I get asked about our pricing model a lot. Usually over coffee, sometimes over email, occasionally by a founder who's just been quoted $12,000 a month by another agency and is wondering whether the entire PR industry has lost its mind. The question is always some version of the same thing: what do you actually mean by results-based?
It's a fair question, because the phrase gets thrown around loosely. A few agencies use it to mean "we'll try hard and send you a report." Others treat it as a marketing line that quietly leads into a conventional retainer. At Payper, it means something specific and, I think, quite different from how most PR firms operate. So I want to lay it out plainly, including the parts that don't always work in our favour.
Why does PR pricing confuse so many buyers?
Most professional services charge for time or output. A lawyer bills by the hour. A designer charges per project. You know what you're paying for, even if you're not sure whether the price is fair. PR has historically been harder to pin down, because the thing you're buying is influence, and influence is hard to guarantee. A good agency can write a brilliant press release, build strong journalist relationships and pitch a story with real conviction, but whether a newsroom runs it depends on the news cycle, the editor's priorities and a dozen factors nobody controls.
That uncertainty is real, and it's the reason most agencies charge monthly retainers. The logic goes: you're paying for our expertise and access, not for a guaranteed outcome. Which sounds reasonable until you're six months in, $60,000 lighter and wondering why you've had two stories published. The retainer model protects the agency from the inherent unpredictability of media, but it transfers all the risk to the client. For a startup founder watching every dollar, that's a hard deal to accept.
How does Payper's results-based model actually work?
Payper is a results-based PR agency in New Zealand, which means clients pay a flat pitch fee for the work of developing and pitching a story, then a separate success fee for each piece of coverage that lands in a leading publication. If a pitch doesn't result in coverage, you pay the pitch fee but nothing more. If it lands three stories, you pay three success fees. The incentives run in the same direction for both sides, which changes the dynamic in ways that go beyond pricing.
For context, a typical New Zealand PR agency retainer sits between $5,000 and $15,000 a month, often with a six to twelve month minimum commitment. Globally, mid-market PR retainers run between $10,000 and $25,000 a month. A 2026 industry survey by Clout Media found that 40% of business leaders now prefer performance-based pricing models over flat retainers, driven by the demand for measurable outcomes. That number has been climbing for years, and it reflects a growing impatience with paying for activity rather than results.
Our on-demand model works like this: you pay a pitch fee that covers a 30-minute strategy call, a press release written by an ex-journalist and pitching to relevant New Zealand media. If the story lands, you pay a success fee per story published in a leading outlet. If it doesn't land, you've paid the pitch fee and that's it. No retainer, no lock-in, no minimum spend.
What counts as a "result" in results-based PR?
This is where a lot of results-based models get vague, so I want to be precise. At Payper, a result is a published story in a recognised media outlet. Not a social media mention, not a blog repost, not a "media impression" that nobody can verify. A journalist wrote about you, an editor approved it and it appeared in a publication with a real audience. That's the bar.
We track every placement and report it to clients alongside reach figures pulled from verified media kit circulation data. We also calculate what we call the Earned Media Efficiency Index, or EMEI, which measures the fair market value of the coverage you received divided by what you paid us. An EMEI above 1.0 means your earned media was more cost-efficient than equivalent paid advertising. Our long-standing client Evnex, who make EV chargers, runs a stable EMEI of 2.90, meaning for every dollar they spend with Payper, they receive nearly three dollars of equivalent media value. That's not a cherry-picked number from a launch month. That's their steady-state performance over a sustained retainer.
What about ongoing retainers?
Not everything fits a one-off pitch. Some businesses need sustained PR support, a regular cadence of stories, media training, press kits, stakeholder communications and proactive news monitoring. Payper offers tiered retainers for that, but the results-based principle still runs through them. Every retainer tier includes a lower success fee per story than our on-demand rate, because the ongoing relationship lets us build deeper journalist connections and develop richer narratives over time. You're still paying for results, just at a volume that rewards consistency.
Our retainer clients tend to be businesses with a regular stream of news, product launches, partnerships or milestones worth pitching. Mons Royale is a good example, a brand with seasonal product drops and athlete partnerships that naturally generate stories throughout the year. The retainer gives them priority access to our team and a structured PR calendar, while the success fee structure means we're still accountable for landing coverage, not just writing pitches.
Does results-based PR work for every business?
No, and I think being honest about that is important. Results-based PR works best when you have something genuinely newsworthy to talk about, whether that's a product launch, a funding round, an expansion, a piece of original research or a founder with a compelling story. If the only angle is "we exist and we'd like some press," you're going to struggle with any PR model, but particularly with ours, because we won't pitch a story we don't believe a journalist will want to write.
We turn down around 30% of the businesses that approach us. Sometimes the timing isn't right, sometimes the story needs more development, sometimes PR isn't the channel that will move the needle for them. We wrote a whole article about why we say no, and the response was surprisingly warm. Founders appreciated the honesty, even when they were the ones hearing it.
The model also requires a degree of trust in editorial quality. Because our revenue depends on stories landing, we're selective about what we pitch, which means we'll sometimes push back on a client's preferred angle if we think a different one has a better chance of getting published. That tension is healthy, but it means working with us requires being open to editorial judgement rather than treating PR as a megaphone for whatever you want to say.
How should you compare PR pricing models?
If you're evaluating agencies, I'd suggest looking past the headline number and asking three questions. First, what am I actually paying for... activity or outcomes? A retainer that buys you a set number of hours doesn't tell you whether those hours will produce coverage. Second, where does the risk sit? In a retainer model, you carry all of it. In a results-based model, the agency shares it with you. Third, how will I know whether it's working? Ask about measurement. If the answer involves AVE, which the industry's own measurement body AMEC declared invalid back in 2010, that tells you something about how seriously the agency takes accountability.
Payper's approach won't suit everyone. If you want an agency on call for crisis comms at 2am or need someone to manage a 40-page stakeholder report every quarter, a traditional retainer with a larger team might be the better fit. But if you want PR that's tied directly to coverage, with transparent pricing and no lock-in, the results-based model is worth understanding properly.
The bigger picture
I started Payper with Lewis because we'd both come from newsrooms and could see the disconnect between what journalists actually wanted and what most PR agencies were sending them. The pricing model grew out of that same frustration. If we believed we could land coverage, we should be willing to stake our fee on it. If we couldn't, we shouldn't be charging a premium retainer and hoping nobody noticed.
Eight years on, I still think the model's greatest strength is the conversation it forces. When your revenue depends on results, you get very good at asking whether a story is genuinely worth pitching, and very honest with clients when the answer is no. That honesty costs us revenue in the short term, but it builds the kind of trust that keeps clients coming back, and it keeps our pitch-to-placement ratio high enough that the model actually works.
If you're curious about how it would work for your business, or you just want to know whether your story is ready for media, we're happy to have that conversation with no obligation attached.
Get in touch here and we'll give you a straight answer.