The 8 Best Digital PR Agencies to Grow Your Brand (+ Costs) (2024)

A digital PR agency can amplify your brand’s market share. We did the homework to find 8 of the best digital PR agencies to help you evaluate the best fit for your business. As one of the top 3% of agencies in the country, we know a good agency when we see one.

Here, you’ll get a rundown of the top reviewed and vetted digital public relations agencies, plus a recap of digital PR benefits, budget expectations, and questions to ask to find the right fit to advance your strategic goals.

We’ve hand-selected these 8 digital PR agencies because they’ve proven to deliver impressive results. If a client came to us with a problem that wasn’t quite the right fit for HawkSEM, we wouldn’t hesitate to refer them to any of these deserving agencies.

Let’s look at what makes each a stand-out PR agency.

Top 8 digital PR agencies

  1. HawkSEM
  2. Berbay Marketing & Public Relations
  3. Olmstead Williams Communications
  4. Miller Ink
  5. BLASTmedia
  6. FINN Partners
  7. Edelman
  8. BLND Public Relations

1. HawkSEM

The 8 Best Digital PR Agencies to Grow Your Brand (+ Costs) (1)

At HawkSEM, we have decades of experience helping brands create memorable connections with their customers — and we have the 4.5x average client ROI and 98% retention rate to prove it.

Many agencies have experience in traditional PR and media channels or old-school press release placements, but that won’t cut it in today’s digital-first market.

We offer data-driven solutions for every channel and stage of the customer sales cycle. We build holistic strategic plans, including content ideation, creation, publication, and promotion. And ensure our clients maximize every opportunity to reach their target audience and increase brand awareness.

We’re a full-service digital media agency in Los Angeles with in-house expertise spans the full spectrum of digital marketing services, like:

  • Content marketing
  • Landing page design and conversion rate optimization
  • Search engine optimization (SEO)
  • Social media marketing
  • Conversion rate optimization (CRO)

Plus, we have ConversionIQ, our proprietary marketing technology, helping big brands like Microsoft, Datadog, and Columbia University increase lead volume by 2x, decrease cost per acquisition by over 40%, and improve lead quality by 60%.

Our past performance across industries and businesses sizes and goals means we’ve tackled many challenges, learned from mistakes, and tested multiple outlandish ideas to help our customers grow.

At HawkSEM, we bring together the best mix of creative and proven approaches, underlaid by a foundation of clear data, defined measurement plans, AI insights, platform expertise, and technical excellence, to build ROI-boosting strategies that achieve meaningful results.

Our breadth of expertise allows us to achieve more — plain and simple. We cement every decision in data, so we don’t expect you to take our word for it.

We helped:

  • Honda increase organic sessions by 200%
  • Microsoft achieve 4,000 new page-one keyword rankings
  • Merrill Lynch double lead volume

That’s just scratching the surface. Dive deeper into our results to see how we help clients:

  • Grow their fanbase
  • Drive targeted website traffic
  • Improve marketing campaigns
  • Increase conversions and revenue
  • Scale successes, and so. much. more.

Best for: B2B/B2C, ecommerce, SaaS, finance, healthcare, education, professional services companies looking for proven past performance, technical chops, industry-leading technology, and big personality. We like to smile and promise your results will make you smile too.

Our Services:

  • Paid Search/PPC
  • Digital PR
  • Remarketing
  • Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)
  • Performance Display
  • Shopping Feed Management
  • Search Engine Optimization and Local SEO
  • Content Marketing
  • Paid Social

Clients:

  • Microsoft
  • Verizon
  • Siemens
  • Nike
  • Wyndham Capital

2. Berbay Marketing & Public Relations

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Berbay Marketing & Public Relations is the second seed in our list for a reason — it has over three decades of experience building visibility and revenue growth for professional services firms.

It’s located in LA and specializes in boutique PR and marketing services for law, real estate, and financial services firms.

It’s deeply ingrained in these industries and offer its clients the perfect combination of big agency expertise with a personal dedication to businesses, small and large.

If you’re looking for turnkey marketing and PR solutions for your professional services business, look no further than Berbay Marketing & PR.

