A few months after launching his online technical-employment business, Matthew Hollingsworth encountered an enviable — but problematic — situation. Job hunters were flooding his Web site with résumés, but his company, Cincinnati, Ohio-based TechEmployment.com, had yet to attract high-tech employers interested in hiring these candidates.

Hollingsworth, 32, needed to get the word out about his new business — and fast. But money was tight: Hollingsworth had quit his full-time job at a technical-staffing company and was trying to stretch the $250,000 he had acquired from venture capitalists. And he knew effective advertising wasn't going to come cheap.

Based on a positive experience with a management-consulting firm that helped him turn his disorganized ideas into a coherent business plan, Hollingsworth decided to bite the bullet and outsource his marketing work to a PR firm.

Hollingsworth now says he wishes had hired the PR firm even earlier. The firm, Symphony Communications, gave good advice — advice that, in the end, more than paid for itself. Symphony’s first suggestion: Spend less money on formal advertisements, and instead let the agency send out press releases to news services.