How to choose a PR agency: the short answer
To choose a PR agency, shortlist three that know your sector and the titles your customers read, give them all the same written brief, and pick the one that shows real understanding of your business, names the senior people who will do the work, measures results you care about and charges for the work rather than per placement. Chemistry matters too. You will be speaking to this team every week.
The rest of this guide covers the detail: whether you need an agency at all, what to look for, the questions to ask, the red flags, what it costs, and how to brief agencies and compare what comes back.
Why hire a PR agency, and when?
A good agency brings three things most businesses do not have in house: story sense (the ability to see what an editor will find interesting in your business), working relationships with journalists, and the time to pitch and follow up properly.
The usual moments to hire one:
- A launch or opening. A new hotel, restaurant, spa, development or collection that has to land with the right people at the right time.
- A growth push. You have capacity to fill, a new market to reach, or a price point that needs more credibility behind it.
- Search and AI visibility. Competitors appear in national coverage, Google results and AI answers, and you do not.
- Reputation. A planning dispute, a difficult run of reviews, or a sensitive change you need to handle carefully.
And the moments when an agency is probably not the answer yet:
- You need enquiries next week. Paid search and social advertising are faster.
- You could not handle more demand if it arrived.
- There is nothing new to say and no budget to create something, such as a study, an event or an expert programme.
- Your budget sits at the entry level. United Press puts entry and freelance retainers at £1,500 to £3,000 a month, and at that level a good freelancer will usually give you more senior time for the money than an agency can.
Agency, freelancer or in-house hire?
It is worth being fair about the alternatives, because an agency is not always the right answer.
| Option | Best for | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|
| Freelance consultant | Smaller budgets, one sector, a steady flow of local and trade coverage | Limited capacity, holiday and illness cover, narrower skills in data, design and search |
| Boutique agency | Premium brands wanting senior attention and a mix of PR and digital skills | Who actually does the work, and how many clients each person carries |
| Large agency | Multi-market brands, big launches, several audiences at once | Senior people at the pitch, junior people on the account |
| In-house hire | Businesses with constant news and budget for a salary plus tools | One person rarely covers strategy, writing, data and search, and media databases cost extra |
Many businesses end up with a mix: an in-house marketing lead who owns the brand, supported by an agency or freelancer for campaigns and national media. That is a perfectly good answer.
What to look for in a PR agency
- Knowledge of your world. They should know which desks and titles suit you, and why Country Life, Condé Nast Traveller and Cotswold Life each need a different story. Ask them to name journalists, not just publications.
- Recent, relevant coverage. Ask to see coverage from the last year for businesses like yours, and what their role in it was. A wall of logos proves little.
- Senior involvement. Find out who will write and pitch your stories day to day, and how many other accounts that person runs.
- A clear view of measurement. They should talk about business outcomes, such as enquiries, bookings and the searches that matter, as well as coverage.
- Clean methods. Earned coverage and earned links only. Google’s spam policies class links bought to manipulate rankings as spam, and that risk sits with your website, not the agency’s.
- Honesty. The best sign is an agency that tells you where PR will not help, or that your favourite idea is not a story.
- Professional standards. Membership of the PRCA or the CIPR, which both publish codes of conduct for members, is a reasonable minimum signal, though it says nothing about creative quality.
Questions to ask a PR agency
Use this checklist in the first meeting. Good agencies answer these easily. Weak ones change the subject.
- Who exactly will work on our account, how senior are they, and what share of their week will we get?
- Which journalists and titles would you approach for us first, and why?
- What coverage have you won in the last twelve months for businesses like ours, and what did you do to get it?
- What would you do in the first 90 days?
- What story would you lead with, and why would an editor care about it now?
- How will you measure success, and can we see a sample monthly report?
- How do you connect coverage to our search rankings, AI visibility and enquiries?
- Do you ever pay for placements, sponsored posts or links? The right answer is no, or a clear explanation of how any paid content is labelled.
- What do you need from us each month, and how much of our time will it take?
- What happens if a campaign does not land?
- What is the minimum term, what is the notice period, and what exactly does the fee include?
- Do you work for anyone who might be a conflict, such as a competing hotel or estate agent in the same area?
- Can we speak to a current client, and to a journalist you work with regularly?
Red flags when choosing a PR agency
- Guaranteed coverage. Journalists decide what they publish. An agency that guarantees placements in respected titles is either paying for them, relying on low-bar sites, or defining “coverage” very loosely. Guarantees are common at the link-building end of the market: BuzzStream found that about half of digital PR practitioners guarantee links, including 43% of its UK respondents. If you are offered one, ask exactly what is guaranteed and how it is achieved.
