How WordPress agencies can attract new customers

If you want your WordPress agency to thrive and grow, you need reliable strategies to attract new customers.

The purpose of this post is to help you implement those strategies for your agency.

Below, we’re going to dig into a ton of tactics that you can use to get new customers for your WordPress agency. We’ll cover tried-and-true tactics like search engine optimization and paid ads, along with other less-discussed strategies like using agency positioning to attract new clients and offering value-added services to convert them.

To make this as helpful as possible, we’ll divide this post into three sections covering how to reach potential customers, how to use value-added services to attract/convert those customers, and then how to leverage your existing work to attract new customers.

Reach potential customers with smart marketing strategies

Before you can get paying clients, you need to find a way to connect with people and businesses that are interested in the services you offer.

In this first section, we’ll discuss some in-person and digital marketing strategies that can help you do just that.

Implement a strong search engine optimization strategy (SEO)

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a great way to connect with potential customers who are searching Google for terms related to your agency.

For example, if you’re a Philadelphia-based WordPress agency specializing in WooCommerce, you’d want to do your best to rank for queries like “WooCommerce development Philadelphia.”

Competition in search will depend a lot on your market and the services that you offer. However, even in high-competition markets, smart keyword research can still help you reach customers searching for less competitive phrases.

You can also consider building a more robust content marketing strategy to reach people at different stages of the sales journey. For example, you might create a blog post about how much a WordPress website costs, which could help you reach people earlier in the sales funnel.

To learn more about SEO, check out our huge post with 60+ experience-backed SEO tips.

Be active on social media

In addition to connecting with people through search engines, you’ll also want to meet them on social media, which is where most people spend most of their digital time.

There are two ways in which you can do this:

• Create profiles for your agency.
• Build your own personal following.

To the first point, you’ll want to set up profiles for your agency on all the major social networks. These give you an official presence and allow you to share relevant content and updates. Many agencies focus on LinkedIn, but don’t neglect other platforms like Facebook, X, Instagram, etc.

You don’t have to just rely on these business profiles, though. You can also try to grow your profiles, which helps you build a more personal connection with your customers.

For example, Mario Peshev, founder of DevriX, has over 22,300 followers on his own personal X page, which is more than the ~5,000 followers on the official DevriX account. A lot of people will have engaged with Mario before even learning that DevriX exists.

Our post on Twitter/X marketing strategies has some good tips for getting started with marketing on X.

Get listed in relevant business directories

Rather than finding your agency directly, some prospective customers will instead start their search using one of the many business directories that are out there.

To get in front of these people, you need to proactively list your agency in relevant directories.

Typically, this involves filling out a form or sending an email with some basic details about your agency. Some directories also might charge for listing, in which case you’ll need to decide if the potential benefits are worth the money.

For WordPress agencies, one great option is the Kinsta Agency Directory, which lists hundreds of WordPress agencies from across the globe. Prospective customers can filter by services offered, locations, average project prices, languages, and more.

You can also find other agency-specific directories, such as Clutch and AdForum, as well as general business directories, such as a local business directory for your region.

Specialize in a specific area and position yourself as an expert

Agency positioning can also be another great way to reach potential customers.

Basically, instead of just starting a “WordPress agency,” you want to pick a more specific area and become the go-to expert in that space.

Instead of just developing “WordPress sites”, you could be the expert in developing “online course platforms powered by WordPress”. You could even niche down further and be the expert in a specific LMS plugin, such as “LearnDash development” or “LifterLMS development.”

Or, instead of specializing in a specific type of project, you could specialize in a specific type of client, such as solopreneurs or nonprofits. For example, Surelutions, an agency in the Kinsta Agency Directory, specifically offers “nonprofit website design.”

Each time you niche down, your pool of potential customers grows smaller, which might seem counterintuitive. However, the upside is that you’ll have a better chance to reach and convert that smaller customer pool because you’re the expert in the services that they need.

It goes back to that old saying — would you rather be the big fish in a small pond or the small fish in a big pond?

Both models can work, and you certainly don’t have to position yourself in a narrow way.

However, if you already have expertise in a specific area of WordPress development, you can try positioning your agency as an expert in that space and see if it helps you attract and convert customers.

Attend in-person events for WordPress or local businesses

In-person events are a great place to network with potential customers and other relevant businesses.

To start, you can try to get to as many WordPress-specific events as possible. These could be official WordCamp events or just your local WordPress meetups — anywhere where you think the networking opportunities could be good.

Beyond that, you can also attend more general local business meetups, which can help you reach a different type of prospective customer who might not even know what WordPress is yet.

Many events will have dedicated networking times built into the schedule, which gives you a great chance to make connections. For example, WordCamp US 2024 had a dedicated networking block at the end of the day.

