By scoring a short list of finalists against the same concrete criteria, relevant recent experience, a named team you'll actually work with, transparent pricing, and a measurement plan tied to real outcomes, rather than picking whoever gave the best pitch. Most companies skip this step entirely. A 2019 study by the Institute for Public Relations and RFP Associates found that chief communications officers reportedly spend less time and thought choosing a PR firm than they do hiring a single employee, which is a strange gap given how much is riding on the decision. Here is what to actually check before signing.
Why does this decision deserve more care than most companies give it?
Because the failure rate is high and expensive to fix. The same IPR and RFP Associates study found that 35% of participants were dissatisfied with their current PR firm, and dissatisfaction didn't track with budget: half of respondents whose firms were paid over $1 million a year described themselves as only moderately, slightly, or not at all satisfied. Large companies spend roughly $15 billion a year on external PR agencies in the US alone, which is a lot of money changing hands against a one-in-three dissatisfaction rate.
Switching agencies also isn't free. It costs onboarding time, a gap in coverage while the new team gets up to speed, and often a restart on relationships the previous agency had already built with journalists in your category. Getting the selection right the first time is cheaper than getting it wrong and fixing it a year later.
What should you decide before you start evaluating agencies?
Three things: the specific business outcome you want, your actual budget, and what you expect the agency to own versus what stays in-house. A vague goal like "more visibility" produces a vague agency relationship. A goal like "get our CEO quoted in trade press ahead of our Series B" or "build a media list and secure three launch-week placements" gives every agency you talk to something concrete to respond to, and gives you something concrete to measure them against later.
Decide scope early too. Some agencies handle pitching and nothing else. Others bundle in content, LinkedIn ghostwriting, and event support. Neither model is wrong, but not knowing what a PR agency actually does before you start comparing proposals is how companies end up paying for services they don't need or missing ones they assumed were included.
What questions actually separate a real fit from a good pitch?
Four, asked directly, with answers you can verify rather than take on faith.
Who specifically will work on our account? Agencies routinely send senior partners to the pitch and junior staff to the actual work. Ask for the names and the resumes of the people who will be on your account day to day, not the people in the room selling you.
What have you placed in our category in the last six months? Not a client list, actual recent placements, with links. A roster of recognizable logos means less than three specific stories this agency landed for a company like yours in the last two quarters.
How do you measure success, and what does that look like for us specifically? AMEC's Barcelona Principles 4.0, the industry's own measurement standard, explicitly rejects outputs like advertising value equivalency in favor of judging actual outcome and impact. An agency that can't describe a measurement approach beyond "we'll send you a clippings report" hasn't adopted that standard, whatever they say in the pitch. How to measure PR results covers what a real measurement framework looks like.
What happens in a slow month? Every PR program has quiet stretches with no obvious news to pitch. Ask what the agency actually does then, keeps pitching anyway, builds media relationships for later, or goes quiet until something happens. The answer tells you more about their actual process than anything in the proposal deck.
What does the agency's own conduct tell you?
More than most companies check. The PRSA Code of Ethics is built on six stated values: advocacy, honesty, expertise, independence, loyalty, and fairness, and independence specifically means a member should decline representing clients whose interests conflict with another client's. Ask directly whether the agency represents a competitor, and how they'd handle it if one approached them while working with you.
Agency membership in a recognized trade body is a weaker signal than conduct itself, but it's a cheap one to check. The International Communications Consultancy Organisation counts more than 3,000 member agencies across 41 national associations in 70 countries, all operating under a shared code of conduct. Membership doesn't guarantee quality, plenty of excellent agencies aren't members, but an agency that claims global reach and isn't part of any recognized professional body is worth a direct question about why.
Source: Institute for Public Relations and RFP Associates study, reported by YouGov, linked in the article.
What are the clearest red flags?
A handful come up constantly, and each one is worth treating as disqualifying rather than negotiable.
Guaranteed coverage or guaranteed rankings. No agency controls an editor's decision, and whether press releases are worth it at all depends heavily on whether a journalist chooses to cover the story, a choice no agency can promise in advance. A firm that promises specific placements is either going to pay for them, which is advertising, not PR, or it's overselling what it can deliver.
No distinction between earned and paid coverage in the proposal. Both have a place, but a proposal that blends sponsored content and editorial placements into one undifferentiated "media coverage" number is hiding which outcomes actually came from a journalist's independent judgment and which came from a check.
Vague scope with a specific price. If the proposal can name an exact monthly retainer but can't name what you get for it in concrete deliverables, that vagueness is doing work for the agency, not for you.
No references, or references they won't let you talk to directly. A firm confident in its work will connect you with a current client, not just a logo on a slide.
How long should you expect to stay with an agency, and what if it isn't working?
Longer than a single campaign, but not indefinitely by default. The IPR and RFP Associates research found tenure split fairly evenly: 30% of respondents had worked with their current agency for over four years, another 30% for three to four years, 27% for one to two years, and 14% for less than a year. How long PR actually takes to work matters here: judging an agency on month-one results is premature, because relationship-building with journalists compounds over time. Judging them on month-twelve results, against the goals you set before signing, is fair.
If it isn't working by then, the fix usually isn't switching agencies again immediately, it's a direct conversation about which specific goal isn't being met and why, using the same measurement framework you agreed on at the start. If that conversation doesn't produce a real change, that's when it's time to run this same evaluation process again, with the added benefit of knowing exactly what went wrong the first time.
The direct answer, for anyone who read this far
Choosing a PR agency is a decision most companies make faster than they'd hire a single employee, and the dissatisfaction numbers show it. Fix that by deciding your goal, budget, and scope before you start comparing proposals, asking for the named team and recent category-specific placements rather than a client logo wall, confirming how success will actually be measured, and treating guaranteed coverage and vague scope as disqualifying rather than negotiable. The agency that survives that process is the one actually built to do the work, not just pitch it.
If you want to talk through what a realistic PR program looks like for your company, request a quotation and we'll walk you through it.
