goals. Showing your commitment to providing results and willingness to change tactics in the face of differing opinions shows your dedication to meeting their goals, creating a positive feedback loop in which they trust you to accommodate their thoughts and opinions, while they trust you to give your advice and best recommendations based on your expertise. The more you can position yourself as an ally who is both receptive and reliable, the more likely your clients are to trust your ability to guide them through challenges and toward their objectives.
