How to Build a Public Relations Scope of Work
PR is a valuable service to offer as a freelancer. As a solo publicist or PR agency owner, you have deep connections with the media, sharp pitching skills, and know how to create unique story angles. PR is your wheelhouse. But knowing how to price your services and create a public relations scope of work that communicates your value? That’s another story.
Whether you’re new to running your independent PR business or just want to gut-check your current rates and services against what others are charging, let’s go over how to build a public relations scope of work (templates included).
What is Public Relations?
Public relations, also called PR for short, involves managing how the public perceives a brand, company, or person. Public relations activities can include media outreach, securing interviews with the press, and developing publicity campaigns that help communicate your company’s message.
Companies can hire an in-house PR team, work with a PR agency, or hire a solo publicist. In any scenario, a publicist’s job is to help clients manage their reputation and increase brand awareness by developing and supporting a PR strategy. Publicists help ensure the public — which includes everyone from consumers to media outlets — has a positive sentiment towards a brand and receives accurate and up-to-date information about the company.
To achieve this, a publicist’s tasks can include any or all of the following:
Writing press releases
Pitching news stories to the media
Responding to media requests
Coordinating interviews with the press
Conducting media training
Overseeing social media
Writing thought leadership articles
Freelance PR vs. PR Agency Scope of Work
If you don’t want to work on an in-house PR team or for an agency, there are typically two different career paths you can follow: becoming a freelance publicist or starting your own PR agency.
There isn’t much difference between freelance PR and a PR agency as far as the work involved. The main difference is that a freelance publicist chooses to work solo and a PR agency owner can choose to bring on additional team members.
As far as the scope of work goes, there are a few different ways to structure your project scope depending on your business. For freelance PR experts, you may choose to focus solely on one aspect of PR — let’s say media relations, for instance. In this case, your scope of work may be smaller and more defined.
If you’re an agency owner with a team and want to put together a PR agency scope of work, you may be able to take on larger projects with broader scopes. Some PR agencies function similarly to marketing agencies in that they offer more than the standard public relations services. If you want to help your clients maintain their entire digital brand, then your PR agency may offer social media strategy or management support. You may also help clients with editorial opportunities by helping write and pitch thought leadership articles.
All of these factors play into how you put together your public relations scope of work. Let’s dive into how exactly to build your PR scope.
How to Build a Public Relations Scope of Work
Whether you want to create a freelance PR proposal or a PR agency scope of work, follow these steps to build a public relations scope of work that successfully helps you secure new client projects, communicate your value, and get paid faster.
Choose your structure
First, decide whether you want to offer retainers or one-off projects like a PR strategy. PR is a long game — it can take time to build relationships with the media, secure interviews, and eventually earn press. Because of this, it’s common for publicists to work on a monthly retainer. Structuring your services and pricing on a monthly basis helps capture all of the ongoing tasks you do.
You may also want to offer PR strategy as a one-off project. Strategy-based services are a great way to communicate your value and expertise while also setting you up for ongoing work once a client sees how successful the first deliverable is.
If you want to go the retainer route, check out our Public Relations Retainer Scope of Work Template.
Decide on your services
Once you’ve figured out how you want to structure your client projects, it’s time to get into the details of your PR scope of work. Which specific services do you want to offer? Do you want to focus solely on media relations? Are you open to ghostwriting on behalf of your client for earned and owned media opportunities? PR can involve a range of tasks, so your scope depends on what your expertise is in and what you want to offer.
If you want to hone in on writing-related PR tasks, check out our Public Relations & Editorial Content Scope of Work Template.
Figure out if you want to team up or go solo
Let’s say you run a PR agency and you want to offer supplementary services that go hand-in-hand with PR, such as social media support or owned content creation like blog posts. If your individual expertise is in PR, then you’ll want to team up with other freelancers whose expertise is in social media and content creation so you can offer a broader scope.
You can also choose to work with clients as a solo PR practitioner. Either way, be sure to create a scope of work that clearly outlines what the project includes. Even if you choose to start the project focused solely on media relations, you and your client may realize that their PR strategy would benefit from social media support. You can always adjust your original scope of work and resend it with the additional deliverables (and teammates) needed to expand the project.
If you want to broaden your scope to include social media and branding, check out our Public Relations, Branding & Social Scope of Work Template.
Decide on your rate
Nailing down your pricing is one of the most challenging aspects of freelancing and agency life. You don’t want to undercharge and undervalue yourself, but you also don’t want to price yourself out of the market and miss out on client opportunities — it’s a tricky balance to strike.
When deciding on your rate, it’s helpful to see what other people charge for similar services. For freelance publicists and PR consultants, the rates can vary. While some freelancers may choose to charge an hourly rate others find it more effective to charge a monthly retainer price.
If you’re going to be working with clients long-term by providing ongoing PR work, it makes sense to set up a retainer using value-based pricing. Using value-based pricing puts a price tag on your expertise and connections rather than your time.
To see exactly how other publicists price their monthly services, check out our Public Relations Retainer Scope of Work Template.
Creating a detailed PR scope of work or proposal that communicates your value and puts a price tag on your expertise is the first step in building long-term client relationships. A good scope of work sets the tone for the project and can even open doors to expanded services down the road. Use our PR scope of work templates to start building a proposal you’re confident in.