The Five Questions to Ask Before
Hiring a PR Firm in 2026
Most PR firms are still selling 2019 deliverables at 2026 prices. These five questions separate the agencies building authority from the ones counting clips, and they will tell you everything you need to know before signing a retainer.
- The PR industry has not fully adapted to the shift from coverage to citation. Most agencies are still selling placement counts.
- Five questions reveal whether a firm understands the modern discovery layer or is operating on an outdated model.
- The right firm treats PR as authority infrastructure, not a campaign. The wrong firm treats it as a clip service.
- Signing the wrong retainer is not just expensive. It is an opportunity cost measured in category leadership.
Most founders who have been burned by a PR agency describe the same experience. The firm was responsive. The team was likeable. The placements were real. And six months later, nothing had changed about the business. No new conversations. No shift in how buyers described the brand. No movement in the category.
The problem was not the agency's effort. The problem was the model. They were optimizing for coverage. The market had already moved to citation.
These five questions will tell you, before you sign anything, whether the firm you are evaluating understands the difference.
Question one.
A firm optimizing for coverage will describe a placement count. A firm optimizing for authority will describe a category position. The right answer sounds like: "At month twelve, your brand should be the name that comes up when buyers in your category ask their networks for a recommendation. The placements are the mechanism. The position is the outcome." If the answer is a number of clips, keep looking.
Question two.
This is the fastest filter available. Open ChatGPT together in the room. Search for the category. If the firm cannot point to a client in the answer, they have not done the citation work. If they do not know how to run the test, they do not understand the modern discovery layer. The firms doing this work will have examples ready. The ones who do not will pivot to talking about impressions.
The right firm treats PR as authority infrastructure, not a campaign. The wrong firm treats it as a clip service. Emily K. Thomas, The Lead
Question three.
In 2026, the founder's credibility is one of the three primary citation signals for a brand. Buyers research founders. Investors research founders. Journalists research founders. A PR firm that treats the founder as a secondary asset, or worse, as a liability to be managed, is missing one of the highest-leverage surfaces available. The right firm has a clear framework for building founder authority alongside brand authority. They should be able to describe it in under two minutes.
Question four.
Coverage is measurable. Placement count. Impressions. Domain authority of the outlet. These are real metrics and they matter. But they are the leading indicators, not the lagging ones. The lagging indicator is authority: whether the brand is the name that comes up in rooms where the category is being discussed. A firm that has thought about this will have a framework for measuring it, even if imperfectly. Peer recommendation surveys. AI citation audits. Share of voice in trade press. Category query rankings. If the firm's only metrics are impressions and clip counts, the model is incomplete.
Question five.
This question is a diagnostic for how the firm thinks about the work. A firm that promises placements in the first 30 days is optimizing for your confidence, not your authority. The right answer is that the first 30 to 60 days are the foundation: understanding the brand's category claim, auditing the existing citation surface, mapping the editorial relationships that matter, and positioning the narrative before pitching it. Firms that skip the foundation produce coverage that does not compound. Firms that build the foundation produce authority that does.
What the right answer sounds like.
The firm you want to work with will be able to tell you, clearly and without hesitation, what category claim they are building authority around, which publications and podcasts they are targeting and why, how they measure citation surface growth, and what the brand's position should look like in 18 months.
They will also be honest about what they cannot control. Coverage timelines. Editorial decisions. The pace of citation compound. A firm that promises certainty on any of these is selling confidence, not expertise.
The firm you want to avoid will lead with relationships, promise placements fast, and measure success in impressions. They are not bad at what they do. They are doing the wrong thing.
Want to know what Gal Media's
process actually looks like?
We start every engagement with a citation surface audit. No pitch. No retainer conversation. Just the clearest picture of where the work is and what it will take to move the brand to the obvious answer.
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