I run a PR firm, and these are the eight questions I would ask any tech PR agency before signing, mine included. The first matters most: which named reporters will you pitch, and do AI engines cite them? Muck Rack's December 2025 report found only a 2% overlap between the two lists.
What should a tech company ask a PR agency before signing?
A tech company should ask about reporters, measurement, press releases, staffing, crisis work, the first 90 days and the contract. Each question has an answer that shows how the agency works and an answer that shows it does not. The table is the checklist I would bring to the first meeting.
| Question | A good answer | A warning sign |
|---|---|---|
| Which reporters will you pitch? | Named reporters, matched to our beat, with recent stories | A media list of outlets with no names |
| Do AI engines cite those reporters? | A check of the sources ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude cite for our category | "We do not track that" |
| How will you measure results? | Placements by outlet, AI citations and inbound leads | Impressions and clip counts only |
| What will you do with press releases? | Short releases built on data, used as a record | A release for every minor update |
| Who works on our account? | Named people and their weekly hours | A senior pitch team and a junior delivery team |
| What happens in a technical crisis? | A written plan with owners and clocks | "We will figure it out when it happens" |
| What do the first 90 days produce? | A dated plan with outputs each month | A strategy deck and a promise |
| How do we leave? | A short exit notice and a clean handover of assets | A long lock-in with no review point |
The rest of this guide explains why each answer matters. I am the founder of a PR firm, so weigh my view against the other agencies you interview.
Which reporters will the agency pitch, and do AI engines cite them?
The agency should name the reporters it will pitch and show whether AI engines cite them. The Muck Rack study compared the most pitched journalists on its platform with those most cited by AI engines for a particular brand, and the overlap was 2% on average. Muck Rack's CEO, Greg Galant, said the gap shows the industry has not yet adapted.
The study also found that about 94% of AI citations come from non-paid sources and that earned media alone accounts for 82%. Muck Rack's May 2026 edition put earned media at 84% of citations and journalism at 27% of cited sources. The numbers move a little between editions, but the direction is the same: AI engines quote coverage a company earns, not coverage it buys.
Ask the agency to show you the sources AI engines cite when a buyer asks about your category. Then ask which of those outlets and reporters it has placed stories with in the last year.
If the engines cite outlets your agency has never pitched, ask how it plans to reach them. Some outlets take contributed expert commentary, some take data and some take neither. A good agency can tell you which route applies to each outlet and what it costs in time.
Why it works: AI engines retrieve and quote pages that already exist on the web. A reporter whose article the engines cite is a reporter whose coverage of your product will be quoted in later answers. Muck Rack's analysis of more than one million AI citations is the evidence (Muck Rack, December 2025).
How should a tech PR agency measure results?
A tech PR agency should report placements by outlet, citations in AI answers and inbound leads, not impressions alone. Impressions measure how many people could have seen a story. Citations and leads measure whether the story changed what a buyer found and did.
Set a baseline before the work starts. Run the same ten buyer questions through ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude and record which brands and sources appear. Repeat the test monthly and report the change. An agency that resists a baseline is asking you to accept its numbers without a comparison.
Ask the agency to separate three kinds of results in the report: stories it placed, stories that came from inbound reporter requests and stories that appeared without its help. The split shows how much of the coverage the agency produced.
Ask for a monthly report with four lines: stories placed, outlets, the sources AI engines cited for your category and the leads that came from coverage. If a number is missing, ask why.
Why it works: A fixed question set turns a moving target into a trend line. Muck Rack's December 2025 report warns that citation behavior changes as models are updated, so a repeated test catches a shift that a one-time audit would miss (Muck Rack, December 2025).
What should an agency do with a tech press release?
An agency should write a tech press release as a short, factual record built on data, then use it as the base for individual pitches. Muck Rack found that press release citations grew five times between July and December 2025, and that the cited releases looked different from the rest.
The cited releases contained twice as many statistics on average, 2.5 times as many bullet points and about 30 percent more objective sentences. They also named more unique companies and products. A release written as a data sheet gives an AI engine something to quote.