Speak at in-person or digital events to showcase your expertise

In addition to just attending events for general networking, you can also seek out opportunities to be a speaker at relevant events.

Not only does this give you a chance to reach potential customers, but it also helps you demonstrate your expertise, giving you a better chance to convert those potential customers into paying customers.

If you decide to position yourself as an expert in a more narrow area, you can also use these speaking opportunities as a chance to cement your expertise.

For example, Equalize Digital is an agency that specializes in website accessibility. The Equalize Digital team used this expertise to speak on WordPress website accessibility at WordCamp US 2024.

Beyond speaking at general WordCamps or meetups, you can also seek out more specialized talks. Keeping with the same WooCommerce development example, you could try to speak at WooSesh, a WooCommerce-specific online conference.

Typically, you’ll need to apply to be a speaker at these events. Many events will put out a call for speakers a few months before the event is scheduled to go on, so you’ll need to be proactive about submitting applications.

Build mutually beneficial connections with other agencies and freelancers

Beyond using networking to connect with potential customers, you should also use it as an opportunity to create mutually beneficial relationships with other agencies and freelancers.

If your agency focuses exclusively on creating WordPress websites, you could build a connection with another agency that focuses on the marketing side of things.

You can recommend that agency to your clients who need help with marketing, and the other agency can recommend your agency to clients who need website work.

You can even build these connections within the WordPress agency space. While you might think that all WordPress agencies are your competition, there are a lot of situations where collaboration makes more sense than competition.

For example, let’s say you’ve decided to position your agency in a more niche way and specialize in developing WordPress membership websites. You then build a connection with another WordPress agency that specializes in developing e-commerce stores with WooCommerce.

If that agency gets a client request for a membership site, they could pass that work to you. Similarly, if you get a request for an e-commerce store, you could pass that work to them.

Consider paid ads if it makes sense

If you want a guaranteed way to get your agency in front of prospective customers, you can also consider paid ads. Common examples would be using Google Ads or Facebook Ads to reach relevant customers.

This is not a requirement, and plenty of agencies achieve success without running these types of paid ads. However, it is still something that’s worth experimenting with, as you might find that it works well for your agency.

It can also help you achieve more immediate results while you wait for other strategies that take more time to develop, such as SEO.

If you do go this route, make sure that you set up proper analytics so that you can track conversion rates and see the return on investment (ROI) of your ads.

Offer value-added services to attract new customers and keep existing ones

While all of the methods above can help you connect with potential customers, you still need to find ways to convert them into paying customers if you want your agency to be successful.

One of the best ways to convert and retain agency clients is by offering value-added services to help separate your agency from the competition.

Host your clients’ websites for them

Rather than just offering one-off web development work, consider creating long-term website hosting and maintenance plans if you don’t already offer them.

These types of value-added services can make you more attractive to potential customers and help you convert them into paying clients. What’s more, it turns them into a long-term customer rather than just a one-off project.

You’ll get the ongoing revenue from that hosting plan, and you’ll also be first in your customers’ minds if they ever need additional development work in the future.

While you can actually handle the hosting yourself, a more hands-off option is to partner with an agency-friendly managed WordPress hosting provider like Kinsta.

With Kinsta’s agency hosting plans, you can focus on other tasks while still being confident that your customers benefit from Kinsta’s managed WordPress infrastructure.

Offer faster website performance than other agencies

If you offer a value-added hosting service for your agency’s customers, another way to differentiate yourself is to offer faster performance than other WordPress agencies.

This is especially important in recent times because of the emphasis a lot of potential clients put on Google’s Core Web Vitals metrics, such as Largest Contentful Paint (LCP).

Beyond keeping your clients happy, having fast-loading client sites also makes your portfolio more effective. If prospective clients see that the prior websites you’ve built are optimized for performance and load quickly, they’ll be confident that you can achieve the same for them.

Kinsta’s agency hosting can handle performance optimization for you, which means you can offer your clients fast load times without adding extra work for your agency.

For example, Cosmick Media achieved a 60% reduction in page load times across its 200+ client site portfolio. At the same time, the Cosmick Media team was able to spend 40% less time on optimizing client sites, which let them focus more on other areas (such as attracting new customers).

Keep your clients’ data safe and secure

Whether your clients are big or small, it’s essential that you keep their data secure if you’re going to offer these types of hosting services. Beyond implementing security protections, you’ll also need a strong backup policy to protect client data from any other issues.

Data security will be high on most clients’ minds, so being able to tell them all the ways in which you protect their data can be a great selling point. As with performance, it can also help you differentiate your agency from competitors.

With Kinsta’s agency hosting, your clients’ sites will benefit from the built-in security protections of Kinsta’s managed platform, including web application firewalls (WAF), malware scanning, DDoS protection, and more.

