Answering 6 Common Questions CEOs Ask About PR

I’ve spoken with hundreds of CEOs about communications, and the same questions come up again and again. If you’ve hired a PR agency, you’ve probably wondered about these same points. Here are my answers.

How do I measure the impact?

PR is primarily an upper-funnel activity. It builds awareness and trust. Occasionally, a prospect will say, “I heard you on that podcast,” or “I follow you on LinkedIn,” and you can directly connect PR to revenue. But those moments undercount reality. Most influence goes untracked.

The practical way to measure impact is twofold:

First, are you reaching the right people? Are you showing up in the publications your customers read? Are they engaging with your content on LinkedIn? That tells you you’re influencing the right audience. Some folks will reach out after one instance of exposure and become customers. Others will develop trust over many touchpoints, which is how marketing drives sales.

Second, are prospects saying things like, “I’m seeing you everywhere,” or referencing your content during sales conversations? That’s the proof your PR activities are contributing to revenue.

Isn’t this expensive?

Our median client pays $15K/month. Our largest pays close to double that. Outside adtech, $35K/month isn’t unusual for PR. So yes, it’s reasonable to ask whether the ROI is there.

The napkin math is simple. If your average customer is worth $200K per year, do you believe that consistent presence in the media they consume, plus weekly touchpoints on LinkedIn, can produce a 10x return? If the answer is yes, it’s a reasonable investment.

I’ll use myself as an example. I built Sharp Pen by being my own chief evangelist — writing on LinkedIn and X, publishing this newsletter, and recording a podcast. Nearly every dollar of revenue we’ve generated can be traced back to those efforts, directly or via referrals from people who consume that content. 

If that engine drives millions in revenue, would $300K/year for a team to run it be unreasonable? Of course not — I owe my entire business to those marketing activities!

Why not just hire a full-time person?

A US-based director-level marketer costs at least $150K/year, plus ~$30K in taxes and benefits, roughly what an agency costs. The downside of an agency is less time; obviously, you're not getting 40 hours per week of focus from one person. The upside is breadth and depth of skills.

Let’s say you hire Sharp Pen. You’re not hiring one person. You’re hiring me plus a senior PR lead and a senior content marketer, people with decades of adtech experience and deep media relationships. Four brains is better than one in many ways — more ideas, more relationships among influencers, analysts, the press, and event organizers, more and often better content, vastly more experience with an array of clients in the industry. Plus, depth: For example, I lead brand narrative development for our clients. Major adtech company CEOs have hired me specifically to do this.

The person you’re describing won’t have that range, nor will they have the industry understanding and strategic chops that come from devising narratives for dozens of companies in an industry.

What’s guaranteed vs. what’s up to chance?

Content is guaranteed. For most clients, that includes something like 2–5 LinkedIn posts per week, perhaps a newsletter, case studies, etc. The messaging work we do at the beginning of an engagement and strategic advice along the way are also guaranteed.

Traditional PR placements aren’t, but expectations can be set. Two to three earned placements per month is reasonable (for example, a byline in AdExchanger and a reported trade story). We also handle awards submissions, analyst introductions (Forrester, Gartner), and event positioning.

Guaranteed:
LinkedIn content, newsletters, case studies, white papers, messaging, website copy.

Not guaranteed (but managed):
Earned media placements.

How do you use AI?

We use AI constantly, and you’d be foolish not to. The key is the quality of the prompting and editing, which come from the same skills for which writers have always been hired.

I’ve given the same writing assignment to two people using ChatGPT. One produces generic output. The other produces sharp, differentiated work. The difference is the prompt and the editorial judgment behind it.

AI amplifies skill. Great writers know how to direct it and how to edit ruthlessly afterward. That’s where the value lies.

Will I be handed off to junior people?

This is a classic concern about service businesses — and for good reason. Sharp Pen works with more than 20 clients. As the sole founder, I can’t permanently service every account, and any agency owner who claims otherwise is either lying or mismanaging their time.

Here’s how it works on the majority of our accounts. Every account has three permanent team members. I’m deeply involved at the start, leading the highest-leverage work: the brand narrative and messaging. I stay until the team is fully running the program at our standards. At that point, I step back.

The core team typically includes two senior people with 10+ years of adtech marketing experience (more than I have). One leads PR (media coverage, events, awards, analyst relations). The other runs executive evangelism and content. A junior team member adds bandwidth.

Ultimately, the question is whether the work is delivering impact. If a program can realistically drive 10x ROI, personnel becomes a secondary concern. If it can’t, you shouldn’t keep the agency even if the founder is on every call.