Free buyer guide · no email required · 46 pages
The Executive Visibility Buyer’s Handbook.
Decide whether to invest in CEO or personal PR, what to buy, who to hire, how to govern the work, and how to measure or end the engagement.
Written by PressFriendly, a PR agency that provides personal and founder PR.
Choose a starting point
Do I need personal PR?
Test the stakeholder need, executive readiness, internal capacity, and timing.
What should I buy?
Compare positioning, media, thought leadership, social, opportunities, and protection.
Who should provide it?
Compare coaches, writers, publicists, agencies, and internal executive communications.
What should it cost?
Understand cost drivers, pricing models, outside fees, and executive time.
How do I choose a provider?
Evaluate the team, voice capture, samples, references, discretion, and terms.
How do we govern the work?
Set company and executive decision rights, approvals, disclosures, and review triggers.
Buyer tools and checklists
Browse the full handbook
46 pages across 11 sections
01
Start Here
- How to use the Executive Visibility Buyer's HandbookChoose a path for deciding, buying, governing, managing, or reviewing CEO and personal PR support.
- What are executive visibility and personal PR?Defines the category and separates it from company PR, executive communications, marketing, influencer management, and reputation repair.
02
Decide Whether and When to Invest
- Whose reputation and objective does the program serve?Identifies the executive, company, buyer, payer, manager, asset owner, and risk owner before a provider is hired.
- Should the executive brand or company brand lead?Helps buyers allocate visibility between a leader and an organization without creating avoidable concentration risk.
- Are you ready for an executive visibility program?Tests stakeholder need, expertise, evidence, executive time, approval capacity, risk tolerance, and opportunity readiness.
- Do you need outside executive PR help yet?Compares no program, internal work, a specialist project, and ongoing outside support.
03
Define What You Need to Buy
Channels and Opportunities
- What is executive media relations?Defines expert commentary, profiles, interviews, reactive opportunities, and the limits of editorial control.
- What should thought leadership and ghostwriting support include?Helps buyers evaluate idea development, interviews, research, drafting, authorship, review, placement, and measurement.
- What should executive social media and LinkedIn support include?Covers strategy, voice capture, drafting, publishing, engagement, permissions, platform rules, and reporting.
- How should you buy podcast, speaking, and awards support?Separates editorial selection, sponsorship, pay-to-speak, entry fees, and audience value across opportunity programs.
Preparation and Protection
- What are executive media and presentation training?Explains when coaching is warranted, what a credible session includes, and how to evaluate readiness without scripting away judgment.
- What can a provider legitimately do about search results and Wikipedia?Separates accurate digital-profile work from deceptive editing, suppression promises, and guarantees a provider cannot control.
- What are executive reputation monitoring and crisis support?Defines monitoring, preparedness, rapid counsel, correction, security coordination, and the limits of reputation repair.
04
Choose the Operating Model
- Coach, ghostwriter, publicist, agency, or in-house team?Compares operating models by the decision, production, access, continuity, specialist risk, and management capacity required.
- Do you need an executive PR specialist or a generalist?Tests category expertise, channel depth, stakeholder access, conflicts, and the cost of learning the executive's field.
- Should the program feature one executive or a leadership bench?Balances message consistency, subject expertise, succession, concentration risk, and program capacity.
05
Hire a Personal PR Partner
- How should you build an executive PR shortlist?Turns the objective and scope into a focused search across referrals, specialists, agencies, and independent operators.
- How should you evaluate voice capture and work samples?Shows how to inspect reasoning, evidence, executive contribution, editing, disclosure, and actual provider responsibility.
- What should you ask in an executive PR agency pitch?Provides comparable questions about strategy, participation, opportunities, governance, risks, team, reporting, and commercial terms.
- How do you check references, conflicts, and discretion?Tests confidential working behavior, competing clients, executive access, judgment, corrections, security, and relationship endings.
