Speaker agency or PR agency: which gives B2B experts more visibility?

If you are a B2B expert who wants to win clients, a speaker agency puts you in front of decision-makers more directly, while a PR agency mainly builds reach in the media. Both routes make you visible, in different places: press work puts your name in front of editors and their readers, whereas a talk at a professional conference puts you in a room with people for whom your topic is part of the job. New business comes from conversations with the people who help decide on a contract, and the stage gets you to those conversations by a shorter route. This article compares a speaker agency and a PR agency by services, cost and measurability, and shows when it pays to use both.

What is the difference between a speaker agency and a PR agency?

A PR agency gets you into media coverage, while a speaker agency for experts gets you onto professional conferences as a speaker, in front of an audience that needs your topic at work. The PR agency works with editorial teams, the speaker agency with programme committees, the groups of organisers and specialists who put together a conference's speaking programme.

A professional conference is an event where people from one industry listen to talks about their field and talk to each other. At a well-chosen conference, the room is mostly filled with people who could need what you offer, whereas many readers of the press will never need it. The services, models and prices of speaker agencies as a whole are covered in the speaker agency guide.

What a PR agency does and what it costs

Press work has a clear benefit: when a trade magazine or an industry portal covers you, an editorial team confirms that your topic interests its readers. A PR agency writes press releases, arranges interviews or guest articles and maintains relationships with journalists. For product launches and in a crisis it is the right partner, because it knows how editorial teams work.

Many people read an article, but you rarely find out who they are, and a decision-maker interested in your topic seldom gets in touch on their own. The editors also choose what they publish, so an agency can pitch topics well but cannot promise publication.

PR agencies mostly bill through a monthly contract, the so-called retainer, which covers a fixed allowance of hours and services. According to price information from agencies and trade media, such contracts for B2B clients usually range from around 2,000 to 10,000 euros a month, with small packages for mid-sized companies starting in the low four figures. Three criteria explain the range: the number of target media, the number of releases and guest articles per month and the experience of the team. Terms of at least six months are common, because relationships with editors take time.

What a speaker agency does

A speaker agency for experts works on behalf of the expert and gets them onto professional conferences through public calls and direct approaches. A call for papers is the public invitation a conference uses to collect talk proposals. The proposal itself is called an abstract, a short description of the planned talk that the programme committee reviews.

Stage Starter takes on this work for you: we find the right calls, write the submission and submit it. To do so, we develop the talk and abstracts with you, research the conferences where your clients sit, follow up after every submission and support you all the way to the stage. You provide your expertise and approve the talk and abstracts once before the start, after which not every single submission comes back to you. The programme committee decides on every acceptance, and you hold the conversation after the talk yourself, because it is your contact and your future client.

Can a PR agency get you speaking slots at conferences?

Some PR agencies offer speaker placement as an add-on and treat it as part of their media work. In practice this often means that the agency approaches a few well-known organisers or arranges speaking slots tied to a sponsorship. Submitting through calls for papers requires a different craft: a continuously maintained collection of suitable conferences, abstracts in several versions, tracking many deadlines and following up with every organiser.

Winning clients through the stage needs submissions in the volume at which the acceptance rate starts to show. That is the core business of a speaker agency, while for a PR agency it sits at the edge of what it offers. How working with an agency compares with submitting yourself is shown in Submit yourself or hire a speaker agency.

Why the conversation counts in B2B

B2B contracts rarely come from one person's decision. For services that need explaining, a buying group of several people from different functions decides, and large parts of the decision are made before any supplier is contacted: the people involved align internally and do their own research. Suppliers who are already known and seen as experts during this period have a head start when the shortlist is drawn up.

This is why the two routes have different effects. An article reaches individual members of such a group at different times and in different places. A talk sometimes reaches several of them at once, shows your thinking through examples from your practice, and you see faces in the room that you can approach afterwards.

What the stage route demands in effort

Direct contact comes from submission volume, and the figures show how much of it is needed. Stage Starter has submitted 2,189 abstracts for clients, of which 1,374 have been decided: 94 were accepted and 1,280 rejected, which is around 7 per cent acceptance per abstract. At conference level the rate is higher, because we often submit several abstracts per conference and one acceptance is enough. Per conference we reach up to 19 per cent acceptances, while at this volume of submissions the market norm is 5 per cent at most.

A rate like this implies a volume: if you aim for four to six talks a year, at 7 per cent per abstract you need around 60 to 90 submissions across many conferences, plus the research and the follow-up. How much time this ties up if you do it yourself is calculated in How much time does a conference programme with a speaker agency cost you?.

What a speaker agency and a PR agency cost compared

A PR agency in B2B usually costs 2,000 to 10,000 euros a month, while at Stage Starter the collaboration starts from 990 euros net a month for the entire submission operation. If you want a written roadmap first, you start with the Speaker Audit from 2,000 euros net, which is credited when you book the agency. The two prices stand for different services, so the sensible comparison is what each euro brings in terms of conversations with potential clients.

You will come across a third option as well: the bought speaking slot. With pay to speak, an organiser sells speaking slots, and these quickly cost 10,000 euros or more for a single slot. Such slots are often not marked as sponsored in the programme, and audiences still frequently read them as advertising. How the model works is explained in Sponsored talks and pay to speak.

The difference in measurability weighs especially heavily when you want to win clients. After a talk you know who was in the room, whom you spoke to and which meeting came out of it, while an article reports reach that can only rarely be linked to a contract. How to capture the success of a talk in metrics is described in Measuring the success of conference talks.

Can you combine a PR agency and a speaker agency?

Yes, the two routes complement each other, and the order follows your goal. A talk at a professional conference provides material for the press: a topic with figures and examples that a trade outlet can pick up. Conversely, a published expert opinion can draw a programme committee's attention to you when it is looking for speakers on a topic.

With limited time and budget, a clear order helps. If new contracts are your goal and your offer needs explaining, you start with the stage, because that is where the conversation happens. If you are launching a product or want to take a position in the wider public, the PR agency comes first. The underlying question is always who should see you: a broad public or the handful of people who help decide on your next contract.