Best for: Law, real estate, and financial firms.

Services:

  • Public relations
  • Speaking engagements
  • Social media
  • Website revitalization
  • Advertising
  • Search engine optimization
  • Marketing materials

Clients:

  • Hodes Milman Liebeck Mosier, LLP
  • Kerr & Wagstaffe
  • Huntley, Mullaney, Spargo & Sullivan, Inc.
  • The Veen Firm
  • Laurus Corporation

3. Olmstead Williams Communications

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Olmstead Williams Communications (OWC) is a reputation management and public relations boutique firm helping businesses raise their brand profile and capture market share.

OWC takes the time to learn your business and its goals, assessing everything from reputation risk to communication objectives. From there, it elevates key messages and activates those communication strategies across the media, events, and influencers.

If you need top-tier media coverage, business growth, or reputation management services, add OWC to your consideration list. Just look at their results – OWC clients achieved:

  • More than $1.5 billion in revenue
  • Grew their workforce 173%
  • Managed 20 attacks and protected their reputation

Best for: B2B, technology, financial services, cleantech, government, healthcare technologies, non-profit, and other professional services companies.

Services:

  • Reputation management
  • Crisis/issues management
  • Media relations/media training
  • Content development
  • Social & shared media
  • Speaker, awards, and events

Clients:

  • CompoSecure
  • Taskus
  • Saban Community Clinic
  • CURE Pharmaceutical
  • Cubic Motion

4. Miller Ink

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Miller Ink is a strategic communications and crisis management firm. It helps businesses tell their story better by building integrated communications programs across earned, owned, and paid media.

Its team members offer media strategy, digital and research capabilities, creative services, and deep PR relationships to amplify brand messages and help businesses navigate reputational crises with ease.

Miller Ink’s unique approach generates big results for clients, and people are taking notice — it’s won dotCOMM, Viddy, DesignRush, Marcom, and Hermes awards, and that’s only a sample of its accolades.

Best for: Professional services businesses across advocacy, education, entertainment, finance, fintech, healthcare, insurance, legal, philanthropy, public affairs, nonprofits, real estate, startups, and technology.

Services:

  • Crisis management
  • Reputation management
  • Media training
  • Executive communication
  • Research and analytics
  • Creative services
  • Media relations
  • Influencer marketing
  • and more

Clients:

  • Community Corp. of Santa Monica
  • Our Common Destiny
  • American Friends of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra
  • Jewish Future Pledge
  • American Friends of Yad Sarah

5. BLASTmedia

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BLASTmedia is a modern SaaS PR agency helping companies drive consistent brand narrative, differentiate from competitors, optimize marketing performance, and improve sales pipeline for nearly 20 years.

Fully ingrained in B2B technology and SaaS industries, BLASTmedia claims to be the only PR agency in the US dedicated to B2B SaaS. It supports everyone from growth-stage to publicly traded companies, creating thought leadership campaigns and media opportunities to impact investors, employees, partners, and customers.

BLASTmedia also won awards for PR Daily’s Top Agencies, Inc.’s Best Workplaces and Top Agency Campaign of the Year in 2023.

Best for: SaaS companies at all stages of business maturity, crossing industries like artificial intelligence (AI), ClimateTech, DevOps, FinTech, Healthcare and Life Sciences, HR Tech, Legal Tech, Logistics & Supply Chain, MarTech, Retail and Ecommerce, Risk and Security SalesTech, and Tech Services.

Services:

  • Media relations
  • Thought leadership
  • Content creation
  • Measurement

Clients:

  • Litmus
  • Formstack
  • Vibenomics
  • Pattern89
  • Phenom

6. FINN Partners

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FINN Partners is a global marketing and communication agency, offering an array of digital services, such as advertising, content marketing, crisis communications, and influencer marketing.

Joining together principals of other great agencies to form a collaborative “new” agency model, FINN Partners is now one of the largest agencies in the world. It continues to grow through strategic acquisitions, most recently of CB&A (C. Blohm & Associates, Inc.) this past November.

