Public relations agency: three different businesses sell under that name, and they cost very different money

A public relations agency is hired to get other people to say things about you: reporters, editors, podcast hosts, analysts, award judges, conference programmers. What you are buying is access, editorial judgement and persistence. Several quite different businesses trade under the label, and sorting out which one you need comes before any shortlist, because a communications counsel at twenty thousand dollars a month and a launch publicity shop at three thousand are not expensive and cheap versions of one service.

The three businesses hiding behind one label

Read a proposal with this table beside it and most of the confusion clears up in ten minutes.

Kind of firm	What the fee buys	A normal month looks like	Where it is the wrong hire
Earned media shop	Pitching, relationships, story development, a steady drumbeat of coverage	Several pitched angles, one or two placements, commentary responses, a coverage report	You have no news and nothing anybody has not already read
Communications counsel	Senior advice: positioning, messaging, spokesperson readiness, issues and crisis planning, internal and investor comms	Documents and decisions rather than clippings	You wanted articles and bought a messaging framework
Publicity and placement shop	Volume distribution, listicle inclusion, contributed columns, paid and sponsored slots	A count of appearances, many of them in outlets nobody in your market reads	You are selling to specialists who can tell the difference
Digital PR team	Linkable assets, original data, outreach aimed at publishers that pass ranking credit	Research pieces, earned links to named pages	You needed reputation management, not authority signals

Public affairs and investor relations are a fifth category, aimed at regulators and shareholders. Ask every firm which row it sits in. A good shop names one and tells you who to call for the others.

What a US public relations retainer costs

Figures first, because every other decision moves once you see them. These bands are my own working read of the US market, assembled from proposals and rate cards rather than from any survey, so use them to spot an outlier in a quote.

• Solo practitioner or two person boutique: roughly 3,000 to 8,000 dollars a month. One senior person, a narrow beat, real relationships in a single category.
• Independent agency of ten to forty people: 8,000 to 20,000 dollars a month. An account lead, a senior pitcher, an executive, a defined monthly output.
• National or global network office: 25,000 to 60,000 dollars a month and upward, usually on a twelve month term.
• Project fee for a launch, funding announcement or report: 10,000 to 45,000 dollars, running six to ten weeks either side of the date.
• Senior counsel by the day, for issues work or a bad week: 1,800 to 4,000 dollars.
• Media training: 3,500 to 12,000 dollars for a session with recorded practice interviews.
• Pay per placement: 1,000 to 5,000 dollars an appearance, and worth declining. It pays somebody to chase whatever is easiest to land, which is rarely what moves your business.

Most of the gap between two quotes for one brief comes from five things: how hard your category is to place, since health, finance and anything regulated takes longer; whether you have genuine news; how available your spokespeople are; how many markets are in scope; and whether a usable newsroom and image library already exists or has to be built in month one.

Most firms ask for a six month minimum, which is reasonable rather than a sales tactic. Month one is research and list building, month two is first contact, and coverage in a serious outlet is usually a conversation that started eight weeks earlier. A three month trial measures setup.

Separating a working media operation from a release mill

Eight questions, and the answers sort a shortlist faster than any case study deck.

• Which five journalists did you speak to last week, and what about? The strongest single question in this category. People who do this work answer instantly and specifically.
• Show me a pitch that was turned down, and what you sent next. Rejection is most of the job. A firm with no record of it has not pitched much.
• Who holds the relationships, will that person be on my account, and what share of their week do I get? Get names and hours into the proposal.
• How do you build a media list for a brief like mine, and what would you refuse to pitch? Listen for recent reading of the beat rather than a database export, and for a firm willing to name something it will not do.
• Do you use paid or sponsored placements, and how are they labelled? Where any part of a programme involves payment for content, the disclosure obligation sits with your brand as the advertiser. The Federal Trade Commission has been clear for years that a paid endorsement or sponsored article must be identifiable as such, and an agency acting for you does not absorb that duty on your behalf.
• What do you need from us every week? Honest answers include a spokesperson on standby, fast approvals and customers willing to talk.

Walk away from guaranteed placement offers. In editorial media the only way to be certain of an appearance is to pay for it, and that is advertising with a different invoice.

What goes in the agreement, and what you keep

Communications contracts are short and the arguments are always about the same eight things. Settle them before the first invoice.

• The media list and contact history are yours, exportable on request and at the end. Some firms call this proprietary, so decide now rather than at the handover.
• The coverage archive as dated links plus captured screenshots, held somewhere you control. Clip services expire and publishers delete.
• Messaging documents, the question and answer bank, bios and boilerplate as editable files, not locked PDFs.
• Photography rights. Headshots and product shots commissioned through the agency need a licence for your own use, in perpetuity and worldwide, or you will be re shooting in two years.
• Named team and conflicts. A say in the replacement if the senior pitcher leaves, plus a list of current clients in your category and an undertaking to disclose new ones.
• Notice and handover. Thirty to sixty days, with a written handover list attached to the contract: list, archive, assets, in flight pitches and open journalist commitments.

When public relations is not the purchase you need

• You have no news. No product, no data, no customer willing to be named, no point of view. Spend the first money on the asset, usually original research from your own numbers, then hire the agency to place it.
• One event, one date. A freelance publicist, commonly 2,000 to 6,000 dollars a month part time, handles a single launch as well as a firm will and leaves no retainer behind.
• You are generating news every week. That cadence, plus an internal communications load, is the point where an in house communications manager costs less per placement and knows the business better.
• You actually want demand. If the board wants leads by the quarter, say so out loud. Coverage builds the conditions for demand rather than filling a pipeline to a deadline, and a performance programme is the right line item for that.

What buyers ask before signing a communications retainer

How long before a PR retainer produces coverage?

First placements commonly land in weeks six to twelve for a firm starting cold, faster if you arrive with real news and an available spokesperson. Trade press moves quicker than national business desks. Judge month three on pitch quality and journalist replies, month six on placements.

Can an agency promise a specific publication?

No, and a firm that says otherwise is either describing a paid slot or overselling. What a good agency can commit to is a named list of target outlets, a pitching schedule against them, and an honest read on which ones are realistic for a company your size.

Is digital PR the same thing as public relations?

Same craft, different scoreboard. Digital PR aims at earned links and brand mentions from publishers that influence search visibility, so it favours data led stories and named landing pages. Traditional PR aims at reputation with particular audiences. Ask which outcome the monthly report will be built around.

What should the retainer deliver in a quiet quarter?

Agree it in advance and the quiet quarter stops being an argument: commentary placed against journalist requests, relationship meetings logged, a research piece built for next quarter, award entries written, spokesperson preparation done. Put the list in the scope so unused pitching capacity converts into something you keep.

The shortlist a reporter now sees before they call anyone

There is a step ahead of the pitch that did not exist a few years ago. A reporter checking who matters in a category, an analyst building a landscape, and a buyer drawing up a supplier list all increasingly type the question into ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude or Google AI Overviews and read a composed answer with three or four company names in it. That answer is assembled from text: coverage, reference pages, directory entries, bylined articles, your own site. Public relations produces most of that raw material, which makes this the one place a communications programme is already working and nobody is reporting on it. The five also disagree, so being named by two and missing from the rest is a specific gap rather than a general problem. AI Knows Us exists to make that readable: your category's real questions, put to all five, with each answer and its citations kept on record. Worth a look before the next quarterly review at aiknowsus.com.