5 Things to Consider When Building Your 2026 PR Budget
Refreshed December 15, 2025
TLDR: Guidelines for Choosing PR Budget
Media breeds media. Don’t lose your PR momentum in the heat of budget scrutiny.
Consider if it’s time to rethink those SEO and online ad budgets and repurpose dollars back into earned media and GEO (generative engine optimization).
Plan for multiple tentpoles throughout the year — and how you’re going to fill the space between them.
Leave room for unexpected opportunities by setting aside 10% of your public relations budget.
Remember that the value of PR is more than media placements.
It’s that time of year: budget season.
In a 2025 Nielsen report, 74% of CMOs said they’re under more scrutiny than ever to prove marketing ROI, and more than one-third say they must work harder than other business functions to secure budget. Budgeting has always been tricky for marketing and PR professionals. It hasn’t gotten any easier this year.
Companies are still facing economic pressures out of their control, and leaders are becoming more selective about how and where to allocate resources. Add to that the earned-media squeeze (fewer newsrooms, thinner reporting staffs, and more fragmented audiences), and leaders must understand where PR actually delivers the most value.
PR isn’t a social media ad. It isn’t a pay-per-click campaign. You can’t plug in $500 and expect $5,000 back by the end of the week.
It’s also not transactional; it’s transformational. It shapes your reputation, builds authority, earns trust, and positions you as the go-to in your industry. Those things don’t show up on a spreadsheet, but they absolutely show up in your business.
The right PR budget for your company depends on a lot of different factors. Here are 5 ways we advise clients to think about budgeting for a year’s worth of PR activities. Plus, we gathered insights from business leaders about how they’re thinking through it for 2026.
PR Budget Breakdown
1. Think holistically about your strategy and budget.
It might be fairly obvious, but worth saying: Always determine your public relations budget in relation to your strategy. Ask questions like, “What business outcomes is the company trying to achieve next year? How can PR support those outcomes?”
Don’t limit yourself to thinking about goals only in terms of sales and revenue. For example, you might want to build up excitement internally ahead of a company milestone or drive demand for a product launch. You also might want to see your company and narrative appear more in LLM (large-language model) queries, especially as more consumers now turn to Gen AI for product and service recommendations. Each of those requires different strategies and tactics.
“I plan on increasing our PR budget in 2026 because of how effective it is for niche audiences. As a direct-to-consumer brand, we do not rely on physical retail, but on visibility and trust in the form of testimonials. I'm increasing spend to improve our relationships with our best reviewers and get placements that showcase our top features.” – Šarūnas Bružas, desktronic
Do a PR budget breakdown with your goals in mind. Consider the role it will play as part of the larger overall marketing strategy. PR is much more than just media relations, so make sure you’re drilling down into all the potential plays – like awards or speaking engagements – and consider how to integrate with larger aspects of marketing.
I was once involved in the launch of a toy company with a Rihanna concert at the Toys ‘R’ Us in Times Square. Which part of your budget covers an activation like that: PR, events, or advertising?
It’s a mix, and every team involved should contribute. When you look at your PR budget breakdown, different areas often come into play. You may need to account for advocates, experiential moments, or more, all in the same campaign. Be open to moving money from one budget area to another if needed to make the greatest impact possible when working on an integrated campaign.
2. Acknowledge when PR is more cost-effective.
Your public relations budget should flex with your stage of growth, audience, and goals. But there are clear moments when PR simply outperforms other marketing channels on cost and impact.
For example, PR can be the most cost-effective form of marketing for a startup, for a few reasons:
Efficacy: When you’re new on the market, PR is the most effective way to educate your industry and build credibility. (What do you trust more: an objective story by a reporter or a paid advertisement by the company?)
Cost: It will cost you significantly more to buy 20 ads than to work with a PR firm to get 20 pieces of coverage.
Longevity: When ads end, they’re gone, but media hits last, in many cases, forever.
Note that startups that are too early-stage might find PR difficult. PR works best when companies work out the kinks of their value-proposition and have something beyond just vision to share publicly. (If you’re wondering whether you’re ready for PR, check out the signs in our article.)
Another reason earned media is cost-effective is that it has a clear impact it has on GEO. Earned media is a major driver of GEO and determines whether your company shows up in user queries (or not). A Muck Rack study reported that 95% of AI-generated citations come from unpaid media sources, and 85% of those come from earned media.
