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The Startup PR Handbook.
Learn how to set a PR strategy, build credible stories, work with journalists, choose who should run the program, hire outside help, and measure what changes.
Written by PressFriendly, a PR agency.
Choose a starting point
I am new to PR
Start with the discipline, its limits, and the stakeholders it serves.
I need a PR plan
Connect a business problem to objectives, messages, stories, and measurement.
I need media coverage
Learn how outlets work, find relevant reporters, and pitch responsibly.
I am choosing who runs it
Compare founder-led, freelance, fractional, internal, and agency models.
I am hiring an agency
Build a shortlist, evaluate the team, negotiate scope, and check references.
My PR program is stalling
Separate strategy, input, execution, and external causes before changing course.
Templates, checklists, and playbooks
Browse the full handbook
77 pages across 13 sections
01
Start Here
02
PR Foundations
- What is PR? Reputation, relationships, and mediaDefines PR as planned communication and relationship management, then explains how earned, owned, shared, and paid channels fit.
- PR vs. marketing, ads, growth, and contentExplains how PR, marketing, advertising, growth, and content differ, overlap, and share responsibility.
- What PR can and can't do for your businessSets realistic expectations for the business and stakeholder outcomes PR can support, its limits, and its attribution constraints.
- Do you need PR yet? Readiness signals for startupsHelps a startup decide whether it needs a PR program, preparation work, another communications discipline, or no paid support yet.
- Agency vs. freelancer vs. fractional vs. in-house hireCompares agency, freelance, fractional, internal, and founder-led operating models before a startup commits resources.
- What PR costs: ballpark budgets before you take meetingsExplains the cost structure of founder-led, freelance, internal, project, and agency PR programs before a startup sets a budget.
03
Plan Your PR Program
- How to map the stakeholders your PR must serveShows how to identify and prioritize the customers, employees, investors, partners, communities, regulators, and media that affect the company.
- What to research before you build a PR planDefines the market, reputation, audience, competitor, and media research that should inform a startup PR plan.
- How to build a startup PR strategyConnects a business problem to stakeholders, communication objectives, a narrative, channels, tactics, resources, risks, and evaluation.
- How to set PR goals and KPIsShows how to connect organizational goals to measurable communication objectives, baselines, targets, and evaluation methods.
- What are messaging and positioning, and what's your role in them?Explains how company positioning, communication messages, evidence, and a media narrative relate, and what the startup must own.
- Newsworthiness: what makes a startup story worth coveringExplains the relevance, timeliness, evidence, consequence, novelty, conflict, and human interest that can make a startup story worth covering.
- How to build a repeatable startup story engineTurns company milestones, customer evidence, useful data, expertise, and market changes into a sustainable pipeline of story opportunities.
- What is a PR calendar and how does it get built?Maps planned company moments, stakeholder communications, media opportunities, preparation work, and review dates into a rolling plan.
- PR ethics: accuracy, disclosure, and editorial independenceSets practical standards for truthful claims, evidence, permissions, confidentiality, corrections, paid disclosure, AI use, and independent journalism.
04
Run Media Relations
- How the startup media landscape worksExplains how national, trade, local, broadcast, newsletter, podcast, and creator outlets differ in audience, format, lead time, and evidence needs.
- What is media relations and press coverage?Explains how startups identify relevant journalists, offer verifiable stories, support reporting, and learn from independent editorial outcomes.
- How to research the right reportersShows how to build a focused media list from current beats, recent work, outlet audiences, formats, locations, and stated contact preferences.
- How to pitch a reporter responsiblyExplains the concise, relevant, evidence-backed information a reporter needs to evaluate a possible story without hype or mass outreach.
- Press release vs. media pitch: when to use eachDistinguishes the formal record created by a release from the tailored story proposition in a pitch and explains when wire distribution helps.
- How to follow up and build media relationshipsExplains respectful follow-up, useful source behavior, preference tracking, and long-term relationship maintenance without manufacturing familiarity.
