The PR Cavalry Announces National Freelance PR Conference in Partnership With the PRCA
The PR Cavalry
We are proud to announce The Business of PR Freelancing, the first national conference for the Freelance PR market, taking place over three days in September.
The conference is focused on enabling freelance PR consultants to win more work at higher day rates and features expert speakers on pricing, becoming a trusted adviser and creating a strong personal brand.
PR Cavalry founder Nigel Sarbutts says “I was approached by a freelancer, Andy Turner who asked why there was no national event for the freelance PR sector when it employs several thousand people. I didn’t know, so the answer was to create it”
The conference was originally conceived as a live event and will now be three streamed masterclasses with panel sessions on the mornings of 15th, 16th and 17th September.
Building Freelance PR Businesses
The session on pricing Freelance PR services will be led by Helen Reynolds, a freelancer who runs the Comms Creatives Network. Her session will also feature a Q&A session with freelance PR consultant Andy Turner who will discuss how he uses value based pricing for his services rather than by the hour or day based pricing.
He will also talk about how he persuades clients to adopt this approach to freelance PR services if they are unsure or sceptical.
The trusted adviser masterclass is being led by Emma Ewing of Big Fish Training who are long time training providers to the PRCA.
Her session will focus on developing the kind of advanced listening and questioning skills that enable conversation with clients to go deeper into strategic intent and concerns that may begin as being off the table.
The personal branding masterclass will be run by internal comms freelancer Advita Patel, the Comms Rebel, who also runs the Comms Hive private dinners for senior in-house communicators.
Advita’s dinner events attract experienced corporate and consumer communications managers and have enabled her to build an envied profile as a true authority in internal communications.
Why are these skills useful for Freelance PR Consultants?
We run the Freelance PR Facebook Group which has 3400 members and our research shows real appetite for a conference that delivers on the brass tacks of competing for higher fees from more strategic work.
We believe that as the economy recovers lost ground, clients will want to rebuild their resources and capacity in small steps and that is where the value of freelance PR really lies.
Being able to hire freelance PR talent in a step by step, low risk way is not only a logical step, it is cost efficient too at a time when clients are understandably nervous about protecting profits.
Before the impact of the pandemic, we saw a number of trends for freelance PR adoption in the workplace
But it is essential that freelance PR is strategic as well as tactical when competing for work.
Our research into the effect of the pandemic on PR freelancers shows that it has been brutal for many.
Early on, 31% of respondents have already seen over 80% of income vanish and a further 18% have seen income fall by between 60 and 80%.
But clients pausing their communications plan doesn’t have to mean that freelance PR work stops completely.
The execution work may haves topped but the thinking work doesn’t. And when markets are changing so rapidly, there’s a lot of thinking to be done.
There is opportunity in uncertainty and there is a tonne of high value strategy work to do understand and adapt to the emerging shape of your client’s category. If you are waiting to hear what the new plan looks like, you might not be part of it.
The final session event will wrap up with a panel session on techniques to win more freelance PR work with the founder of The PR Cavalry, Nigel Sarbutts, plus Alice Weightman of the Work Crowd and Angie Wiles of virtual PR agency The Difference Collective.
We are delighted that the PRCA are partnering with us in this first national Freelance PR conference
PRCA Director General Francis Ingham MPRCA, said:
“PR freelancers have been some of the hardest hit professionals over the last few months. However, agency and in-house leaders around the UK have told me repeatedly that when recovery begins, they’ll be a lifeline of flexible resource. Well that recovery is here now, making this business masterclass perfectly timed to provide freelancers with the opportunity to get the right strategic advice in building revenue and results. I’m grateful to The PR Cavalry for creating the event and look forward to hearing an excellent senior line-up of speakers over the three days.”
Tickets for the event giving access to all three sessions are £50 +VAT (£40 + VAT for PRCA members) with £20 off PRCA membership via a discount code, available from
