Clients in the professional services sector may be subject to the same overarching concerns facing everyone in the business world (i.e., AI), but in 2025, communications firms who wanted to successfully work with them had to take a detailed look at the specific needs of each client.
Understanding Differentiation
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| Keri Toomey |
"No professional sevices PR plan is complete without a keen understanding of differentiation," says Highwire/The Bliss Group EVP of professional services Keri Toomey.
"All firms have expertise that can add value to a media conversation," Toomey adds, "but what is your unique perspective? What can you say or do that no one else can?"
Highwire leveraged its unique point of view into $67.8M in fees in 2025, a four percent jump from 2024, as reported in O'Dwyer's annual ranking of PR firms. Out of that total, $8.8M came from professional services clients as detailed in O'Dwyer's ranking of 54 firms in this specialty.
Success with those clients, Toomey says, depends on pinpointing exactly what they need in terms of both strategic and executional support, allowing Highwire to pull in its full capabilities.
| O'Dwyer's May '26 PR Firm Rankings Magazine |
At the top of the list of those client needs is media relations. "Nearly every client we have leverages Highwire for media relations," she notes. Other high-demand services include content creation, executive visibility, analytics, social and paid media.
While measuring success requires looking at such metrics as the number of qualified leads and the ROI of conversion, Highwire is also looking closely at the tone and tenor of how results are landing across the organization. "It’s a holistic view of success and opportunity for each program."
As far as the future goes, Toomey emphasizes that "it’s critical to understand the priority practice areas and where firms are placing their bets for growth. That’s always a first step in our planning conversations for both new and longstanding clients. For example, we’re seeing a real trend with cybersecurity as an area of focus right now. But it’s also critical for firms and their agency partners to be able to ruthlessly prioritize efforts toward those big bets."
Especially in a matrixed organization, where there will always be more opportunities and demand for marketing than resources to support, having a leader who can partner with us to focus on the big picture is essential to making meaningful progress.
Getting the Competitive Edge
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| Don Silver |
For Boardroom COO Don Silver, success hinges on "doing your homework."
Boardroom's 2025 revenues hit $3.7M last year, up 2.8 percent from 2024. Professional services clients accounted for $1.4M of that total.
A big part of that homework, Silver says, is to really know your clients—"to research the firm and its competitors, to understand the nature of its practice and where it stands versus the competition."
He also says that a list of the right questions to ask is an invaluable resource. Those questions could include:
• Tell me about your firm and its positioning versus others in the market, Where do you believe you have a competitive edge and why?
• How is your firm structured, and what role do the practice area heads play? Do they have regularly scheduled meetings?
• What has been your experience working with PR and marketing agencies?
• If you hire our agency, what are your expectations, and what can we do to exceed them?
Silver also notes the central position of media relations. But he also says that media relations is not a one-size-fits-all proposition. "Large firms typically have internal resources of their own, but most don't believe they have the media relations firepower of a well-connected external agency," he says. "With boutiques (10-50 professionals), we often suggest a role of outsourced marketing department, offering our full suite of services."
For Silver, a good step in measuring success is "setting up group and individual meetings with the firm's key practice groups, key partners and up-and-coming associates. That's where our initial plan of action is formulated. We measure success against our joint objectives."
Selling Judgment, Not Products
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| Gina Rubel |
For Furia Rubel CEO and General Counsel Gina Rubel, the key to succeding in today's environment is "understanding that professional services firms do not sell products; they sell judgment, trust and expertise."
Helping those firms meet their goals, Rubel says, "requires a deep understanding of the client’s business, the industries they serve, and the specific issues clients are facing in real time."
Furia Rubel's success in helping clients do just that is reflected in a 26.3 percent hike in fees to $2M. Almost all of that comes from professional services clients.
Rubel also says that firms catering to professional services clients need to focus on what makes them stand out from the rest of the field. "Most firms try to be everything to everyone, which dilutes impact. We work with clients to concentrate on the industries and practices that are strategically important and market-relevant, where they have real strength, where demand exists and where they can differentiate themselves."
She adds that trust can't be built overnight. "For professional services firms, credibility is cumulative. A strong media hit won’t move the needle if the firm’s website, LinkedIn presence, attorney bios or search visibility don’t reinforce the same narrative or if the firm isn’t prepared for scrutiny when issues arise."
To be truly meaningful, "success has to be tied to client satisfaction and business outcomes. Media impressions and placements are not enough. We look at indicators such as increased visibility in key practice areas, stronger positioning in target markets and industries, engagement with decision-makers, and ultimately, contribution to pipeline and client acquisition. We also evaluate whether professional service providers, such as attorneys, are becoming recognized voices in their space (being quoted, invited to speak and called upon for insight). If PR isn’t supporting growth and reputation in a measurable way, it’s not doing its job."
PR has moved mostly to the agency side where extensive special practice areas have built up over the past 30 years. For example, O’Dwyer’s currently has 79 ranked firms in healthcare and 64 in technology based on 2025 fees. Only O’Dwyer’s does such rankings which are usually at or near the top in Google searches for those categories.
PR firms that are thinking of joining O'Dwyer's rankings should consider the benefit of third party endorsement. This is the bedrock principle of PR -- others recognize you. The O’Dwyer Co. has been doing PR firm rankings for 57 years and its name is well known in the business world. Our rankings measure counseling and media contact services, not advertising or production expenses.
Jones Lang LaSalle, the $19.4B real estate and investment firm, has hired Laura Vallis as head of communications.
Ken Kerrigan, a 20-year veteran of Weber Shandwick and Ernst & Young, has joined The Bliss Group as senior VP and co-head of its professional services group.
The art of knowing when to spread the news and knowing when to lie low.
The convergence of traditional professional services firms with software-as-a-service capabilities presents new value to clients and has broad implications for the future of the marketing industry.
PR veteran Ken Kerrigan, who did ten-year stints at Weber Shandwick and Ernst & Young, has joined legal, professional services and crisis shop Infinite Global.
