PR Fees in Germany

DPRG Trend Barometer 2017

What are currently the PR fees in Germany? Is there any official information available? Yes, it is. The German PR association DPRG published their so-called Trend Barometer 2017 in which agency fees are listed up in detail. As this information is originally only available in German language we as a member of this association herewith present the basic information also in English language.

How much is a press release in Germany?

Our agency experience show that prospect customers very often are asking the following questions:

• How much does the press work cost?
• How expensive is a press release or a by-lined article or a case study?
• What does a media list cost?
• What are the costs of press conferences?
• What is the price for media support during a trade fair?
• Can we settle on a project-based basis (project fee)?
• What would be an average retainer (monthly remuneration)?
• Is there the possibility of a performance-based remuneration?
• What are the hourly rates (for supervisor, senior consultant, junior consultant, assistant, secretary)?

Cost transparency with the PR fee

However, the fee does no tell the full story. The example of the press release shows this very quickly. What has to be taken into account in the price of a press release, because the pure writing is not the entire job. This has to be added:

• Read and understand customer briefing plus further research
• Development of a good hook for the press release
• Discussion with the customer, whether the hook fits into the general communication concept
• Write the press release
• Co-ordination with customer
• Compilation of the media list (end user media, trade media (horizontal and vertical media), economic media, etc.) and identification of the right contacts in the editorial department
• Design of the press release
• Co-ordination with customer
• Dissemination of the press release
• Media observation
• Report and clippings.

All these activities need time and are not available for only 650 €. We therefore display all positions in our offers so that the customer understands where the money goes. Every serious company knows that public relations work is excellent value for money when done well. “The Fall of Advertising & the Rise of PR“ is the legitimate standard work which shows that good public relations work can have a much bigger and more credible effect than advertising.

What are the hourly rates of PR services?

Services (fee per hour)

(expressed in Euro (free value input, median), n=92, Source: DPRG Honorar- und Trendbarometer 2017)

Flat rate services

(expressed in Euro (free value input, „from … to…“, median), n=102, Source: DPRG Honorar- und Trendbarometer 2017)

The DPRG trend barometer 2017 lacks blogger relations and SEO PR

The charts make it clear that in public relations work still very classical services are demanded – now supplemented by social media. However, blogger relations are not explicitly mentioned. Maybe, DPRG now sees this as part of the usual PR tasks?

We also miss “SEO-PR“. We mean online PR, of which the main target is improving the Google ranking of a customer’s website. We combine PR with classic SEO measures on the customer’s website (on-page optimization) and complement this through additional PR activities, which are executed very SEO-oriented (off-page optimization). Only a few PR agencies with a deeper SEO understanding can provide this hybrid performance.

We offer this service, and we are opposed to the SEO agencies by the fact that we as PR professionals thinking it very much from the content side, while the SEOs tend to be more technical. We are convinced that this search engine optimization driven PR will become even more important in the coming years, as customers want to land on Google Page 1 and get as high as possible when the most important keywords are searched.

About Deutsche Public Relations Gesellschaft

The DPRG was founded in 1958 and has around 2,500 members. There are 15 working groups and nine regional groups to promote the exchange and further training of the members.

Industrie-Contact (IC) has been a member of the DPRG since 2002 and adheres to the German Code of Conduct.

More information

DPRG: Fee and trend barometer