As over half of consumers have replaced traditional online search with generative AI tools, it might be time to rethink those SEO and online ad budgets and repurpose those dollars back into earned media.
“PR is now a necessity for brand relevance. A brand's narrative must be reliable and tailored to appear in LLMs as more and more people look to them for solutions. Our PR strategy will now incorporate AIO/GEO with SEO and content strategy to fuel reliable responses when an AI tool is asked a question about our space or our brand.” -Pilar Lewis, Marketri
3. Plan a regular cadence of PR activity throughout the year.
Companies are starting to let go of the (incorrect) perception that one big, national media hit means you’re set for the year. Just like in music, a one-hit wonder isn’t as meaningful as a regular cadence of targeted hits that lead up to and follow a tentpole moment.
“We are planning to increase PR budget, but are reducing spend on vanity coverage and one-off campaigns. The investment is moving toward long-term partnerships with journalists and niche media where content has residual value, meaning it compounds visibility and credibility over time. PR is becoming less about volume and more about sustained relevance.” – Chris M. Walker, Legiit
In the heat of budget scrutiny, before you make any moves, remember that “media breeds media.” Meaning, one hit often leads to another and another. PR is a snowball rolling down a hill, gathering speed and impact as it goes. Therefore, if you cut back – or stop the ball in its tracks – you’ll essentially start over from scratch later.
Here’s a case study: Droyd, a manufacturer of children’s rideables, came to us for our sustainable PR approach to introduce their current products (and eventually new ones) to the market.
Starting sustainably: First, we began building foundational media relations to secure attention and product reviews. This grew into strategic coverage in trade publications which helped build awareness in the retail and toy community. It also resulted in national hits right before the holidays, getting Droyd in front of the eyes of millions of consumers in outlets like CNET, BuzzFeed, and more.
Staying always-on: In between new product announcements, we continued our proactive pitching with evergreen angles. Through trendjacking and social listening, we secured placements in product roundups and holiday gift guides, along with award wins to keep coverage flowing.
Building on the foundation: The following year, we amplified these efforts, including partnering with industry experts and participating in media events like the Holiday Gift Guide Show and Toy Fair. Droyd also participated in our owned, exclusive event Carve-X, an interactive media event that showcases products in their native environments. We capped it all off with more top-tier, national TV segments during the holidays.
As a result of this sustainable strategy, Droyd nailed down national retail distribution in Target, and earned billions of impressions. Without trust in us, a great product, and a layered approach to reaching the target audience, this result wouldn’t have been possible.
4. Leave room in your public relations budget to be opportunistic.
Some of the most exciting opportunities are unexpected — a speaking role opens up when a speaker drops out three weeks before an event that was fully booked three months ago, or a morning show has a last-minute opening to feature a product.
Set aside 10% of your public relations budget as a pool of “opportunistic” dollars to give yourself the flexibility to take advantage of them.
Part of that 10% might even be allocated to investing in tools for media monitoring, reporter targeting, and measuring the value of coverage. You never know what might crop up unexpectedly, especially as more AI capabilities surface every day, and don’t want a lack of budget to be the reason you pass on a tool that could potentially drive results. Just avoid chasing every new, shiny object you might discover.
Pro Tip: Using new AI tools can sometimes feel like throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks. We compiled a list of learnings in our own agency’s AI journey here to help you avoid that from the outset.
5. Remember there’s more value to PR than placements.
Clients have told us they value our Executive Interviews because they afford them time and space to think. We’ve also seen over and over how delivering a draft for a press release forces marketing, product, design, and sales teams to align on a unified narrative for a big announcement after waffling for weeks.
When budgeting for PR, remember all its “extra” benefits, like breaking teams across the organization out of their siloes.
“We recently supported a partner through a major growth initiative that required clear communication across investors, customers, and regulators. Strong PR kept everyone aligned and gave the company room to move while we secured a strategic partnership that unlocked new recurring revenue. It reminded me that thoughtful communication can be a growth lever in turbulent markets.” –Neil Fried, EcoATMB2B
There’s more internal and external noise than ever. Communications is well-equipped to step up and help employees and consumers decide what is truly important to know and act on and what can fall to the wayside.
No definitive guideline on a public relations budget will make sense for every organization. Your PR budget depends on your industry, goals, and audience, as well as your prior efforts. Make it a priority to measure and analyze this year’s initiatives regularly so you can make more informed decisions about what to invest in next year.