When Is a Small Business Ready to Hire a PR Agency?

By Jordan Baker, Founder of Fair Public Relations and former UK national journalist

There is no minimum revenue, team size or number of years a small business needs to have been trading before it is ready to hire a PR agency.

I have worked in PR for more than a decade, and the businesses that are most ready usually have something much simpler in common.

They have something journalists could genuinely be interested in. They know what they want PR to help them achieve. They have a credible online presence. They can afford to give the campaign a reasonable amount of time, and they have somebody who can give the PR team the information and approvals it needs.

Most importantly, they are open-minded.

If I were assessing a small business, I would look at its website, media potential, goals, budget and readiness to participate. Later in this guide, I have included a practical checklist to help you assess those things for yourself.

Previous media coverage can help, but it is not essential. Neither is having an internal marketing department or a large team.

A one-person business can be completely ready for PR.

A company with 100 employees can be completely unready.

The question is not really how big you are.

It is whether there is enough for a good PR campaign to work with.

What does being ready for PR actually mean?

Being ready for PR does not mean having everything perfectly organised.

You do not need to already be famous. You do not need hundreds of press mentions. You do not need a dedicated communications director.

What you do need is a solid enough business foundation that media attention has somewhere useful to lead.

There also needs to be a reasonable match between what your business can offer and what journalists actually need.

Those are not always the same thing.

A business may desperately want publicity around a particular service, announcement or company message. That does not automatically make it interesting to a journalist.

One of the first things we do when assessing a potential small-business PR client is separate two questions:

What does the business want to talk about?

and:

What might an independent journalist genuinely want to write about?

Sometimes those things overlap perfectly.

Sometimes they are miles apart.

Being PR-ready includes accepting that distinction.

Does a business need to reach a certain size before hiring a PR agency?

No.

I do not have a minimum revenue, employee count or business size that I use to decide whether someone is ready for PR.

I would much rather work with a small owner-managed business that has good expertise, useful ideas, a realistic budget and an engaged founder than a much larger company that is difficult to work with and does not have a clear reason for doing PR.

For me, the more important questions are:

- Can you afford the campaign?

- Can you give us the information we need?

- Are you reasonably responsive?

- Do you have something with genuine media potential?

- Are you open-minded about what journalists might find interesting?

- Is PR capable of supporting what you are trying to achieve?

If those things are in place, the size of the company matters far less.

A one-person consultancy can be a great PR client.

So can a consumer brand, medical expert, trades business, coach, technology company or professional services firm.

The media is not checking your staff headcount before deciding whether an idea is interesting.

Does a business need previous media coverage?

No.

Previous media coverage is useful, but it is not a requirement.

I quite like working with businesses that have some experience of PR because they already understand a little about how the process works.

They know that journalists make their own editorial decisions. They understand that not every idea becomes an article. They are normally more familiar with interviews, approvals and journalist deadlines.

That can make it easier to get into a good working rhythm quickly.

But we regularly work with businesses and experts who have never had meaningful press coverage before.

Everybody has to get their first article somewhere.

What matters more is whether we have credible material to build from.

Can a brand-new business be ready for PR?

Yes, although I generally prefer a business to have some foundations in place first.

A new business can absolutely use PR.

In fact, launches, new products, founder stories and new approaches to established problems can create interesting media opportunities.

I am less enthusiastic about starting too far before launch.

If journalists are going to research the company, I want them to find something credible.

Ideally, the business should at least have:

- a live website

- clear information about what it does

- details of relevant products or services

- credible founder or expert information

- suitable photography or brand assets

- a way for somebody who reads an article to find out more

PR can attract attention.

It is much more useful when the business is ready to do something with that attention.

How important is your website before starting PR?

I think it is very important.

As a general rule, I would be reluctant to start promoting a business seriously to journalists if it did not have a website.

It does not need to be the most expensive website ever built.

It does need to look credible and make it obvious what the business actually does.

