The ultimate guide to writing PR briefs

What is a PR Brief

A PR brief is a document that you create when you are looking to hire a PR firm. It contains information about your business, where you are right now, and your goals for your business and PR campaign(s). You usually share this document with 4-5 shortlisted PR agencies that look like the best fit for you. The shortlisted agencies then use this brief as a foundation to create a custom proposal. The agency that has the best proposal gets the contract. 

Benefits of writing a PR brief

Here are the reasons why having a written brief is important. 

Download now: Free PR Brief template

• Helps you clarify what you want

Before you spend thousands of pounds in hiring external help, you should get clear on what you want out of that investment. Writing a PR brief forces you to research and think strategically about your business objectives, campaign goals, what success looks like to you and how you would measure it. 

 In order to answer these questions, communications professionals usually need to liaise with their CEOs to have an understanding of the overall business strategy. Input from heads of other departments to know where the challenges lie across the customer and stakeholder lifecycle, for example in attracting leads or closing leads, help in coming up with campaign objectives that aim to solve the specific issues you are facing. Hence the process of coming up with the answers for the various sections of the brief helps create internal alignment. The brief can hence be used for internal PR and marketing campaigns as much as when hiring external firms.

• Save time

While a PR firm will research your industry and market on their own, only you can provide answers to their questions about your business, goals and challenges. When you proactively provide that information up front, you save hours in answering the same fundamental questions that each of the shortlisted agencies will ask you before submitting a proposal. 

• Save money

With the PR brief, the process of choosing a PR agency is streamlined. Now instead of providing different agencies with ad hoc information based on who asks what questions, every shortlisted firm has the same — and enough — information. This helps ensure that you are starting the agencies on the same foot to be able to compare them. Hence, the process ensures you hire the best firm out there — and not just the firm that might have an advantage over others as it was given more information.

Also, briefs that have clear objectives and KPIs (key performance indicators) get the best and most targeted proposals out of the agencies. This leads to better and more accurate results when you do hire a PR firm. 

Sharing a written brief also sends a signal to the agencies that you are professional, process-oriented, value their time, have thought through what exactly you want and would not be changing or moving the goalposts once the project has begun. This helps you save money as agencies usually factor in the time for account management in their proposal fee. If agencies think you would be easier to deal with, you would be charged less.

Also, since payment-by-results is becoming a common component of remuneration in the industry, you would need to know what the results are that you are paying for. 

What to include in a PR brief

These are the key points that you need to be clear on before requesting a proposal from agencies. Feel free to be as succinct or as detailed as you want under each point. 

Since some of this information might be confidential, you should always first send across a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) to the firms. Only once they send back the signed NDA form, should you share the PR brief with them.

• Background

Share key information about the company such as the company name, brand name if there are several brands within the company and the project concerns only one and the primary benefits of your service or product. 

 

• Business objectives

Write what is the strategic focus of the company for the next few years. If you have an internal document about the business plan for the next five or ten years, share that as well. 

 

Share both qualitative and quantitative business objectives. For example, “to become the product of choice for your target audience when they have a specific issue” as well as SMART goals that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely. For example, achieving 25% growth in revenue in the next 6 months. 

 

• Campaign objectives

What are you specifically looking for at this point? It could be anything like increasing sales from one particular target audience, becoming a thought leader and industry expert, entering a new market or driving traffic to your website. 

Also, share how this specific campaign or launch fits into your overall business objectives and SMART goals. Why would entering a new market or influencing public opinion on a specific issue important to you right now? 

Knowing this helps as PR firms can then adapt their campaign messages and outreach targets accordingly.  

Read more: Measurements for PR ROI

• KPIs 

How are you going to measure the success of the PR firm? If your campaign objective is brand awareness, what metrics would make you feel that they have achieved that goal? Is it growth in social media followers, increase in email subscribers, the number of branded search queries on Google or the number of media mentions? 

These KPIs should be written in the same way as SMART goals. For example, I want 500 new followers on Twitter in the next 3 months. KPIs are one of the most important aspects of a PR brief as it ensures that both you and the agency are on the same page. If a PR firm finds that your KPIs are unrealistic, they would tell that to you beforehand so you can adjust your expectations.

• Positioning

How do you differentiate yourself from your competitors? What is your unique selling proposition (USP) in the market? What are the strengths and weaknesses of your product or service?

• Target audience

Share your ideal customer avatars and/or buyer personas here. What are their goals, values, challenges, interests and demographics? What blogs and websites do they visit? Also, share this info for the audience you don’t want to attract. This information helps in pitching to the specific media and partnering with the influencers that they follow.

• Competitors

Share a competitor list. If available, also share the information on how they position their brand and their target audience — and how it is different from yours. The best way to get media coverage is to focus on differentiation since this makes for a good story. Competitor information helps agencies come up with creative angles for campaigns. 

• Key messages

What are the three messages that you want your audience to take away when they read your social media posts or media coverage? It could be around your company values, purpose or USP. 

A key part of public relations is building trust with your audience with authentic and honest communication. So share specific data, information or research to back those key messages. For example, if one of your key messages is “doing business with us will help you make an impact in the world”, do you have case studies and testimonials of past clients to back that?

• Tone

What is your company tone? Is it formal and authoritative or friendly and casual? Do you want to sound optimistic or practical? This would guide any owned content like social media or website that a PR firm would create.

