How Much Does PR Cost?
Ah, the big question every PR client has, and every PR expert dreads, because it requires an explanation that often borders on an education about what PR is, what it isn’t, and how different types of PR and PR goals require different pricing structures.
TL;DR Version
$5,000.
“Wait…, but for what?”
See, that’s what’s hard about pricing PR, it’s not as though there is something called “PR” and at one PR firm they charge $10,000 and at another they charge $5,000 and you can get from the $5,000 firm the same thing you would get for $10,000 from the other.
In other words, I’m afraid there isn’t much of a TL;DR version if we’re talking about PR broadly, but if you want to know what Canvas charges, we charge a flat fee per article placement, ranging from $5,000 to $60,000 per article, depending on the publication and type of article.
For example, if you want a mention (or brief quote) in a Forbes article, that will be $5,000. If you want a feature article in Cosmopolitan, that’s $60,000.
Most of the placements we do are in the $5,000 to $15,000 range, with discounts when clients pay for three or more placements upfront.
PR Pricing Detailed Version
Rather than asking how much PR costs, the better question to ask a PR firm is “What’s your minimum monthly retainer?”
Most PR firms charge a monthly retainer, meaning a set amount per month, and most will have a minimum number of months. If you sign up for a single month of PR on a retainer, that’s not enough time for the firm to actually get you anything. That first month will be strategy, planning, and getting ready to do outreach, but it’s unlikely pitches will start going out the first month. Even if they did go out the first month, if you haven’t paid for the second month then who’s going to take care of things when a journalist responds and says they want more info?
PR firms will generally require a minimum of four months to work with a client, although it may be 6-12 months. Retainer contracts may exceed 12 months in some cases.
Whether you’re an author looking for book publicity or a startup trying to get exposure in tech publications, your minimum PR retainer is going to be around $5,000 per month. That’s if you hire a smaller PR firm that’s not based on New York, London, Singapore, or another world city.
If you hire a NYC PR firm, you might struggle to find a retainer less than $20,000 per month. After all, $20,000 per month in NYC barely pays the office rent.
While minimum retainer amounts are in that $5,000 to $20,000 range, that’s for small stuff. If you’re a major corporation then you’re looking at retainers that are hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars per month, because you’ll probably need a dedicated team on your account.
There is no price for PR services at which it is a ripoff. There’s no such thing as paying too much for PR, if you get a positive ROI. What I hate to see is clients who come to us and say, “I paid a NYC PR firm $20,000 per month for nine months, and at the end all I got was a quote in a Forbes article and nothing else!” Yeah, that bums me out because we could have delivered that in one month for 1/36 the cost.
Managing PR Expectations
A ripoff in the PR world is when you pay for something and you don’t get what was promised. I guarantee anyone who paid $180,000 for PR and got a single mention in a single article was led to believe they would get more. That’s on the PR firm for not doing their job.
However, if a PR firm tells you, “For $10,000 per month, we expect that over the next six months we’ll be able to get you 3-4 articles in top-tier publications and 7-8 in 2nd-tier or industry-focused pubs,” and then they deliver that but you complain because you didn’t get on the front page of the New York Times or the cover of Forbes…well, that’s on you for having unrealistic expectations and not listening to what the firm said.
Avoiding PR Scams
If a PR firm makes promises and delivers less than promised, that’s not necessarily what I would call a “scam.” Maybe they thought they could get the results they promised but for one reason or another things didn’t come together as hoped.
A scam is when someone sells PR services with no intention to deliver what is promised. This happens a lot, but it’s almost 100% on the low end, with PR offers that are so cheap and promise so much they sound too good to be true. Examples of PR scams include:
We’ll get you into 7,000 publications for just $200!
See your name in the New York Times for just $800!
Get 10 articles in top-tier publications for just $2,000!
The only way anyone can tell you they’re going to get you into thousands of publications is if they’re sending out a press release that gets mass distribution. I’m sorry to say, these press releases will get published in thousands of publications, but nobody will ever see them. They aren’t indexed by search engines, they are in a “press” area of the publication where thousands of other press releases go to die, and they’re removed soon after they’re posted.
Someone may get your name in the NYT for $800, but it’s not going to be editorial content. They may buy a small add on a back page and put literally your name (and nothing else) along with 50 others names, or something sneaky like that, but you’re not getting into an article written by a journalist.
I hesitate to say, “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is,” because some people say that about us.
“You can’t guarantee PR!” they’ll say. My longer response to that is here, but the short version is that a PR firm can’t make promises like, “We will get you into Forbes, no matter what!” but at Canvas we don’t make that kind of promise, what we guarantee is that we’ll get you into a Forbes article within 90 days or we’ll give you a full refund. If we don’t think we can get you into Forbes we won’t take you on as a client in the first place.
Well, I hope this is helpful information if you were looking for how much PR costs.
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