Ask the agency to show two recent releases. Check each for a named customer, a number with a source, a product name and a plain description of what changed. If a release is full of adjectives, expect it to be ignored.
Why it works: An AI engine chooses sentences it can attribute and verify. A statistic with a named source can be lifted whole, while a claim such as "a leading platform" gives the engine nothing to cite (Muck Rack, December 2025).
Who will work on a tech PR account every week?
The agency should name the people who will work on the account and state their weekly hours before you sign. A senior executive often leads the pitch, and a junior team often runs the work. Both arrangements can succeed, but you should know which one you are buying.
Ask for three things in writing: the names of the account lead and the day-to-day contact, the hours each person is expected to spend and the experience each person has with your kind of product. A tech product needs a team that can read a technical brief and ask the engineer a useful question.
Meet the day-to-day contact before you sign. Ask that person to explain your product back to you in two sentences. If the explanation is wrong, the pitches will be wrong too.
How does a tech PR agency handle a technical crisis?
A tech PR agency should have a written crisis plan with owners, clocks and approved templates, and it should show it to you before you sign. A breach, an outage or a bad launch will arrive without notice, and a plan written in the middle of one costs hours.
For the security case, my guide to the first 24 hours of a breach lists the fact sheet, the holding statement and the leadership brief a company needs. For the general structure, see the crisis communication plan template. Ask the agency which of those documents it has already written for a client in your category.
Then run a short drill. Give the agency a hypothetical outage on a Friday afternoon and ask what it would send, to whom and by when. The speed and specificity of the answer tells you what the next real incident will look like.
What should the first 90 days of a tech PR program produce?
The first 90 days should produce a baseline, a set of pitched stories and a repeatable reporting routine. Illustrative scenario: a startup with a new developer tool hires an agency, and the table shows a reasonable plan.
| Days | Work | Output |
|---|---|---|
| 1 to 30 | Interview the founders and engineers, run the AI baseline, build the reporter list | Message document, baseline report, named reporter list |
| 31 to 60 | Pitch two stories with customer proof, publish one data-backed release | First briefings, first placements, first monthly report |
| 61 to 90 | Repeat the AI test, adjust the reporter list, add a byline or a research piece | Change in AI citations, a renewed plan for the next quarter |
Ask the agency to show you its version of this table with dates. A dated plan lets you hold the agency to the work, and an undated one lets both sides drift.
Technology companies that want a team to run this plan can start with 5W's technology PR practice, my firm's practice. For the wider program, see my technology companies PR guide and the media relations guide.
Which contract terms protect a tech company?
A tech company should look for four terms: a defined scope, a monthly report, a review point after the first quarter and a short exit notice with a clean handover. Each term protects you from a different failure.
- Scope: a list of deliverables per month, so that "support" has a meaning.
- Reporting: a monthly report with the four lines described above.
- Review: a meeting at the end of the first quarter to decide whether to continue.
- Exit: a notice period that lets you leave and a handover of media lists, drafts and assets.
Have counsel review any contract. The right agency will not object to a review point, because a review point only matters to an agency that expects to miss.
My take
If I were buying, I would take a small named team over a big deck every time. I would also hire the agency that tells me which of my own goals are unrealistic, because PR is a mix of journalism, psychology and lawyering, and an agency that only flatters you is practicing none of the three.
Take the table to your next agency meeting and score each answer. Hire the agency that answers the most questions with names, dates and numbers.
Frequently asked questions
What does a tech PR agency do?
A tech PR agency earns coverage for technology companies in news outlets, trade publications and analyst reports, and manages communication during launches and crises.
How do I choose a tech PR agency?
Ask which reporters it will pitch, how it measures results, who will work on the account and what the first 90 days produce. Prefer answers with names, dates and numbers.
Does earned media matter for AI search?
Yes. Muck Rack's May 2026 edition of What Is AI Reading? found that earned media accounts for 84% of AI citations across ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini.
Should a tech company still issue press releases?
Yes, as a short factual record. Muck Rack found that cited releases had twice as many statistics and 2.5 times as many bullet points as the rest.
Published October 2026.