Today’s guest post is by Victoria Harris.

Many PR consultancies spend a significant amount of their time and resources on proactively searching for new business and developing proposals.

Some larger agencies will have teams who spend all of their time on this area.

However, with increased competiveness due to the challenging economic climate, agencies would be short-sighted to focus disproportionately on generating new business, while neglecting retained clients.

Loyalty from retained clients can no longer be seen as a given.

In the 1980s, the average client-agency relationship lasted seven and a half years; yet by 2007, this was down to just three and a half.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are more than 7,000 public relations firms in the United States, so competition is fierce. (more…)