If we are promoting an expert, I want to see their credentials clearly explained.

If we are promoting a product, the journalist should be able to find the product.

If we are talking about a service, there should be a proper page explaining that service.

That matters for journalists, but it also matters after coverage is published.

A reader might see your name in an article and Google you.

A journalist may link to your website.

Search engines and AI systems may encounter the relationship between your brand, expertise and third-party media coverage.

PR is much stronger when all of those pieces reinforce one another.

Before taking on a new client, I will often Google the business myself.

I want to know what somebody who has never encountered the company before is going to see.

If the search results are confusing, the website looks unfinished or an expert's credentials are impossible to verify, I would rather fix those foundations first.

What does a small business need that journalists can actually use?

There is no single answer.

Different businesses generate media opportunities in different ways.

Useful ingredients can include:

Expertise

If you know a subject particularly well, journalists may need informed commentary, explanations, opinions or practical advice.

Strong opinions

Having expertise is useful. Being prepared to say something interesting with it is even better.

A journalist rarely needs another person saying something completely obvious that everybody in the industry already agrees with.

Products

Consumer products can create opportunities around reviews, recommendations, gift guides, buying guides, seasonal features and trends.

Services

Services can generate media attention when they connect to consumer problems, expertise, trends, useful advice or an interesting business story.

Original data

Good data can give journalists something genuinely new to report.

Founder experiences

A founder does not need an extraordinary Hollywood-style origin story, but experience can sometimes provide a useful human or business angle.

Customer or real-life stories

Where appropriate and handled carefully, genuine human stories can be extremely powerful.

Business news

Launches, research, expansion, partnerships and other developments can sometimes provide useful news angles.

The important word in all of those examples is useful.

What matters is not whether something is interesting internally.

It is whether somebody outside the business has a reason to care.

Do businesses misunderstand what journalists find interesting?

Constantly.

This is one of the biggest gaps a PR agency has to bridge.

Companies naturally think about their business from the inside.

A new feature may have taken six months to develop.

A new hire may feel extremely important to the team.

A new service may be central to the next stage of the business.

None of that necessarily means a journalist's audience wants to read about it.

Journalists are thinking about their readers, listeners or viewers.

Why would they care?

What does this tell them?

What problem does it solve?

Is it surprising?

Is it useful?

Is it timely?

Does it explain something currently happening?

Is there a human story?

Does this person know something our audience would find valuable?

Sometimes a client's preferred idea is the strongest one.

Sometimes we need to move quite a long way from it.

Being able to have that conversation is a major part of being ready for PR.

How clear should your PR goals be?

Very clear.

"More exposure" is not enough for me.

Exposure for what?

And why?

Before starting a campaign, I want to understand what the business ultimately wants to achieve.

For example:

- Are you trying to build trust and credibility?

- Do you want potential customers to encounter you in respected publications?

- Are you entering a new market?

- Are you launching a product or service?

- Do you want to become better known as an expert?

- Are you preparing to raise investment?

- Are you trying to strengthen the search presence around your brand?

- Is SEO or GEO part of the wider objective?

- Are you trying to build brand awareness with a particular audience?

- Do you need stronger third-party trust signals to support your sales process?

PR does not directly guarantee any of those commercial outcomes.

But knowing the objective helps us decide what sort of media activity makes sense.

A campaign designed to establish a founder as a respected industry expert may look very different from a campaign designed to get a consumer product into shopping features.

The clearer the goal, the easier it is to build the right campaign around it.

Can you afford to give PR enough time?

This is one of the most important readiness questions.

My own rule of thumb is that a business should be financially comfortable thinking about PR over roughly six months.

That does not mean every PR agency requires a six-month contract.

Fair Public Relations' Standard PR service, for example, begins with an initial three-month commitment and then continues with one full billing cycle's notice.

But contractual commitment and sensible financial planning are two different things.

If spending the money for several months is going to cause serious stress, I would question whether now is the right time to hire an agency.