With 1400+ team members and 24 offices spread across three continents, FINN Partners brings together deep industry leadership and extensive past performance across 12+ sectors. It was awarded Best Midsize Agency of the Year (PRovoke/SABRE) and Best PR Firms in America (Observer) in 2022.

If you need a direct communication line and small-business partnership, FINN may not be the right fit for you.

Best for: Mature brands seeking enterprise PR and communication resources.

Services:

  • Advertising
  • Brand strategy & development
  • Content marketing
  • Corporate communications
  • Crisis communication
  • Digital marketing
  • Employee engagement
  • Influencer marketing
  • Investor relations
  • Paid media
  • Public affairs
  • Public relations
  • Publishing & authors
  • Research & insights
  • SEO

Clients:

  • Jack Daniel’s
  • Olympics
  • Meharry Medical College
  • Margaritaville
  • Epic Games

7. Edelman

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Edelman is a global communications firm and large agency, with 6,000 people in over 60 offices and 30 countries.

Founded in 1952, Edelman has a long legacy of impressive past performance, high-profile clients from some of the world’s most recognized brands, a huge swath of service capabilities, and expertise across 19+ industry sectors.

Edelman is uniquely renowned for studying ‘trust” for more than 20 years. Its annual Edelman Trust Barometer and Edelman Trust Institute provide research and data to help businesses build greater trust with their stakeholders to inform leadership, strategy, and policy.

Best for: Big brands looking for global expertise and a vast service offering

Services:

  • Business marketing
  • Business transformation
  • Digital
  • Data security and privacy
  • Executive positioning
  • Predictive intelligence
  • Public affairs, and more

Clients:

  • Taco Bell
  • Heineken
  • eBay
  • Vaseline®
  • Xbox

8. BLND Public Relations

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BLND Public Relations is a boutique company offering full-service PR, branding, web design, influencer engagement, and social media management.

The firm helps lifestyle, beauty, and wellness brands gain greater visibility, customer engagement, and sales, through press placements, social media engagement, strategic partnerships, and events.

It has bicoastal locations and deep industry connections, so if you’re looking for a digital marketing agency in Los Angeles and/or New York City, BLND PR may be right for you.

Best for: Wellness, beauty, and lifestyle brands.

Services:

  • Storytelling
  • Public Relations
  • Social Media
  • Paid Social Strategy
  • Content Creation
  • Influencer Marketing
  • Brand Partnerships
  • Crisis Management

Clients:

  • Delara Home
  • Surrogacy Is
  • Goldthread Plant-Based Tonics
  • Emcee
  • Habitat Home & Garden

What do digital PR agencies do?

Digital PR agencies help businesses protect their reputation and gain wider brand recognition in the marketplace by sharing strategic communications across the channels, platforms, and press where their customers engage most.

They have deep relationships with publishers and press and proven expertise on how to promote genuine brand stories across channels to get customers to pay attention and motivate deeper brand engagement.

Areas digital PR agencies can help:

  • Online reputation management: Elevating your business reputation by monitoring reviews and online mentions to mitigate issues and maximize every opportunity to enhance your online presence.
  • Media outreach: Building relationships, reaching out to publications, securing interviews, finding the right influencers or bloggers to promote link building, and staying top of mind for interviews and other press opportunities.
  • Social media management: Engaging with connections, sharing strategic messaging, and driving targeted campaigns on social media to grow your audience, drive website engagement, and increase conversions.
  • Content distribution: Amplifying your brand’s story across popular media platforms by distributing high-quality articles, blog posts, infographics, press releases, and videos to reach a target audience and generate backlinks.
  • Crisis management: Mitigating damage from negative public perception through strategic advice and communication strategies.
  • Speaker and event promotion: Securing speaking opportunities, managing events, and generating buzz to elevate your team’s thought leaders as respected industry voices.
  • Brand monitoring: Keeping a pulse on the state of your industry and competition to ensure you’re taking advantage of opportunities to position your business as a go-to.
  • Digital marketing and online advertising: Executing digital marketing services across owned, paid, and earned channels to widen your audience and promote your business.
  • Analytics and reporting: Delivering transparent reporting; sharing results and KPIs from strategic initiatives (like media coverage, reach, engagement, and conversions) to improve and continuously optimize PR performance.