- How news timing works: embargoes, exclusives, and reactive PRExplains embargoes, exclusives, briefings, and reactive opportunities, including the agreements and confidentiality each requires.
- What is media training and do you actually need it?Explains how to prepare the right subject-matter experts for accurate, useful interviews without scripting away their judgment.
- On the record, background, off the record: agree terms firstExplains common interview ground rules, why definitions vary, and why both sides must agree before sensitive information is shared.
- How to review pitches and quotes without strangling themShows how to correct facts, protect substantiated claims, preserve a natural voice, and avoid turning media material into corporate copy.
- How to use earned coverage after it publishesShows how to share, cite, measure, and reuse coverage across owned and sales channels while respecting copyright and outlet branding.
05
PR Services and Specialties
- What can a PR agency actually do for you?Maps common PR services to the business and stakeholder problems they are designed to address.
- Is social media, community, and content part of PR?Explains how social, community, content, and media relations can share a strategy while retaining clear owners, scopes, and budgets.
Visibility Services
- What does a product launch or announcement service include?Explains how to scope strategy, evidence, stakeholder communication, media work, launch operations, activation, and evaluation.
- What is thought leadership (bylines, exec visibility, podcasts, speaking, awards)?Explains how evidence-backed executive ideas use articles, interviews, podcasts, speaking, and awards, including authorship and disclosure.
Specialist & Situational Services
- What is digital PR and link building?Explains how online coverage, citation-worthy assets, referral traffic, and search visibility relate, including paid-link and link-spam risks.
- What is analyst relations (Gartner, Forrester)?Explains vendor briefings, paid advisory access, research eligibility, company inputs, and what an analyst-relations operator can manage.
- What is funding and financial communications?Explains how to communicate financing and transaction news while legal and financial advisers set the disclosure requirements.
- What is crisis communications?Explains how communication supports incident response, preparation, stakeholder updates, monitoring, and recovery.
06
Hiring a PR Agency
Choose the Agency Model
- Large agency, boutique, or solo operator: which delivery model fits?Compares how large firms, boutiques, and solo operators organize expertise, attention, systems, continuity, and delivery.
- Do you need a PR specialist in your industry?Compares domain fluency, regulation, technical accuracy, audience specialization, learning, and conflict risk.
Build and Screen the Shortlist
- How to build and screen a PR agency shortlistShows how to source candidates through multiple channels, screen them against one brief, and verify fit before requesting proposals.
- When to disqualify a PR agencyDefines integrity and control failures that disqualify an agency and separates them from trade-offs that require diligence.
- Conflicts of interest and competing clientsExplains how to identify and manage competitive, confidentiality, capacity, financial, and personnel conflicts.
Evaluate the Finalists
- What questions should you ask in an agency pitch?Provides a consistent question set for diagnosis, team, evidence, adaptation, measurement, commercial terms, and risk.
- How to read a PR case study criticallyShows how to reconstruct context, evidence levels, contribution, quality, learning, and causal limits from a PR case study.
- How to verify a PR agency through referencesVerifies the proposed team's work through permitted references, independent feedback, and substitute evidence when confidentiality applies.
07
Agency Contracts and Pricing
- What should the scope of work spell out?Defines objectives, audiences, services, responsibilities, measurement, fees, change control, rights, risk, and exit obligations before work begins.
- How PR agencies charge: retainers, projects, hourly work, and publication-based feesExplains how billing triggers allocate risk, how to audit publication-based fees, and how to compare total cost across realistic scenarios.
- How to evaluate a guaranteed-coverage claimExplains why independently earned coverage cannot be promised by a provider and how to audit editorial control, payment, distribution, and disclosure.
- How to evaluate contract terms, renewals, and notice periodsExplains how term, renewal, notice, exit cost, and transition obligations allocate risk and how to match them to scope and review points.
