Choosing a B2B PR company on published evidence

Agencies with a verified published price

How to run a selection process for business to business PR

1. Name the outcome you are actually buying. Category credibility before a funding round, air cover for a sales team entering a new segment, analyst recognition, executive profile, or crisis readiness are different mandates with different teams and different costs. Write down which one is primary. Firms will happily quote for all of them, and a scope that includes everything gets you a little of each.
2. Define the target publication list yourself. List the ten or fifteen outlets, newsletters, podcasts and analysts your buyers genuinely read, and ask each candidate to comment on that list rather than presenting their own. This one step removes most of the vagueness from a PR proposal and immediately shows which firms have real relationships in your category.
3. Agree the reporting standard before signing. Insist on a monthly report that names the outlets, the relevance to your list, the pitches sent and the responses received, rather than an aggregate impressions figure. Advertising value equivalence and audience reach numbers are the two conventions that most often make an unproductive month look productive.
4. Pin down the team, the term and the exit. Ask who is assigned, how much of their week you are buying, whether the senior person in the pitch will be on the account in month four, what the minimum term and notice period are, and what happens to your media list, press assets and relationships if you leave. Get the last point written down.

What we record about each firm

Our index records what each firm publishes on its own website, with the date we checked it, rather than what an award page or a directory badge asserts. That means published starting prices where they exist, disclosed minimum engagements and minimum terms, named clients and stated practice areas. Where a firm publishes nothing on price, we record the absence rather than inventing an estimate, because a fabricated figure is worse than an empty field.

Public relations firms publish pricing less often than any other category in this index, which is a fact about how the trade sells rather than about quality. Minimum engagements are more commonly disclosed, and those are useful on their own, since a firm with a substantial monthly floor and a long minimum term can be removed from consideration before anyone spends an hour on a call.

How the work is priced and where the money goes

Most business to business PR is sold as a monthly retainer that buys a share of a team's time, typically covering a set number of story angles pitched, a content programme of bylines and commentary, media list maintenance, and a monthly report. Project pricing exists for launches, funding announcements and award submissions. Hourly billing is rare and usually appears only for crisis work. What varies most between firms is how much senior time is really in the retainer, since juniors do most of the pitching almost everywhere.

Because the deliverable is an attempt rather than a result, the scope has to specify effort in a way both sides can check: how many angles a month, how many bylines drafted, how many analyst briefings arranged. A retainer without those counts cannot be judged and cannot be compared with another retainer. Ask for the counts, then compare candidates on the same set.

Claims, sponsorship and the lines that must not blur

Earned coverage and paid placement are different things, and the difference matters legally as well as reputationally. Where a firm arranges sponsored content, an influencer post or a paid placement, that connection has to be disclosed clearly, and the FTC's endorsement guides FAQ covers the situations that arise in practice. Ask each candidate to state plainly which of their placements are paid, which are contra arrangements and which are genuinely earned.

The same applies to the claims inside your own announcements. Performance statistics, customer results and category firsts all need substantiation you can produce if challenged. Agree who holds that file, who approves a release before it goes out, and whether the firm carries professional indemnity cover. Raising it early is also a good test: a serious firm has answers ready because clients have asked before.

Questions people actually ask

How long before a PR retainer produces coverage?

The first weeks are usually spent on research, messaging and building a pipeline of angles, so meaningful coverage typically arrives after that groundwork rather than in month one. Judge the first quarter on the quality of the angles and the responses received, and the second on placements in outlets from your own target list.

Should we count coverage volume as the measure?

No. Ten mentions in outlets your buyers never read are worth less than one substantial piece in the publication your buying committee circulates. Score coverage against the target list you defined at the start, and ask the firm to report against that list rather than against a total.

Do we need a PR firm or a freelance practitioner?

A capable freelancer with the right relationships can outperform a mid sized firm for a narrow mandate, at a fraction of the cost, and the trade off is capacity and continuity. Firms make more sense where you need several disciplines at once or coverage during a crisis. Ask each candidate what happens when the assigned person is unavailable.

Can PR and search work be bought together?

They complement each other, since earned coverage produces the kind of references that support visibility generally. Keep them scoped, priced and reported separately even where one supplier does both, so neither can borrow credit from the other and you can see what each is worth.

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