Why invest in digital PR?

In today’s crowded market, businesses must pull out all the stops to differentiate, communicate effectively, and get their message in front of the right audience.

Buying behavior, meanwhile, continues to evolve:

  • Consumers in the U.S. are 14% less brand loyal than 2022. Instead, they’re diligently researching brand values, reading reviews, eyeing alternatives, seeking discounts, and comparing prices before buying.
  • B2B is no different. The average enterprise B2B buying group consists of five to 11 stakeholders. Plus, the average B2B buyer refers to 6.9 information sources before buying.

Digital PR acts as an undercurrent to this self-serve research — sharing a business’s point-of-view and value proposition to help consumers make a purchasing decision.

Adding an SEO and digital PR agency to your marketing budget is an investment in amplifying your brand story to the customers most likely to buy. You gain access to deep media relationships, industry thought leaders, traditional communication skills, digital marketing, and optimization expertise.

What’s the average cost of digital PR?

Typically, the average cost for digital PR services will range between $2,500–$10,000 per month. Monthly costs for a digital marketing agency depend on the size and complexity of your PR engagement.

Costs are influenced by the size of:

  • Media outreach
  • Geographic targeting
  • Content creation quality and breadth
  • Paid advertising, boosted posts
  • Influencer engagements
  • Event sponsorships

Ultimately, digital PR is part of your overall marketing and business development budget and a crucial investment.

We couldn’t agree more — a successful PR and marketing strategy gets your customers and industry talking, increases mentions on social media, and gains media coverage. In turn, this grows website traffic and sales for your business.

Choosing a digital PR agency

With a decade in the industry, we know all agencies aren’t the same. In fact, clients have turned to HawkSEM after being burned by agencies unable to tackle and achieve their goals.

When choosing a digital PR agency, consider qualities, like:

  • Years of experience: Are they too green to handle your business challenges?
  • Services offered: Can they fill multiple marketing gaps – and do you need them to?
  • Awards won: Are they recognized in their field?
  • Client list: Have they helped clients grow, similar to your brand’s needs, size, and goals? Will they share client references and case studies?
  • Media relationships: Do they have the connection to secure placements and coverage where your target audience engages?
  • Industry sector experience: Do they have past performance in your industry’s dynamics, target audience, and market trends? Do they have relationships with industry influencers, associations, media, and events?
  • Agency size: Will you be merely one of thousands of clients? Will you have a single POC or direct access to the PR team for support?
  • Regional or global experience: Do they have experience in your target audience’s locations or the global connections you’ll need to scale?
  • Content quality: Is their content high-quality and reflective of your voice, tone, and preferred formats?

These variables reveal an agency’s strengths, priorities, differentiators, and overall fit.

Questions to evaluate a digital PR agency

Let’s review key questions to ask an online digital PR agency to evaluate a good fit for your business:

  • How will you get to know my audience, brand, and business to develop a strategic PR plan?
  • What marketing channels do you recommend for my business goals and why?
  • What’s the budget range you need to achieve these goals?
  • What metrics will you measure for each of these goals?
  • Are you experienced in ecommerce?
  • What certifications do you have?
  • Which publications do you work with most frequently?
  • What is your team structure and who would I work with?
  • How do you prefer to communicate (e.g., Set meetings or asynchronously, tools and platforms, frequency)?
  • What analytics and reporting do you offer?
  • What other clients do you work with in my industry and what has been the result?
  • Who are your technology partners?
  • Do you outsource any part of these engagements?
  • What is your view on generative AI, and how do you use it within your practice?

These questions determine how a digital PR agency works with a business from initial planning stages through execution and measurement of digital PR campaigns.

Ultimately, you’re looking for the right mix of services, engagement, reporting, and cultural fit to ensure you’re comfortable with the digital PR strategy and confident with the partnership.

The takeaway

The right digital PR agency analyzes your business goals, industry, competitors, and audience to build effective communication strategies to engage your target customers.

It’s a revenue-driving investment to grow your business. When considering different agencies, look for the right combination of experience, connections, credibility, clients, and size to match your needs and ambitions.