PR is earned media.

You are paying for strategy, writing, research, angle development, journalist outreach, follow-up, account management and the professional judgement involved in running the campaign.

You are not purchasing a guaranteed number of articles.

That makes it very different from simply buying an advert.

I would rather someone waited three or six months until the budget felt comfortable than start PR feeling that every week without a national article meant the investment was failing.

How much time does a small business need to give its PR agency?

Less than many business owners expect.

As a rough guide, I usually ask clients to be prepared to give us around five to ten minutes a day when needed.

That does not mean there is necessarily something to do every day.

Some clients respond as things arrive.

Some set aside time every few days.

Others prefer to go through approvals and questions in a weekly batch where deadlines allow it.

At Fair PR, we use WhatsApp for quick communication and hold regular account calls, while our client portal provides a central place for campaign activity, requests and approvals.

What matters is that we can get information when we need it.

You might need to:

- approve a quote

- answer a question

- confirm a fact

- provide a photograph

- explain your opinion

- send product information

- approve a media document

- tell us whether you are available for an interview

Most of those things are quick.

But if a journalist has a deadline at 3pm and we do not get an answer until three days later, the opportunity may have disappeared.

You do not need hours every week.

You do need to be engaged.

What client behaviours tend to produce stronger PR campaigns?

There are two things I particularly look for:

Engagement and open-mindedness.

If a business has neither, I genuinely think hiring a PR agency can become a waste of money.

I think of part of the PR agency's role as brokering an exchange between two parties.

The client wants exposure.

The journalist wants good content.

Our job is to find the overlap that makes both sides happy.

It is not our job to take money from a client and somehow force an independent journalist to write whatever the client wants them to write.

That is not how earned media works.

The best clients understand that.

They will tell us what they want to achieve, but they will also listen when we say there may be a better route.

They respond to opportunities.

They share what is happening in the business.

They give genuine opinions rather than watered-down corporate statements.

They tell us when they have a new product, customer story or useful piece of data.

And they allow us to use our understanding of journalists to guide how those things are presented.

That collaboration makes the account easier for us to run and, more importantly, gives the client a better opportunity to get value from PR.

What expectations suggest a business may not be ready?

There are some expectations I would want to correct before accepting a client.

"I need PR to generate immediate sales"

PR can support sales.

Media coverage can build credibility, increase awareness, strengthen trust and give your wider marketing and sales activity more authority.

But I would not recommend hiring a PR agency if you urgently need an immediate and predictable number of sales next week.

That is not what earned media is designed to do.

"I only want to be in Forbes"

Having target publications is completely reasonable.

We ask clients which publications matter to them, and we can actively develop ideas with those publications in mind.

What is not realistic is treating editorial coverage like ordering from a menu.

You cannot simply decide that because you are paying a PR agency, a particular independent publication must feature you.

Over time, good campaigns can absolutely build towards important target titles.

But the client needs to remain open to other relevant opportunities too.

"Every press release should produce an article"

I would not think about press releases that way.

A press release is one part of an ongoing relationship with the media.

It introduces ideas.

It helps journalists understand what a business can offer.

It keeps relevant expertise, stories, products and developments in front of the right people.

Sometimes a release generates coverage quickly.

Sometimes an idea goes nowhere.

Sometimes a journalist remembers the person or business and returns weeks or months later for something completely different.

PR is a body of activity, not a vending machine where one press release goes in and one article comes out.

"You should guarantee national coverage"

Some services do sell guaranteed or paid-for placements.

That can be useful in the right circumstances, but it is different from earned editorial PR.

Fair PR does not guarantee coverage, specific publications, backlinks, search rankings, enquiries or sales.

Journalists and editors make the final publishing decision.

Any business hiring an earned-media PR agency needs to be comfortable with that independence.

When is it too early to hire a PR agency?

Sometimes PR is simply not the next thing a business should spend money on.

I have told prospective clients this plenty of times.