Beyond that, Kinsta will automatically back up every client site daily and store those backups in secure off-site locations.

For example, Bookswarm was dealing with DDoS attacks on its servers, which affected multiple client websites, caused issues with client satisfaction, and consumed the Bookswarm team’s time. By switching to Kinsta, Bookswarm was able to end these DDoS issues and remove a lot of stress from the Bookswarm team.

Offer easy scaling as your clients’ needs grow

Whether your client is starting at zero or already has a thriving business when they come to you, it’s a good bet that their needs will change over the course of your relationship.

Being able to seamlessly scale and adapt to these changes can be a huge selling point over other agencies that might not be able to offer that flexibility. It also means that clients will never outgrow your offerings, which is important for maintaining relationships and avoiding churn.

Of course, offering scalability on your own platform can be difficult, which is another reason why you might want to consider Kinsta’s agency hosting. We have an entire post on how Kinsta offers scalable hosting for agencies and how this can help you grow your agency.

Show off your existing work to convince prospective customers

Once your agency has some existing clients, you can leverage those relationships to help you reach potential customers and more effectively convert them into paying clients.

In this last section, we’ll review some strategies to use your existing work to attract new work.

Build a portfolio of your work

Creating a portfolio of your previous client work is one of the most straightforward ways that you can showcase the quality of your work to potential clients.

If your agency is still young, you might showcase every single client project in your portfolio. For larger agencies, you might choose to curate some of the projects you’re the most proud of.

Here are some examples of portfolios from both large and small WordPress agencies to give you some inspiration:

• 10up
• Digital Skyrocket
• Bookswarm
• Torro Media
• WP Creative

To set up your portfolio, you could use a dedicated WordPress portfolio plugin, or you could create your own solution using custom post types.

Showcase testimonials from happy customers

Displaying customer testimonials on your website is another great way to showcase the quality of your work.

A lot of agencies will display these testimonials on the homepage and other key pages, but you can also create a dedicated testimonial page to display them.

Beyond adding testimonials on your website, you can also feature them on your agency’s social media profiles.

Here are a few tips for effectively using testimonials:

• Try to showcase testimonials from well-known clients, if possible. While all testimonials can be useful, being able to showcase positive words from well-known industry figures will be the most effective. In the example above, you can see that 10up showcases a testimonial from the former CEO of TechCrunch.
• Find a testimonial for each of your key service areas. For example, if you specialize in membership websites and e-commerce stores, you should try to get testimonials for both types of projects.
• Ask permission before posting anything. Make sure your client understands where and how you will be using their testimonial before you share it publicly.

Ask customers to review you on review platforms

In addition to displaying customer reviews on your agency website, you can also encourage customers to leave reviews on other platforms such as Google, Clutch, Trustpilot, and anywhere else you think prospective customers might be looking for you.

For customers, finding these reviews on third-party platforms can make them seem more authentic and less filtered.

You can also embed these third-party reviews on your website and use them as testimonials, which can be effective for the same reason. Check out our guide on embedding Google reviews on WordPress to learn how to do it.

Create your own more in-depth case studies in key areas

While your portfolio gives your potential customers a look at your finished product, many customers will also be interested in the process itself.

To provide this type of information, you can consider creating a few in-depth case studies for some of your best projects. As with testimonials, try to spread these case studies over your key service areas.

For example, if you specialize in WordPress membership sites and online courses, you might create one case study that covers a membership website and another case study that covers an online course. That way, potential customers can read a case study that applies perfectly to their situations.

You can check out this Harvard Gazette case study from Human Made to get an idea of what it might look like.

Participate in other companies’ case studies

Beyond creating your own case studies, you can also volunteer your agency to be part of another business’s case study. If you’re smart with the information you provide in these case studies, you can use them as another way to showcase your expertise and attract new customers.

For example, many WordPress agencies happily use Kinsta to host their clients’ websites. To showcase this, we’ve published a number of case studies on how WordPress agencies are using Kinsta’s hosting platform to achieve more business success.

If you read some of these case studies, you’ll see that they also do a good job of promoting the agency and showcasing how each agency creates great experiences for their clients. Check out the Client Success Stories page and use the Agency filter to find some examples.

Summary

Learning how to get clients for your agency is essential for achieving long-term success.

To reach new customers, focus on finding ways to get your agency in front of prospective clients, converting those customers with strong offers and value-added services, and then using those happy clients to help you reach even more people.

If you want to get a start on reaching potential clients, you can list your agency in the Kinsta Agency Directory today.

If you’re interested in using Kinsta for your agency hosting, check out Kinsta’s agency plans to learn more and get started.

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