- What do you own or retain when a PR contract ends?Distinguishes company inputs, assigned or licensed agency work, company-controlled accounts, and publisher-owned coverage, then defines the exit inventory.
- How to negotiate a PR agency contractExplains how to negotiate the complete exchange of scope, team, governance, rights, risk, and price before signing.
08
Agency Onboarding and Early Review
Shared Assets and Approvals
Establish the Operating Agreement
- How to assign PR responsibilities and decision rightsShows how to assign company, operator, specialist, and third-party roles, handoffs, and escalation paths with a RACI-style matrix.
- How do approvals and sign-off work day to day?Defines a risk-based approval matrix, delegated guardrails, version control, service levels, backups, and emergency escalation.
- How to set a communication and reporting cadenceDefines operating, reporting, strategy, and incident loops by phase, decision frequency, risk, artifacts, and escalation.
09
Managing an Agency
Shared Inputs and Service Levels
- How response time affects PR opportunitiesDefines reciprocal service levels based on actual deadlines and risk, then shows how to learn from accepted, declined, blocked, and expired requests.
- What inputs a PR program needs from the companyDefines the verified facts, permissions, calendars, experts, assets, disclosure boundaries, and measurement access an operator needs across channels.
10
Measuring PR
- Which PR metrics actually matter vs. vanity metrics?Explains how to distinguish activities, outputs, audience response, outcomes, and organizational impact while stating causal limits.
- Why is AVE (advertising value equivalent) discredited?Explains why advertising value equivalent does not measure communication value and what to use instead.
- How do you tie PR to revenue? The attribution problemShows how to evaluate PR's contribution to organizational outcomes without claiming unsupported last-click causation.
- What does a good monthly PR report look like?Describes a monthly report that connects work performed with communication outputs, audience response, outcomes, learning, and next decisions.
11
Fixing or Ending an Agency Engagement
- What are the signs your PR has stalled?Lists the signs a PR program has stalled and the valid explanations to rule out first.
- How to diagnose a stalled agency engagementExplains how to trace a stalled agency engagement to the part of the program that needs correction.
- How to run an agency performance reviewShows how to document evidence, examine causes on both sides, agree corrective action, assign owners, and set a review date.
- Should you pause, renegotiate, or end the engagement?Maps temporary constraints, recoverable operating misfit, broken trust, and failed corrective plans to pause, renegotiation, or exit decisions.
- How to offboard a PR agency and transfer the workCovers the controlled transfer of work, access, records, obligations, accounts, and decision authority under the signed agreement.
12
Startup PR Playbooks
- Crisis comms: what to do when bad news hitsExplains how to activate a cross-functional incident response, verify facts, meet obligations, sequence stakeholders, and communicate updates.
- Launching out of stealth: how to run the revealExplains how to plan a stealth reveal: product readiness, public facts, disclosure boundaries, channels, and follow-through.
- Announcing a funding round: the PR playbookExplains how to announce a funding round across stakeholders and channels under counsel-defined disclosure rules.
- Building the founder's personal brandExplains how to build founder visibility around real expertise while managing disclosure, safety, and key-person risk.
- How to scale a startup PR programExplains how to tell when a PR program needs more capacity and what to add first: budget, vendors, or employees.
- Going international: PR across multiple marketsExplains how to research, govern, staff, localize, and measure communication in each market with local specialist review.
13
Tools and Reference
Templates & Checklists
- PR agency RFP template (copy-paste)Gives a copy-paste RFP to send agencies so you get comparable, honest proposals.
- Agency vetting scorecardProvides a scorecard to compare agencies side by side before you sign.
- PR readiness checklist: are you ready to hire?Checks whether you have the triggers, assets, and time in place before you spend a dollar.
- Kickoff brief template for your new agencyProvides what to hand a new agency on day one so they can start fast.
- Monthly PR reporting templateSpecifies what to require in every monthly report so you can see real activity and outcomes.
When outside help is the next step
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