

Ask HN: Have you hired a PR agency? - joelandren

If you did hire an agency, was it a positive experience?<p>If you did not hire an agency, why not and what did you do instead?<p>I also setup a 4 question google form to get numerical feedback. (I&#x27;ll share the results with everyone 24 hours after this posting).<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.google.com&#x2F;a&#x2F;pressfriendly.com&#x2F;forms&#x2F;d&#x2F;1PiVS_fY9CjGuUMQp8B-VCnF4GVlrCyMtstpN-xQ8j-Y&#x2F;viewform
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will_brown
When it comes to PR, I like to point out PG's article The Submarine. It names
the PR agency he used (for viaweb), I think it was in about 1996 and they
spent $16,000/month at that time (which I would consider a large amount now,
much less then).

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joelandren
I've hired agencies/consultants six times and results were always somewhat
lacking.

Anecdotally, I've heard the same from many founders. Wondering if this is the
consensus.

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staunch
I have. They're mostly useless at the stuff people hope they're good at. The
best advice I ever heard is not to hire a PR firm until you have too many
_inbound_ requests from the press to manage yourself.

In other words: until you've made it big time and spending $10k/mo+ on PR is a
non-issue.

