Only four of these twelve questions matter, and they are the ones most buyers skip: who does the daily work, what the last three clients actually got, what happens at month four if nothing has landed, and whether the agency can show you a single AI engine citing coverage it won. In 2026 the average PR retainer runs $3,000 to $7,000 monthly at boutique firms and $8,000 to $15,000 at mid market shops, contracts default to twelve months, and pitch to placement conversion across the industry sits between 3 and 10 percent. Those numbers mean a bad twelve month engagement costs $36,000 to $180,000 and produces a folder of screenshots. The questions below are organized into four buckets, and each one has a right answer and a tell.
The agencies worth hiring answer all twelve without flinching. The ones that get uncomfortable around bucket two are the reason this list exists.
Bucket 1: who actually does the work?
Ask these three first, because the answers determine everything downstream. Agency pitches are staffed by principals. Agency accounts are staffed by whoever is available.
1. Who is on my account day to day, and what else are they on?
The right answer names people, titles, and a client load number. A senior account executive at a mid market firm typically carries four to seven accounts. Above eight, your pitches are getting written between other people’s fires. Ask to meet the account executive before you sign, not the managing director who runs the pitch and then reappears at the quarterly review.
The tell: an agency that answers “our team” without names. Cision and Muck Rack seat licenses cost $5,000 to $25,000 a year, so agencies know exactly who has access to what. Vagueness here is a choice.
2. What is the actual hours breakdown of my retainer?
A $10,000 monthly retainer funds roughly 50 to 70 hours of blended agency time, of which 60 to 70 percent is labor and the rest is overhead, margin, and database subscriptions. Ask for that split by function: media list research, pitch writing, follow up, reporting, strategy. Real agencies have this in a spreadsheet. If nobody can produce it, the retainer is a number somebody picked.
3. What is your average tenure, and who from the pitch team will still be here in a year?
PR agency turnover has run high for years, and reporter relationships walk out the door with the person who built them. Ask for the tenure of your named account lead specifically. Under eighteen months is a risk you should price into the contract length.
Curious whether the coverage a PR agency wins for you will actually show up when buyers ask ChatGPT about your category? Get a free AI visibility audit and see who gets named in your space today.
Bucket 2: what can you prove?
This is where pitches fall apart. Every agency has a logo wall. Very few have a defensible number behind it.
4. Show me the last three clients in my size range and what they got in months one through six.
Not the best client. The last three. In your revenue band. A candid agency will tell you that months one and two produced no placements because the media list and messaging were being built, and that months three through six produced a specific count. Trade coverage volume for a $10,000 retainer typically runs two to six meaningful placements a month once the program is warm. If someone claims fifteen, ask which of those were wire syndication.
5. How do you distinguish earned placements from syndicated ones in your reporting?
This single question separates serious agencies from resellers. Wire distribution through PR Newswire, Business Wire, GlobeNewswire, EIN Presswire, or Accesswire republishes your own release across hundreds of low authority domains for roughly $200 to $2,500 per release. That is distribution, not coverage. Contributor programs like Forbes Councils, Fast Company Executive Board, and Newsweek Expert Forum charge annual membership fees in the $1,500 to $2,000 range and let members self publish. That is also not reported coverage. Neither is fraudulent. Counting either one in an “earned placements” column is.
6. Which metrics do you report, and do any of them include advertising value equivalency?
If AVE appears anywhere in the reporting deck, that is a red flag with a paper trail. The Barcelona Principles formally rejected AVE in 2010, and AMEC has revised its measurement framework twice since. Good reporting includes share of voice against named competitors, message pull through, referral traffic by outlet, branded search lift, and increasingly, AI engine citation counts. Ask which of those five they deliver monthly.
Bucket 3: what does this cost and what happens when it stops working?
7. What is the total first year cost including onboarding, tools, and expenses?
Onboarding and discovery fees of $2,500 to $10,000 are standard and often unmentioned in the retainer conversation. Media training, press kit production, and wire distribution are frequently billed on top. Add it up: a $7,000 retainer with a $5,000 onboarding fee and $800 a month in pass through costs is a $98,600 first year, not $84,000. Ask for the all in number in writing.
8. What are the contract term, the notice period, and the out clause?
Twelve month terms with 90 day cancellation notice are the least buyer friendly structure in common use and are still the default at many firms. A reasonable structure is a six month initial term with 30 day termination after month three. Ask specifically what happens to work product: does the messaging document, media list, and press kit belong to you when the engagement ends. Frequently the answer is no unless you negotiate it.
