Founder & CEO of MVPR – Automated PR for startups.
PR is an expensive outlay that has long been presented to startup founders as both an indispensable function and an opaque process, based on complex media relationships—usually exclusively held by PR agencies.
In parallel, I find that PR agencies have purposely ignored the need for proper, accurate data to feed into PR measurement and keep themselves accountable to clients who need a real ROI. In my experience, I’ve seen some agencies even take advantage of this opacity and of a general lack of knowledge and access in the space to force heavy retainers on companies that don’t have good alternatives, or know what their options are.
The truth is that a lot of what PR agencies do, founders, CMOs and their teams could probably do themselves. Because at an early stage, it’s not that complicated, and it can be integrated into existing marketing workflows.
PR has become way too expensive.
From my time working at one of the world’s largest PR agency, I had visibility on both small and large agencies’ retainers, which ranged from $5,000 to $20,000 a month circa 2020. Since then, over half of firms have increased their fees, some by as much as 20%.
That’s an incredible cost for startups, especially if it’s not clear how success is measured and there are no guarantees. On top of this, I’ve never heard a good answer from agency owners when the “measurement question” comes up. Most struggle to come up with smart measurement frameworks that are suitable to startups’ way of thinking, often reverting to article clipping lists or skewed media coverage “impressions” data. Call me a cynic, but we’ve all seen those reports that claim the announcement had a reach of 40 million readers.
PR teams in agencies are rarely trained in lean or agile methodologies.
The way a lot of PR agency teams are structured usually means you will be paying for different seniority “layers” that aren’t necessarily customized around your needs. Agencies price retainers based on the hourly rates of the people who will work on your team—and the more senior, the more expensive. There are always going to be a few senior people hanging around on calls to give direction to the juniors, and so the costs add up.
Sure, you’ll get more PR experience if you have more senior members on your team, but the people you’ll be working with day to day will be account executives and account managers, and it’s on their relationships with the media that your success will rise and fall. Until you’re established in the public eye, I find you’re unlikely to need the “senior” PR skills offered by agencies, though it does look good on proposals when you can see a lot of senior ex-journalists in your “Editorial Advisory” team.
So here’s how to create a low-effort PR engine in-house that just works.
What agencies don’t tell you is that you could actually do a lot by yourself, with the right tools and the right data. Most good PR professionals know that executing on an efficient PR strategy for early stage companies only takes 1-2 people and the tools capable of enabling them. The approach I have successfully used at my company is detailed below:
1. Create a clear and documented set of company values and messaging points.
2. Identify the audiences you want to reach with your content and what content they are likely to care most about.
3. Decide which stages of your sales funnel you want to influence and let that additionally shape your messaging.
4. Identify the journalists who write for those audiences.
5. Decide which tools you need to reach out to journalists and build relationships with them—all of which you can do with PR software or with CRMs.
6. Using those tools, share high-quality content with your target journalists to create a baseline of credibility for your team, and keep an eye on opportunities to contribute to relevant media stories in the making.
That’s it. If you need more in-depth branding advisory, you can probably get it on an ad hoc basis from companies that can help with strategic direction.
To provide a comparison between keeping things in house and using agencies or tools, my company found that the cost of PR services varies widely. Large PR agencies charge between $120k-$400k annually for seasoned teams, while boutique agencies offer services at $60k-$120k per year. Freelancers typically cost between $30k-$50k annually, depending on their experience and contract. In contrast, an in-house PR team costs around $36k-$60k annually, with PR software subscription costs ranging from $3k-$25k yearly. If you are running a startup, you may find in-house PR and software tools to be more cost-effective than agency services due to the layered seniority costs and broad service offerings of agencies—which you might not need at the beginning of your PR efforts.
Finally, no good PR activity exists without measurement. So if you do go down the DIY route, record the metrics when you start and that will give you a baseline. Track the increase in your domain authority, acceleration of leads through your funnel and ask companies when they book demos where they heard about you. Then, measure how effective you are actually doing PR—your percentage response rates from journalists, the time it takes you to draft or approve content and the average domain authority of the coverage you do achieve.
Doing this will allow you to experiment and improve, and when the time does come when you want to spend $300k a year on an agency, you’ll know exactly which messages work in which channels, and which part of the funnel you can use your spend to activate. Alternatively, you can also wait for AI to eat that sector, because, in my opinion, eventually, it will.
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