Free buyer guide · no email required · 78 pages
The Startup PR Buyer’s Handbook.
Decide whether and when to hire PR, what it should cost, who to choose, and how to manage and measure the work.
Written by PressFriendly, a PR agency.
Choose a starting point
Do we need PR yet?
Test your timing, evidence, internal capacity, and business need before spending.
Who should run PR?
Compare founder-led, freelance, fractional, internal, and agency models.
What should PR cost?
Set a realistic budget and understand what different scopes and billing models buy.
How do I choose an agency?
Build a shortlist, inspect the proposed team, compare evidence, and check references.
How do I manage the first 90 days?
Set responsibilities, approvals, reporting, and early review points before work begins.
Why is our PR stalling?
Separate provider, company, strategy, and external causes before changing course.
Buyer tools and checklists
Browse the full handbook
78 pages across 11 sections
01
Start Here
02
Decide Whether and When to Invest
- What is PR? Reputation, relationships, and mediaDefines PR so buyers can decode service scopes, distinguish media relations from the wider discipline, and assign channel ownership.
- 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.
- What does PR-ready mean when you are hiring support?Explains how to test a provider's readiness claim, separate media readiness from hiring readiness, and identify the evidence needed to proceed.
- Do you need outside PR help yet?Helps a startup decide whether it needs no paid support, preparation work, a specialist project, an ongoing partner, or an internal hire.
03
Define What You Need to Buy
- 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.
- How to set PR goals and KPIsShows how to connect organizational goals to measurable communication objectives, baselines, targets, and evaluation methods.
Core Services
- What is media relations and press coverage?Explains how startups identify relevant journalists, offer verifiable stories, support reporting, and learn from independent editorial outcomes.
- 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 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.
04
Choose the Operating Model
- Agency vs. freelancer vs. fractional vs. in-house hireCompares agency, freelance, fractional, internal, and founder-led operating models before a startup commits resources.
- 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.
- 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.
05
Hire a PR Partner
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.
06
Price, Scope, and Contract the Work
- 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.
- 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.
07
Onboard and Manage the Engagement
Company Assets and Decisions
- What should a press kit and boilerplate contain?Defines the verified assets, owners, rights, access, maintenance, and handoff obligations a buyer should include in scope.
- 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.
Working Relationship
- How to set a communication and reporting cadenceDefines operating, reporting, strategy, and incident loops by phase, decision frequency, risk, artifacts, and escalation.
- 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.
- 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.
Spokesperson Responsibilities
- 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.
08
Measure and Diagnose
- 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 equivalency does not measure communication value and how a buyer should challenge renamed versions of the same method.
- 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.
- What are the signs your PR has stalled?Provides a concise warning-sign companion to the full agency-engagement diagnosis without treating a quiet coverage period as proof of failure.
- How to diagnose a stalled agency engagementExplains how to trace a stalled agency engagement to the part of the program that needs correction.
09
Correct, Renegotiate, or Exit
- 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.
10
Buy PR for Common Startup Moments
- How to buy crisis communications support during an incidentHelps a company identify qualified crisis support, define its role inside incident response, and retain the necessary operating and risk decisions.
- How to scope PR support for a launch out of stealthExplains when outside launch support fits, what the scope should cover, which readiness gates matter, and which decisions remain with the company.
- What should funding-announcement PR include?Helps buyers decide whether to announce a round and scope legal review, stakeholder communication, media work, company inputs, and measurement.
- Should you invest in the founder's personal brand?Helps buyers test the stakeholder need, executive time, governance, safety, succession, provider scope, and measures behind founder visibility.
- How to buy and manage PR across multiple marketsExplains the readiness, local capability, staffing, governance, legal review, and market-level evidence required for multi-market support.
11
Buyer Tools and Reference
Buyer Tools
- PR agency RFP template (copy-paste)Gives a copy-paste RFP to send agencies so you get comparable 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 the company can brief, fund, own, support, approve, and evaluate outside PR work before signing.
- 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.
Evaluate Strategy and Story Development
- How to evaluate the stakeholders in a PR recommendationShows buyers how to test whether a proposed program identifies the affected groups, relationship owners, obligations, and rationale behind its priorities.
- What research should inform a PR recommendation?Defines the research evidence a buyer should expect before approving a PR recommendation and the limits a provider should disclose.
- What should a credible startup PR strategy contain?Gives buyers an acceptance standard for the connection among the business condition, stakeholders, evidence, strategic choice, work, and measurement.
- What are messaging and positioning, and what's your role in them?Explains what positioning and messaging should deliver, what a provider can draft, and which facts, promises, approvals, and risks remain with the company.
- Newsworthiness: what makes a startup story worth coveringGives buyers a practical standard for judging whether a proposed media premise fits a defined outlet and audience.
- Does your startup have enough stories to sustain PR?Helps buyers assess the evidence, access, permissions, operating cadence, and provider system required to sustain useful story development.
- What should a useful PR calendar show?Explains the dependencies, decisions, uncertainty, owners, and response capacity a buyer should be able to inspect in a PR calendar.
- PR ethics: accuracy, disclosure, and editorial independenceSets the accuracy, disclosure, consent, confidentiality, correction, and editorial-independence standards buyers should require from a provider.
Evaluate Media Relations
- How to evaluate a proposed startup media strategyShows buyers how to test outlet choices against audience, subject, format, geography, timing, evidence, and realistic editorial control.
- How to judge a PR agency's reporter researchDefines the current, evidence-backed relevance standard a buyer should require for every proposed media contact.
- What does a responsible media pitch look like?Gives buyers an evaluation standard for a provider's targeting, premise, evidence, conduct, approvals, and learning.
- Press release vs. media pitch: when to use eachHelps buyers decide whether a release, direct pitch, both, or paid wire distribution serves the requirement and what each purchase can deliver.
- What does responsible media follow-up look like?Defines the limited, relevant, inspectable contact standards a buyer should require without directing each media interaction.
- How news timing works: embargoes, exclusives, and reactive PRExplains the company approvals, confidentiality terms, tradeoffs, and failure modes behind embargoes, exclusives, briefings, and reactive opportunities.
- What should happen after earned coverage publishes?Helps buyers define activation scope, ownership, rights, labeling, measurement, and the distinction between the original coverage and company promotion.
When outside help is the next step
Bring your readiness, staffing, scope, or current-agency question to a free introductory PR call with PressFriendly.