9. What do we do at month four if nothing has landed?
The answer reveals whether the agency has a diagnostic process or a hope process. Strong answers name specific pivots: reframe the pitch angle, change the spokesperson, move down a publication tier, commission original data. Weak answers talk about how PR takes time. Both things are true, but only one is a plan. Publication tiers matter enormously here, and pitching them out of order is the most common reason campaigns stall. Our breakdown of publication tiers for law firms maps the same logic that applies in any regulated vertical.
Bucket 4: do you understand where discovery actually happens now?
10. Do you track whether AI engines cite the coverage you win?
Buyers now ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Mode, and Microsoft Copilot for vendor recommendations before they open a results page. AI referral traffic is still roughly 1 percent of total web traffic per Similarweb’s 2026 measurement, but it converts at multiples of organic and it grows near 1 percent month over month. More important, the systems synthesize answers from third party publications far more often than from brand owned domains, with commonly cited estimates putting the gap around 6.5x. Coverage placement is now partly an AI retrieval decision.
Most agencies cannot answer this question yet. That is fine. The ones who say “we do not track that, here is what we do track” are more credible than the ones who improvise a yes.
11. How do you choose outlets, and does crawlability factor in?
An article in a mid tier trade publication with clean structure, a permanent archive, and no paywall can get retrieved by AI systems for years. A one day hit behind a hard paywall in a national title often gets crawled once and forgotten. Ask whether outlet selection weighs archive permanence, structured markup, and syndication footprint at all, or whether it is purely circulation and prestige.
12. What would you tell me not to spend money on?
The single best question on this list. An agency willing to name something in their own service menu as a poor fit for your situation is an agency that will tell you the truth in month seven. If the answer is that everything they sell is right for you, you have learned what you needed to know. For firms that want to see how placement scope gets defined before pricing gets attached, our services overview shows the structure we use.
Frequently asked questions
How many PR agencies should I interview before choosing? Three to five. Fewer than three and you have no pricing context, since retainers for identical scope vary 40 percent or more between a Midwest boutique and a coastal mid market firm. More than five and the process stalls past the point where the difference matters. Run the same twelve questions with each and compare the answers to question 4 and question 12 side by side. Those two produce the widest spread between agencies.
Should I ask a PR agency for references? Yes, and ask for a former client, not just a current one. Current clients are mid engagement and motivated to be positive. A client who ended the relationship on good terms will tell you what the agency was actually like at month nine. Ask that reference one question: what did the agency do when results stalled. The answer to that predicts your experience better than any case study.
Is it reasonable to ask for a trial period? Yes. A three month pilot at full rate is standard and most agencies will accept it, though some price it 10 to 20 percent above the ongoing rate to cover onboarding they cannot amortize. Do not expect placements in month one. A fair pilot measures process quality: media list relevance, pitch personalization, response rate from reporters, and reporting clarity. Placements typically start landing in month three or four.
What should I ask about crisis communications coverage? Ask three specifics: is crisis work included in the retainer or billed separately, what is the after hours response commitment in hours, and who from the team is on call. Crisis retainers price 30 to 50 percent above standard because the agency holds capacity in reserve. If crisis is included at no premium, it is probably not staffed. Get the escalation path in writing before you need it.
How do I check whether an agency’s claimed placements are real? Search the exact article headline in quotes. If the same text appears on dozens of unfamiliar domains, that is wire syndication of a release, not reported coverage. Check whether the byline belongs to a staff reporter or to your client contact, which indicates a contributor program. Look for a sponsored, partner, or paid partnership label near the top or bottom of the article. Any of those three findings reclassifies the placement.
What is the biggest mistake buyers make when hiring a PR agency? Buying on the pitch team rather than the account team, and buying a twelve month contract before seeing a single month of work. The second mistake compounds the first. Structure the engagement so the people who impressed you are contractually named on the account, and so you can leave after month three if the pitch quality does not match the pitch meeting. Agencies confident in their delivery accept both terms.
The takeaway
Twelve questions is more than most buyers ask and fewer than the number of ways a PR engagement goes sideways. If you only have time for a short version, run questions 4, 5, 8, and 12. They test proof, honesty about what counts as coverage, contractual exposure, and willingness to talk you out of something. An agency that handles those four cleanly will handle the other eight, and one that stumbles on any of them will cost you a year and a five figure sum before you find out. Ask them in the first meeting, not the third.
Want a data point to bring into those meetings? Pull your free AI visibility audit first and walk in knowing exactly which competitors AI engines already recommend in your category.
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