Don’t stress over the many options. Bring in digital PR specialists, like HawkSEM, to navigate the dizzying mix of marketing channels and media opportunities to amplify reach, enhance public perception, and grow revenue. It’ll also free your internal teams to concentrate on improving business operations, product strategy, and customer experience.

Let’s talk about your 2024 growth plans — reach out to HawkSEM to schedule a free consultation.

The 8 Best Digital PR Agencies to Grow Your Brand (+ Costs) (2024)

FAQs

How much does digital PR cost? ›

However, according to multiple independent sources, the average monthly retainer fee for digital PR services in the US is $5,000. This means that you can expect to pay around $5,000 per month for a standard digital PR campaign that covers the basic aspects of content creation, distribution, and outreach.

What is a digital PR agency? ›

A digital PR agency integrates content generation with PR and other functions, improving your brand's thought leadership positioning and enabling your content to achieve greater impact across many digital channels.

What is the number one PR firm in the world? ›

In 2023, Edelman continued to top the global ranking of public relations (PR) agencies by annual fee income, with its result surpassing one billion U.S. dollars. All the world's top five firms are based in the United States.

Is PR agency profitable? ›

PR firms with 10-15% profitability are doing okay. Those with 20% profitability are very healthy. And the fortunate few who make it to 25% or higher profitability are killing it.

How much does the average PR agency cost? ›

There is a huge range of pricing for PR firms. Solopreneur firms, or less experienced PR firms, might charge around $4,000 monthly, depending on the client and the market. Larger firms, premium agencies $25,000 or more monthly, and boutique firms often charge between $12,000 to $18,000 monthly for their services.

How much do PR packages cost? ›

Most PR firms charge a monthly retainer, and generally for a set number of months. For example, a PR firm might charge $20,000 per month for six months, or $50,000 per month for 12 months, or $4,500 per month for four months. That makes it sound arbitary but it's not.

What is the best PR model? ›

Two-way symmetric is the most ideal and modern PR model. It strives to build and maintain mutually beneficial relationships between the organization and its stakeholders.

What is the best PR strategy? ›

Provide Expert Opinions and Research. Positioning your business as an industry authority is a powerful PR strategy. Publish articles, research findings, and expert opinions on topics relevant to your field. Also, establish a regular content publishing schedule to maintain consistency.

Who is the father of PR in world? ›

Edward Louis Bernays (/bɜːrˈneɪz/ bur-NAYZ, German: [bɛʁˈnaɪs]; November 22, 1891 − March 9, 1995) was an American pioneer in the field of public relations and propaganda, and referred to in his obituary as "the father of public relations".

Is PR worth it for small business? ›

PR is a key component of your marketing plan

PR should be seen as a key component of the marketing plan of any small business, sitting alongside advertising, e-mail campaigns, sales initiatives and social media.

What is the highest paid PR industry? ›

PR pros at brands are the highest earners, with 50% earning $100K or more annually and 26% earning more than $150K annually. Airlines/aviation, apparel/fashion and financial services are among the highest paying industries for PR pros.

What is the budget for a PR agency? ›

Set Aside a Set Amount for PR

Usually, PR companies charge between $100–$150 per hour for their services. So, the more PR work your business requires, the more expensive your project will be. Companies spending more than a fair amount on PR should consider hiring an in-house team or keeping a PR agency on retainer.

How much does PR media cost? ›

Many PR agencies charge clients a monthly retainer fee for ongoing PR services. Retainer fees can range from INR 50,000 to several lakhs per month, depending on the scope of services required and the reputation of the agency.

How much does PR charge? ›

Good public relations are important. But for most companies paying for PR is absolutely crazy. Reputable PR firms charge anywhere from $5,000 to $10,000/month to start, and often what you get is a series of media hits that provide a traffic “bump” without any meaningful conversion to customer.

How much will it cost for PR? ›

The total fees towards the Australian PR for the primary applicant is equivalent to AUD 4640. Australian Permanent Residence (PR) is granted through Subclass 189/190/491 skilled visa schemes. The fee can be paid through your International Visa/ Mastercard/ American Express debit and/or credit card.

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