If I think somebody would get better value from fixing something else first, I would much rather say so.

That might mean improving:

- branding

- website design

- business systems

- professional photography

- positioning

- expert profiles

- product pages

- basic sales infrastructure

- the clarity of the service itself

Sometimes I will recommend that somebody starts with DIY PR.

Sometimes I will point them towards another specialist.

We regularly make referrals when we think somebody needs something other than PR first.

That is better for everybody.

A business that comes back six months later with those foundations fixed is much more likely to become a good long-term PR client.

Should a small business try DIY PR first?

Sometimes, yes.

If you are very small, have more time than budget and work in an industry where journalists have a strong appetite for expert contributions or stories, doing some PR yourself can make complete sense.

It can also teach you a lot.

You start to understand what journalists reply to.

You learn which ideas work.

You see how quickly media deadlines move.

You become more comfortable contributing commentary and doing interviews.

Our guides on how to do your own PR and whether DIY PR is worth it go into that in much more detail.

A common point for hiring an agency is when DIY PR has begun to work but the business owner no longer has enough time to keep doing it consistently.

Another is when they understand the opportunity but want more experienced help developing angles, writing material and dealing with journalists.

There is nothing wrong with reaching PR through that route.

In fact, those clients often understand the process particularly well.

A practical small-business PR readiness checklist

I would not make this more complicated than it needs to be.

If I were assessing a business before starting PR, these are the areas I would look at:

PR readiness question	Probably ready	Partly ready	Not ready yet
Do you have something journalists can use?	Clear expertise, products, services, stories, data, opinions or news	Some potential, but positioning needs work	Little credible or useful material for the media
Do you know why you want PR?	Clear commercial or reputation goals	General desire for visibility	Expecting PR to solve an unrelated business problem
Is your online presence credible?	Professional website and clear supporting information	Basic site that needs some improvement	No usable website or unclear/incomplete information
Can you comfortably fund PR?	Budget available for around six months	Budget possible but feels tight	Need immediate returns to afford the next month
Can you give the campaign some time?	Five to ten minutes a day when needed	Availability is inconsistent	No one can provide information or approvals
Are you open-minded about media angles?	Happy to listen to editorial advice	Attached to some preferred messages	Only willing to promote predetermined company messages
Are your expectations realistic?	Understand coverage is earned and not guaranteed	Need some education about the process	Expect guaranteed publications, immediate sales or fixed article volumes
Is there a clear contact person?	One engaged decision-maker can work with the agency	Responsibilities are slightly unclear	Nobody owns approvals or communication

You do not need eight perfect answers.

But if most of the right-hand column sounds familiar, I would probably wait.

What do I personally look for before accepting a small-business PR client?

After more than a decade of doing this, you do develop a sense quite quickly for whether an account is likely to work.

Before recommending that somebody hires us, I want to understand the business properly.

I will usually look at its website.

I will Google it.

I want to see what comes up.

If there are experts involved, I want to see whether their qualifications and credentials are clear.

I want to understand the products or services.

I will ask what the business wants PR to achieve and whether I think PR can realistically contribute to that objective.

I want to know whether there is somebody who can work with us directly.

I want to know whether the budget is sustainable.

And I want to understand whether the client is likely to be open to advice.

Previous PR experience is useful, but it is not essential.

Previous coverage is useful, but it is not essential.

A large team is not essential.

A particular revenue number is not essential.

What matters is whether there is enough substance, budget, cooperation and media potential for us to do good work.

We are deliberately selective about that.

Our business model is based much more on building long-term relationships than making a quick fee from somebody who is not ready.

The more ready a client is, the easier it is for us to build momentum, the more value they are likely to get from the campaign and the more likely the relationship is to work over the long term.

If I do not think somebody is ready, I would rather tell them.

Sometimes we will suggest a website designer, branding specialist, systems company, photographer or another type of support.

Sometimes the advice is simply: try some PR yourself first and come back to us later.

