Enquirer Consulting Group

Reachable Buyer Map

Prepared for Brianna Swales · Swales + Co. PR · August 2026
Here is the map, and it covers the US market. Public relations has two different buyers inside the same company: the marketing leader who buys an ongoing relationship and has to report on it every quarter, and the founder who buys a single moment and moves on. This page covers where both sit, who signs, and roughly how many there are. It describes the market rather than your business, and there is nothing to buy at the end of it.
B2B technology and software companies
The category that buys earned media hardest, because the product is invisible and the proof has to come from somewhere outside the company. Crowded on the agency side, but the buying seat is well defined and the budget survives a bad quarter more often than paid media does.
Who signs: chief marketing officer, VP of marketing, head of communications, and at the smaller end the founder.
8,000 to 10,000
US software and technology employers carrying 20 or more people on the plan
Health care, devices and health technology
Slower to sign and stickier once signed, because regulated claims mean the work cannot be handed to a generalist twice a year. The reputation stake is high enough that this segment tends to keep an outside voice on standing call rather than hire one per project.
Who signs: chief marketing officer, VP of communications, head of market access, chief of staff to the CEO.
5,000 to 6,000
US device, diagnostics and health technology employers at 20 or more people
Professional and financial services firms
Law, accounting, wealth management and consulting. The whole growth model is being known by name, so thought leadership is not a nice-to-have here, it is the pipeline. Decisions sit with a small committee, which makes the first conversation most of the sale.
Who signs: managing partner, chief marketing officer, director of business development, practice group head.
12,000 to 15,000
US professional and financial services employers at 50 or more people
Manufacturers and industrial operators
The least worked segment on this page. They rarely run a communications function, they almost never appear on an agency inbound list, and when they do buy it is triggered by an event rather than a plan: a plant expansion, an acquisition, a safety story, a succession.
Who signs: the CEO or president, VP of sales and marketing, and the corporate communications lead where one exists.
5,500 to 6,500
US manufacturing employers at 250 or more people
Companies at a funding or launch moment
Not a sector, a moment. A raise, a new leadership team, an acquisition, a product launch, an award cycle. This is when outside counsel gets bought fastest and shopped least, and it is also the group no static list can hold, because the membership changes every week.
Who signs: founder or CEO, the incoming marketing leader, the board member who raised the question.
No standing register
identified by watching announcements across the segments above, one week at a time

Where the openings are

1
The buyer here is a seat, and seats turn over. A new marketing or communications leader almost always reopens the agency roster inside their first two quarters. A channel built on named roles catches that week. A channel built on referral hears about it after the decision.
2
Referral selects for adjacency, not for fit. In this category most new work arrives through a network, and a network reaches only the slice of the market already touching it. Everything above is not unqualified, it is simply unaware, and the distance between those two words is the whole growth problem for a firm that does good work.
3
Two buyers, one message. The marketing leader buys a relationship and needs a reporting story. The founder buys a moment and needs speed. Those are two different first sentences, and most firms send one and wonder why half the market goes quiet.
4
Industrials are the quiet band. Between 5,500 and 6,500 US manufacturers at 250 people or more, most with no communications function and no incumbent agency to displace. They are hard to reach by conference and easy to reach by name, which is exactly why they stay open.
Built from public registry data covering US employers that file a benefit plan, current to the 2024 filing year. Counts are banded deliberately. Workforce bands use plan participants as a headcount proxy, so they indicate scale rather than an exact staff count. Owner-only and very small employers are not published in this data. Sector codes are self-reported. The funding and launch moment is not covered by any register and is described rather than counted.
ENQUIRER CONSULTING GROUP
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