#AskJon: How much does it cost to work with a PR firm?

So this is gonna be a bit self-serving, but I think it will be helpful to people who are considering working with a PR firm. We are just like any other professional services firm. We bill by the hour and we have hourly rates. So, the first way is, we bill you by the hour, with no limit. And, you hope that you’re getting a good value for that. And we know that we can bill as much as we need to over a period of time in order to get the job done. The second is, the same way but with an agreed-to monthly cap. So, in the cases where we are billing fewer hours that month, you’ll save some money. And you know that we can only work up to a certain level, and you have some cost certainty there. Our preferred way, and the preferred way for most of the folks that we work with, is a retainer where there’s a set scope of work over a certain amount of time, whether six months or a year. We agree, based on that retainer, and we estimate how many hours it will take us on a monthly basis to do the work. Sometimes we work under, sometimes we work over, but it all sort of works out in the end. And if anything is out of scope, we go back to our clients and say, ok, this is out of scope, this should be above and beyond the retainer, it should be an additional project. But those are the three ways that we like to work, and hopefully it will fit into what your idea is in working with a PR firm.