06
Price, Scope, and Contract the Work
- What does executive and personal PR cost?Explains the cost drivers and total budget behind advisory, content, media, social, opportunity, and protection scopes.
- How do executive PR providers charge?Compares projects, retainers, hourly advisory, production packages, and opportunity-based fees without treating unlike scopes as equivalent.
- What should an executive PR scope of work spell out?Defines services, outputs, responsibilities, executive time, approvals, rights, expenses, reporting, risks, and change control.
- Is the opportunity earned, paid, sponsored, or controlled?Helps buyers classify media, podcasts, speaking, awards, councils, and contributed content before paying or claiming third-party validation.
- What rights, ownership, and exit terms belong in the contract?Protects accounts, audiences, archives, drafts, recordings, likeness rights, confidential material, access, and continuity after the relationship ends.
07
Govern the Executive-Company Boundary
- How should the executive and company divide decision rights?Assigns ownership and approval for subjects, facts, claims, channels, opportunities, accounts, risk, and escalation.
- When is an executive speaking personally or for the company?Sets practical boundaries for company policy, personal opinion, employment duties, politics, customers, employees, and public response.
- How should ghostwriting, authorship, AI, and approval work?Defines substantive executive contribution, research, review, publisher rules, AI safeguards, attribution, and accountability.
- What must an executive disclose about endorsements and conflicts?Explains material connections, employment, investments, gifts, sponsorships, paid access, and provider responsibilities.
- When does executive content need regulatory or legal review?Identifies public-company, financial, employment, privacy, health, litigation, lobbying, and other high-risk review triggers.
08
Onboard and Manage the Engagement
- How should you structure the first 90 days?Sequences research, positioning, governance, foundation assets, initial opportunities, measurement, and early review decisions.
- How much executive interview and approval time does the program need?Sets a sustainable cadence for idea capture, preparation, factual review, risk review, and rapid opportunities.
- How should you evaluate an executive opportunity?Scores audience, relevance, selection mechanism, format, preparation load, rights, cost, risk, and expected value.
- What should an executive editorial calendar show?Makes subjects, stakeholders, evidence, formats, owners, approvals, reuse, timing, and conflicts visible across channels.
- How should you manage account access, security, and impersonation risk?Covers company-controlled permissions, strong authentication, vendor access, recovery, monitoring, escalation, and transition.
09
Measure, Diagnose, and Exit
- How do you set executive visibility goals and baselines?Connects a stakeholder decision to current awareness, understanding, trust, access, behavior, and organizational objectives.
- Which executive PR metrics matter?Separates activity, outputs, audience response, outcomes, impact, cost, executive time, and concentration risk.
- How do you diagnose a stalled executive PR program?Separates objective, expertise, evidence, executive participation, governance, provider work, opportunity, and measurement causes.
- Should you pause, renegotiate, or offboard the provider?Turns the diagnosis into a corrective test, amended scope, orderly pause, or secure transfer of work and access.
10
Buy for Common Executive Moments
- How should you buy visibility support for a new CEO?Scopes internal and external positioning, stakeholder listening, announcement work, inherited issues, and the first leadership narrative.
- How should executive visibility support fundraising, an IPO, or a deal?Defines the communications role, audience, timing, evidence, confidentiality, and regulatory coordination around financial milestones.
- How should you buy support for a book, research, category, or career launch?Matches finite launch moments to positioning, content, media, speaking, owned audiences, rights, and longer-term value.
11
Buyer Tools and Reference
- Executive PR buyer brief templateCaptures the objective, stakeholder, executive expertise, evidence, boundaries, channels, time, governance, budget, and selection process.
- Executive PR provider scorecardScores strategic fit, voice and evidence, team, opportunities, governance, ethics, security, measurement, and commercial terms.
- Executive visibility and personal PR glossaryDefines the buying, publishing, media, social, reputation, measurement, rights, and governance terms used across the handbook.
When outside help is the next step
Bring the audience, objective, executive schedule, or provider proposal to a free introductory call with PressFriendly.