Fundamentally, public relations is about your business and the relationships you have with your target audiences.

Those audiences might include customers and potential customers, but also other stakeholders such as staff, talent, the public, specific communities, potential investors, political and regulatory stakeholders, media and any other audiences which may be important to you.

A strategic PR consultancy will take your commercial objectives, review the audiences who are important to engage with to achieve those, develop a strategy and plan and then use a host of PR agency tools to support those goals.

Whether those objectives are to sell, to influence, to recruit, retain or position, PR supports your brand with those audiences.

There is a powerful shift at the moment towards businesses which have earned the trust of their audiences and whose brands have a quality reputation, are personable and build authentic connections. Supporting that is when PR strategy is at its most powerful.

Like other professionals such as accountants, HR consultants and solicitors, most PR companies will charge at hourly rates relevant to the experience and specialism of the PR consultancy team.

At Polymedia we are both flexible and transparent with our costings.

• Projects

If you have a PR project such as a product launch, acquisition announcement or a new website then we can develop a brief with you and cost to that brief, based on the varying hourly rates of the PR consultants involved and the time needed by each to deliver the project.

• Ad-hoc

If you occasionally have requirements for PR consultancy support, then we can work with you on an ad hoc basis. This can be costed in advance by collaboratively developing a brief which we cost to, or charging hourly, sometimes with a ceiling, if you prefer.

• Charging hourly

This is usually an approach when it’s impossible to know how long our support may be needed. For example, in a live crisis management scenario the hours needed will be determined by how the crisis unfolds. We record hours carefully and report daily on costs incurred.

• PR Retainer

A retainer is by far the best way to work on an ongoing basis with a PR consultancy.

A public relations retainer allows us to really become one of your team. We get to know your brand and your people and can proactively look for exciting opportunities. There is a commitment from both parties to an ongoing relationship and that makes for the best relationships.

Our PR consultancy retainer rates are lower than hourly or project rates and a retainer works on a swings-and-roundabouts basis with higher levels of activities some months offset by lower levels in others. Hours are monitored and servicing levels reported on monthly, balancing out over the year.

Crudely explained, marketing is more raw and direct – it’s a kind of “buy me” mechanism that sits closely with the sales function. It’s usually worked through paid channels such as advertising, PPC and e-marketing.

Public relations is more about your brand, promoting awareness, building trust, reputation, connection and engagement to achieve your commercial objectives. Those objectives may be to generate sales, but they may also be to position your brand, or influence or engage with certain audiences. PR is usually worked through owned and earned channels so carries more influence and credibility.

The tactics are largely different, but there is often crossover. In today’s commercial climate, with AI search and Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) increasingly shaping how people search, the authority created through strong PR campaigns, credible media coverage and trusted content is becoming increasingly important.

Our team has been working from Hampshire for around three decades, and we love living and working on the south coast.

Much of that work is for businesses based in this Central South region including Southampton, Portsmouth, Basingstoke, Winchester and Chichester.  Sometimes they need support regionally but for those who work nationally, we do too.

We’ve also always worked with national businesses –  IKEA, KLM, Help for Heroes and the Workdry Group, for example. Sometimes that’s because they have a southern regional initiative they need consultancy support with, but sometimes they need national support and we provide that too.