• Spokespeople

Which people in the company from the C-suite or the employees can represent the company in outreach campaigns? Are these people trained in doing media interviews, do they have an interesting personal story to share, do they have the professional expertise, do any of them have a large and engaged social media following? Share links and bios wherever appropriate. 

• Influencers

Which external influencers and brands is your target audience impacted by or loyal to? This is useful information for influencer marketing or partnership marketing campaigns.

Read more: The influencer marketing evolution

• Other activities

Share any other information from other departments or projects that may help with brainstorming creative ideas. For example, if you are taking part in corporate social responsibility (CSR) or undertaking any projects to increase diversity in your hiring, sharing those details might provide nuggets of gold to PR firms for story ideas.

• What has worked well in the past

If you have used PR support in the past, relationships with which journalists or which pieces of media coverage gave the highest return of investment (ROI)? This information helps us focus on doing more of what worked.

• Challenges

What has not worked well in the past might be equally insightful. Are there any bottlenecks within the company that hinder your PR efforts? For example, is it hard to get quick responses from the C-suite to journalist queries, is there any specific trust issue with your audience that is hard to get by, is your competitor hogging all the attention, etc. 

If it has come up in the past, it will come up again. Knowing this information helps agencies either create campaigns that bypass these issues or offer a plan of action to solve these. For example, if there is a trust issue in the audience, what content, stories and data should we include in our messages to address these issues in our campaign?

• Preferred channels and services

Do you have a preference for any specific channels to achieve your campaign objectives? For example, you could achieve brand awareness in any number of ways, from hosting virtual events, starting a podcast, posting on social media to creating SEO-driven website content, media relations, guest blogging, etc. Similarly, what specific services like thought leadership, content marketing or media relations are you interested in.  

While a PR firm will suggest what medium and services they think would help you reach your goals most efficiently, it is good to know your preference.

• Key dates

If there are any important milestones or key dates like the company anniversary or a new product launch date, share them here. It helps with planning campaigns around those dates. 

• Timelines

Share timeframes for the different steps of the pitch process: 

• • Date of sharing this PR brief document
  • Deadline for clarification questions: The shortlisted firms might have more questions at this stage.
  • Deadline for submission of proposals: Give the agencies at least 2 weeks to create the proposals. 
  • Notifying agencies who will be presenting: After evaluating the proposals, you may decide to have only a few from those shortlisted agencies present their proposal via a video call where you would also get a chance to ask questions. 
  • Presentation: The week when you would be holding the presentations
  • Notifying agencies of your decision: Based on the presentations, decide which one you would like to go ahead with. This is when you would let the agencies know whether you would be signing a contract with them or not.
  • Start date: This is one of the key dates to include. Sometimes agencies are at full capacity for the next few months. Knowing when the project would commence helps them know whether they even want to put together a proposal or not in the first place, based on their foreseen availability.
  • Type of contract

Are you looking for ongoing PR support or it would be a project with a specific beginning and end? If latter, how long would the campaign run? Would it be a project-based contract or monthly annual retainer?

• Proposal structure

What headings and information do you want the agencies to cover in their proposal that would help you judge and compare them effectively? 

What are the actual factors or selection criteria that will help you in determining which agency to choose? For example, it could be relevant experience, seniority of the team, creative ideas, qualifications of the team, relevant case studies, references, etc. Whatever it is, sharing this helps agencies highlight those aspects in their proposal. 

Read more: Choosing the right PR firm

• Scope of work

Here you mention if the PR firm would undertake everything from research, strategy, planning to delivery and evaluation or you have an in-house team that will do some of these tasks. This is crucial to know this helps us decide the proposal fee. 

• Budget

This is one of the other most important information to include in a PR brief. Agencies are not paid for their time spent in business development, from holding meetings to creating a proposal. So if you provide your budget range, you save everyone’s time. 

If your budget is below our monthly minimum, it does not make sense for us to participate in the pitch process. Similarly, building and protecting reputation can be done in so many ways that knowing your budget range helps us in proposing a PR strategy that you can actually consider. 

• Point of contact

Who will be the point of contact we would be reporting to.

• Meeting preferences

Would you be holding meetings during the pitch process and after onboarding virtually or in-person? 

• Past experience with a PR firm(s)

Have you worked with a PR firm before? What went good or bad?

Working with companies that don’t have prior experience working with a PR agency requires us to lead with education on the process of working together. 

Some potential clients that have worked with PR agencies in the past have had troublesome experiences that made them lose hope in the power of PR. Knowing your challenges and why they occurred means we can focus on ensuring this doesn’t happen now.

• Format for plans and reviews

Do you have any written format in which you’d like to receive the plans and reviews from the agency once hired? We have our own templates that cover specific headlines. But if you have templates at your company, it is good to share those so we know how in-depth and what angles you like being covered at the planning as well as evaluation stage.  

• Relevant contractual clauses

Any contractual clauses that will be relevant or may act as a deal-breaker for agencies at a later stage. For example, payment terms such as payment at the end of the month instead of at the beginning.

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Conclusion

While you may question why you are doing so much work in creating this document when you are hiring someone else to work for you, know that PR works best when it is a collaborative effort. You bring your knowledge of your company while we bring our skills and expertise. 

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Curzon PR is a London-based PR firm working with clients globally. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact our Business Development Team bd@curzonpr.com