You don’t need a £25K per month B2B PR budget

You can spend £25,000 a month on PR, but you can also spend a lot less. It all comes down to what you’re looking to achieve, and sometimes, whether or not that’s what you’ve been used to paying.

For some brands, a £25,000 monthly PR budget is entirely justified. Large consumer campaigns can involve nationally representative research, influencers, celebrity partnerships, huge stunts, paid amplification and major campaign launches. And the budget can disappear pretty quickly.

But B2B is different – so long as you set your objectives out early and want real results, not fancy presentations from men in fancy suits, sitting in fancy gin palaces in fancy Shoreditch.

If you’re selling specialist products or services to a relatively niche audience of decision-makers, specifiers and influencers, you don’t need to create mass awareness among millions of people who will never buy from you? Just those that matter to you.

B2B PR isn’t about being everywhere

For consumer brands, reach can be everything. A campaign that gets millions of people talking may have done exactly what it was designed to do.

In B2B, however, a piece of coverage read by 5,000 facilities managers, security directors, architects or procurement professionals may be considerably more valuable than something reaching 500,000 people with absolutely no connection to your business.

So we shouldn’t be asking “how many people saw it”, but “who saw it, and what did they think, or do, about it?”

The £25k isn’t the issue

There is nothing inherently wrong with spending £25,000 a month on PR. If that’s what the strategy requires, and the agency is delivering £25,000 worth of strategic value, expertise and activity, then it may represent excellent value.

But the size of the retainer is not the measure of good PR, and a Times article published this week highlighted growing pressure on agencies as clients scrutinise budgets and ask what AI means for the value of communications services. Because, as AI takes on some of PR’s more routine tasks, the value increasingly lies in higher-level strategic thinking and counsel  -and of course, industry knowledge.

So if ChatGPT can write a press release in seconds, what exactly should you be paying your PR agency for?

There is no single “average” price for PR in the UK. Retainers vary considerably according to the size of the agency, its location, the level of senior expertise involved and, importantly, what the client is actually asking it to deliver. But recent UK benchmarks do paint an interesting picture.

Research published in June 2026 puts the entry point for UK PR support at around £2,000 – £3,500 a month, rising to £3,000 – £8,000 for consistent proactive PR activity and around £8,000 – £15,000 for established mid-market agencies. At the top end, London and specialist firms can charge £15,000 – £30,000 a month or more for senior strategic counsel and larger integrated campaigns.

So £25,000 a month isn’t an imaginary PR budget, it’s very much at the upper end of the market. But that doesn’t make it either good value or poor value. The question is what the investment is buying.

And that is where B2B PR becomes particularly interesting. A smaller, specialist agency might be able to focus its resources almost entirely on understanding one client’s market, audience and media landscape, developing original thought leadership and securing coverage in the handful of publications that really matter. 

A much larger campaign might involve research, influencers, events, stunts, paid amplification and multiple teams working across different channels. Both are legitimate PR strategies, they just serve different purposes.

As The Times reported, the PR industry is already grappling with AI and that strategic counsel is where the value lies. And B2B PR is no different. I’m aware of countless, exceptional B2B PR agencies across the UK who squeeze every last drop out of a budget by understanding how buyers, and influencers think, and deliver fantastic insight, counsel and value. Whether that’s a £25K or £2.5K per month retainer. 

Pay for thinking

Simply writing words was never where the real value of PR should have been, it was knowing what is worth saying in the first place.

It’s in sitting down with a client, understanding their market and recognising that something they casually mention in conversation is actually an interesting response to a much bigger industry issue.

In other words, agreeing not what should be talked about but what does the audience need to hear about.

And this brings us neatly back to why your PR agency shouldn’t just understand your business, but also your market. Who you’re trying to influence, what pressures are they’re facing, what geo-political events impact their bottom line, cashflow or pipeline, and what regulations squeeze them.

If you provide electrical services, then great – a bit of PR in the electrical magazines is nice. But does it hold the value of getting that same piece of thought leadership into the magazines read by your buyers in, say, estates, construction or FM?

A 2025 B2B Thought Leadership Impact Report found that more than 40% of B2B deals stall because of misalignment within buying groups. It also highlighted the importance of so-called “hidden buyers” – stakeholders who may never speak to your sales team but can still significantly influence whether you win the business.

Almost all of those hidden buyers (91%) said a hallmark of high-quality thought leadership is that it helps uncover challenges or needs their organisation had not previously recognised.

That understanding and knowledge is often invisible, but it’s the £25K mindset you require when commissioning a B2B PR agency. It means expecting the same commitment to understanding, strategic thinking and value from every pound you do spend.

You should be paying for someone to understand your business, understand your audience, identify what matters, spot the opportunity, challenge your thinking and turn your expertise into ideas worth publishing. And increasingly, the online content and earned media surrounding your business contributes to the wider information ecosystem through which customers research companies – including through AI-driven, and GEO search.

If you’d like to know more about how Catalyst PR can give you the £25K mindset, in the B2B PR environment get in touch.