- Pay-per-link pricing. Paying per link rewards volume over quality and relevance, and pushes an agency towards whichever sites will say yes. A link from an irrelevant site does nothing for a five-star hotel’s reputation.
- Junior handover. The director who pitched for your business disappears after the contract is signed. Ask for named people in both the proposal and the contract.
- Vague reporting. Monthly reports full of “potential reach” in the hundreds of millions, advertising value equivalents or lists of press releases sent, with nothing on quality, relevance or business results.
- Long lock-ins. A 12-month contract with no break clause before you have seen any results. United Press describes three months as the baseline minimum and six as standard, followed by a rolling 30 or 90 days of notice.
- Mass distribution as the plan. “We will send your release to our database of thousands of journalists” is the opposite of good PR. Muck Rack’s 2026 survey found that 88% of journalists immediately disregard pitches that miss their beat.
- No questions about your business. If the proposal could have been written for anyone, it probably was.
How much does a PR agency cost in the UK?
Published UK benchmarks give a reasonable picture. United Press sets out the typical monthly retainer by type of agency:
| Type of agency | Typical monthly retainer |
|---|---|
| Entry level or freelance | £1,500 to £3,000 |
| Boutique or regional | £3,500 to £6,500 |
| Mid-tier specialist | £7,000 to £12,000 |
| Top independent | £12,000 to £25,000 |
| Global network | £25,000 or more |
Source: United Press, What is a PR retainer?
Other reference points:
- Essential Content’s analysis of 61 independent UK agencies found a mean retainer of £4,672.55 a month and a median of about £3,571.
- For digital PR specifically, BuzzStream’s survey (updated June 2026) found UK respondents’ average contract was $5,227 a month. Across all respondents, agencies averaged $6,357 and freelancers $4,200.
- On terms, United Press describes billing monthly in advance and a typical discount of five to ten per cent for a 12-month commitment.
Our own retainers start from £4,500 a month and launch projects from £9,500, with a three-month minimum and then 30 days of notice. Our pricing page explains what is included. Whoever you choose, the useful question is not the headline fee but how much senior time and genuine campaign work it buys, so ask every agency to spell that out.
How to brief a PR agency
A good brief saves everyone time and gets you better proposals. Keep it to two pages and send the same version to every agency on your shortlist. A simple template:
- About you. What the business is, who owns it, what makes it different, and your price point.
- What is new. Openings, launches, investment, new people, data you hold, milestones in the next 12 months.
- Your customers. Who they are, where they live, and what they read, watch and listen to.
- Objectives. What you want to change, in business terms: midweek occupancy, enquiries for projects over a certain value, a waiting list, recruitment.
- Target titles. The publications and programmes you would most like to appear in, and any you would rather avoid.
- History. PR you have done before, what worked and what did not.
- Spokespeople. Who can talk to the media, and how much time they have.
- Sensitivities. Planning issues, neighbours, private clients, anything that must stay out of the press.
- Budget. A range. Agencies cannot propose sensibly without one, and it filters out poor fits early.
- Timings. Start date, seasonal peaks, and when you will decide.
- How you will judge proposals. Tell them what matters most to you.
A note on free pitches. Asking agencies to produce detailed creative ideas for nothing is common, but it is costly for them and some of the best are reluctant. A short, focused response to your brief plus a real conversation often tells you more than a glossy deck.
How to compare PR agency proposals
Lay the proposals side by side and score each against the same criteria:
| Criterion | What good looks like |
|---|---|
| Understanding | They have played your brief back accurately and added something you had not considered |
| Ideas | Specific stories matched to named titles, with a reason each editor would care now |
| Team | Named people, their seniority and the time each will spend on you |
| Measurement | Targets tied to your objectives, with a sample report |
| Methods | Earned coverage and links only, with a clear policy on paid content |
| Terms | A clear fee, what is included, the minimum term and the notice period |
| Fit | You trust them, and they were honest about what PR will not do |
Weight the criteria to suit your business. For most premium businesses, understanding, team and ideas matter far more than a modest difference in fee. And take the reference calls seriously: ten minutes with a current client will tell you more than any proposal.
If you would like to understand the day-to-day work behind a retainer before you start talking to agencies, our guide to what a PR agency does sets it out. And if you would like us on your shortlist, our digital PR service explains how we work, or you can send us your brief.