I would much rather start working with somebody at the right time.

So, when should a small business hire a PR agency?

For me, the answer is relatively straightforward.

You are probably ready when your business has genuine media potential, a credible online presence, sustainable funding, a responsive contact and realistic expectations. Above all, you need to be open to the possibility that journalists may want a different story from the one you initially hoped to promote.

You do not need to be big.

You do not need a marketing department.

You do not need existing press coverage.

You do not need a remarkable founder story.

But you do need to be able to give a PR agency enough to work with.

If those foundations are there, you are probably ready to start.

If they are not, fixing them first will usually make your eventual PR campaign stronger.

FAQs

How big does my business need to be before hiring a PR agency?

There is no fixed minimum size. A one-person business can be ready for PR if it has credible expertise, products, services or stories, realistic goals, enough budget and time to work with the agency.

Do I need a marketing department before starting PR?

No. Many small businesses outsource PR precisely because they do not have an internal communications team. What matters is having a main contact who can provide information, approve content and respond when media opportunities arise.

Can a business with no previous media coverage hire a PR agency?

Yes. Previous coverage can make the process easier because the business already understands how PR works, but it is not essential. A good PR campaign can start from no previous media presence.

Should I hire a PR agency before launching my business?

Usually I would prefer the basic business foundations to be live first. That includes a credible website, clear product or service information, useful founder or expert profiles and good-quality assets. A launch itself can then become part of the PR opportunity.

How much time will I need to give my PR agency?

At Fair PR, we generally suggest being prepared to provide around five to ten minutes a day when needed. Some weeks require very little input, while time-sensitive journalist requests may occasionally require a faster response.

How long should I budget for PR?

I personally think a business should be financially comfortable viewing PR over roughly six months. That gives the campaign room to develop without every individual week being judged in isolation. Contract terms vary by agency. Fair PR's Standard PR service has an initial three-month commitment followed by one full billing cycle's notice.

What if I cannot afford PR yet?

Do not force it. DIY PR can be a sensible starting point, particularly for a small business with time available and genuine media potential. You may also get better value from investing first in your website, branding, photography, systems or positioning.

Does hiring a PR agency guarantee media coverage?

No. Earned media is independently controlled by journalists and editors. A PR agency can develop ideas, create media material, pitch relevant journalists and manage opportunities professionally, but it cannot guarantee publication decisions.

Is your small business ready for PR?

Fair Public Relations provides founder-led, journalist-led PR for suitable small businesses, founders, experts, B2B businesses, B2C brands and professional services firms.

Our Standard PR service includes journalist-led strategy, positioning, angle development, media content creation, pitching, follow-up, interview support, press monitoring and ongoing account management.

Standard PR currently costs £797 per month for UK clients, US$997 per month for US clients and CAD$1,497 per month for Canadian clients. It starts with an initial three-month commitment and then continues with one full billing cycle's notice.

We do not believe every small business should hire us.

If you get in touch, we will look at the business, discuss your goals and tell you whether we believe PR is likely to be the right next step.

Explore PR for Small Businesses

See How Our PR Works

Get in Touch

‍Written by Jordan Baker
Founder of Fair Public Relations and former UK national journalist

Jordan Baker is the founder of Fair Public Relations and a former UK national journalist with more than a decade of PR experience. He writes about public relations, journalist outreach, small-business PR, founder visibility, expert positioning and earned media.

View Jordan Baker's media expert profile

You might also like these blog posts

• Is DIY PR Worth It? What Small Businesses Need to Know Before Doing PR Themselves

• How to Do Your Own PR: A DIY PR Guide for Small Businesses

• How to Get Press Coverage for Your Small Business: Advice From a Former National Journalist

• Freelance PR Consultant vs PR Agency: Which Is Right for Your Budget?

• How Much Does PR Cost in the UK? A Practical Guide for Small Businesses

• Is Affordable PR Worth It? The Difference Between Fair Pricing and Cheap PR