5 things I've learnt about startup PR strategy
A consolidated list of old and new PR learnings for startup marketers and founders
I’ve written posts before on early-stage PR strategy. But having worked on our seed funding announcement, I couldn’t help but bring out a primer again. I’m keeping it much simpler and sharper, while also adding new things I’ve learnt.
This release, the Atomicwork funding launch, is probably the 7th or 8th announcement I’ve done, and easily the biggest. We managed to get into so many publications, national and international, plus industry newsletters, that after a point I stopped sending them to the team on Slack.
The end result was that we managed to deliver the impression that Atomicwork’s funding was what everyone in the ecosystem was talking about, which is a kind of goal in itself.
Let’s get into how we tried to do this.
1. Press releases should (still) carry only only one message
Many announcements make a common mistake: Trying to pack int too much information. Avoid this, especially when you're in the early stages and announcing your seed or Series A funding. At this point, people are primarily interested in knowing who you are, what you do, and how much you've raised. That’s it. Very few journalists and publications will go beyond that surface level. A better strategy would be to talk directly to those journalists/publications who want to go deeper, and give them a lot more insight/access.
We didn’t follow this advice of sharpening the message this time, we did write a lot about the product and what we were attempting to do. This is because we had a story to tell, which is the next point.
2. Try to tell a story
Provide the journalist with a compelling story. Sending a standard PR announcement won't do anything for you. Consider why the journalist would want to write about this, and then pitch the story itself, not just your product or feature.
This is one of the reasons we were successful this time at Atomicwork: Our story had all the details journalists wanted to write about at this time. A solid founding team, an enterprise product being built on AI, and funding from top-tier VC firms. That we were able to articulate the problem, and explain how and why we were building the product, meant that the story just needed to be packaged well, which journalists are experts at.
3. Use social media to stretch out your coverage
This is something tactical I’ve been wanting to do for a while, and was able to execute. In the weeks before our PR was announced, we lined up podcasts with our investors Matrix Partners and Neon Fund. For Blume, I had our CEO write a guest post on his personal experience of starting up the second time. We also had blogs ready to go on our own platforms.
We also made a video explaining our product, and made sure we had socials ready for all the above.
With all this locked and loaded, in the week of the announcement and the next, we kept putting out all this content. Our investors were also gracious enough to schedule podcast releases and blogs when we requested them to. What this resulted in was a perfect storm of exposure: We were everywhere for those two weeks.
4. You need to cultivate the press, and give them stories
Now this is not popular advice. That’s because it’s difficult to do.
But you need to engage with journalists, and build strong relationships. This could involve providing quotes, facilitating interviews, and assistance with their stories, even if they have nothing to do with you. The goal is to create a mutual partnership so that they'll support you when needed. If you only approach them when you want coverage, you and your startup may gain a reputation as being a one-sided participant that doesn't give back.
In my time at Accel, I had built a few relationships that were helpful for this announcement. But I need to do this better. I’ve already taken some steps towards this, and you should too. These relationships can be your advantage.
5. Make sure everyone’s aligned
There’s a reason I’ve included this here: We all forget to do this, to our own detriment.
What story does the founding team want told? Write it down. Is that story in agreement among all the founders? Get consensus. Has that been communicated to the marketing team? If it has, has it been communicated to the rest of the team? And from there, do we have a strategy of how we are speaking to the press? Does everyone know what tone to strike on social media? Do they want something written? Can marketing do this for them?
See how starting from the story, and getting consensus led to action items that can basically get the whole company to push a single, focused story?
That’s the goal, isn’t it?
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