Business to business public relations is bought badly more often than almost any marketing service, because the thing you are actually purchasing, a person's relationships with a handful of reporters and analysts who cover your category, is invisible on a proposal. What appears instead is a package of activity counts and a list of publication logos, and those two things can be produced by a firm with no relationships at all. The good news is that the invisible part is testable in a single conversation if you know what to ask. This page covers what these agencies really do, how to test the claim, and how to measure work that pays off across quarters.
What the work actually consists of
Four distinct services usually sit inside a business to business retainer. Media relations, meaning individually researched pitches to named reporters on your beat, which is where earned coverage comes from and where the senior time goes. Analyst relations, briefing the research firms whose reports appear on your buyers' shortlists, which is a different discipline with its own calendar and its own etiquette. Thought leadership, meaning ghostwritten bylines, commentary and speaking submissions, valuable when your executives hold a real position and hollow when they do not. And awards and speaking submissions, much of which is administrative and some of which is pay to play. Ask for the retainer to be broken down across those four, in hours, because a proposal that presents them as one number usually means the cheapest of them will absorb the time.
Testing sector relationships in one conversation
Ask a candidate to name the five journalists and two analysts who matter most in your category, and to say when they last spoke to each of them and about what. A firm with real relationships answers immediately and specifically, and will often tell you which of those reporters will not be interested in you and why. A firm without them will describe a media list, a distribution network or a database. Then ask for the last three campaigns they ran in your sector, what coverage resulted, and what they pitched that went nowhere. The second half of that question is the one that matters, because everyone can present the wins. A candid answer about failure tells you how they will talk to you in month four when a launch does not land.
Coverage, links and where the two disciplines meet
Business buyers research quietly, so coverage matters partly because a buyer reads it and partly because it shapes what appears when they search your category later. That second effect is why so many retainers now blend media relations with link-earning work, and it is worth being explicit about which you are buying, because they are measured differently and staffed differently. Where links are the goal you should be comparing digital PR agencies rather than traditional media relations shops, and either way the links have to be earned rather than placed. Google's spam policies treat links intended to manipulate rankings, including links in paid placements without appropriate markup, as link spam, so any promise of guaranteed placements with links deserves a direct question about whether money changed hands and how it is disclosed.
Measuring work that pays off across quarters
Monthly lead counts will make good business to business public relations look useless, because the buyer who reads a piece in March may enter a sales process in September. Build a scorecard with three layers instead. Activity, meaning pitches sent, replies received and briefings held, which tells you whether the retainer is being worked. Output, meaning coverage in publications your buyers actually read, share of voice against named competitors on your core topics, and analyst mentions. Outcome, meaning referral traffic, branded search volume, inbound enquiries that cite a specific article, and eventually pipeline recorded in your own system. Agree all three before the first month, and agree that impressions and advertising value equivalents will not appear in the report, because neither measures anything you can bank.
Questions people ask about b2b pr agencies
What retainer length is realistic?
Six to twelve months at minimum. The first weeks are messaging, research and list building, and journalist relationships take time to produce replies. A three month trial usually ends just as the work begins to function, so negotiate an honest review point rather than a short term.
Do we need a sector specialist?
In most business to business categories, yes, and the test is the relationship question rather than the logo wall. A specialist knows which reporters cover your niche, what they have already written this quarter, and what they will refuse. A generalist will offer you a database.
How does this differ from consumer PR?
Audience size stops mattering. A trade publication read by a few thousand of exactly the right people beats a national mention read by a large audience of the wrong ones. Judge outlets by whether your buyers read them, never by traffic estimates.
Are paid placements ever appropriate?
Sometimes, when they are disclosed as advertising and bought for reach rather than credibility. What they are not is earned coverage, and links inside them need appropriate markup, since Google treats links meant to manipulate rankings as spam regardless of where they sit.