The startup founder's guide to early stage PR
5 immediate, actionable steps for your PR and media strategy
Part of my role at Accel is to work with founders on their press releases, media outreach, and announcements. And this is usually at the seed/very early stages.
Most growth stage startups know exactly what they want to do, what they expect from a release, and what they need help with. They have done this before, they have marketing teams that can execute. At the early stage, however, founders have to handle this stuff on their own. It’s tough, especially with everything else they have going on.
VC firms do help founders with this, like we do at Accel, but there is also a clear information gap. Early stage founders are doing this for the first time, and they have unrealistic expectations of what PR can do for them. One incorrect notion is that journalists will be immediately interested in their new startup, and will write about it. That’s not the case, to put it mildly. Journalists are already working on stories, and have their own themes and interest areas. If you want to be picked up by them and be in the news, you have to become interesting to them.
What I have tried to do with this essay is to take away some of that knowledge gap for early stage founders. These steps/actionables are as tactical as I can make them, and I have tried to furnish examples whenever needed.
Here goes.
1. Press releases should carry only one message
A press release’s aim is to convey one primary message. A mistake a lot of founders seem to make is pack a lot of information into a press release. Don’t. Especially at an early stage, when you are announcing your seed or Series A funding, no one will pay attention beyond who you are, and how much you have raised. Make sure you get that point across first, and well.
If anyone wants to know more, your website has all the other details, doesn’t it? They’ll find it.
What if your PR is aimed at something else? What if the major agenda is employer branding? Then don’t tie it to a funding announcement. If you want to grow your employer brand and make sure it’s better known, do something specific about it that could get picked up as news. Superbikes, anyone?
2. Have a clear CTA, and insist on links
This is more than a mistake. This is marketing blasphemy, and it drives me crazy. Like landing pages, press releases need to call for a specific action. And a clear link to the website is a perfectly good CTA. It astounds me that marketers seem to forget even this. Just please make sure that both releases and media coverage carry links back to the website.
And it’s fine if the link isn’t there when the story is first published. Email and nag until you get them. Because it’s not just the immediate traffic you want, it’s also the linkbacks from websites that rank above you. These are invaluable.
3. Give the journalist a story
Consider this early August story on VentureBeat.
The product is Chatwoot, and they have released an open source customer engagement platform. But the reason the story is being published is not because of that at all. The story is juicy and will harness readers because of the challenge laid down to Zendesk. That’s the story, not the product release.
There’s more.
See how the funding story is buried in the challenge being laid down? This is a team that knows what it’s doing. No one cares about a $1.6 million seed round right now. If they had led with that, no one would have covered them. It’s not news. But a challenge to industry heavyweights is always news. Brilliant!
Our takeaway here is that you have to give the journalist a story. Sending over a default PR draft will do nothing for you. Think about why the journalist would be interested in writing the story, and then pitch the story, not your product or feature.
4. Make the coverage stretch out
There is a reason you can see super-size hoardings with the bright Golden Arches of McDonalds from a long distance off on a highway. McDonald’s wants you to start thinking about their food, so you’ll stop at the restaurant. The signages appear repeatedly before a restaurant actually arrives. This repeated stimuli to your brain will make you want to eat even if you are not hungry. In fact, on highways with bigger McDonald’s outlets, the signages appear almost every mile near approach.
You should do the same.
Your PR release should be followed by at least two to three weeks, and at most a month of constant noise. This can be on social media or as advertising or as op-eds. It doesn’t matter, as long as your audience keeps seeing you over and over again for a period of time. This repetition makes sure that you are remembered and that the brand becomes recognised. Stretch the coverage out, so you get every last ounce of attention you can garner.
5. Make social media work for you
That social media is a great way to get your story and narrative out is old fish. You know that already. But few folks use it well, especially in the PR context.
Here’s a simple way to make it work. Imagine that you are pitching an early stage funding announcement. You have the story, you know who is going to carry it when. As I told you in the last point, write blogs, tweets, threads, and LinkedIn posts and make sure you post them at regular intervals so people can get more angles of the same story. The next thing to do is make a list. Of all your investors, friends in high places, well-wishers with massive followings. Send them individualised tweets according to their usual style and personality on social media.
Will this take time and effort? Yes. Good marketing does.
But the upside is that so many more people will hear about you from people they trust and hold in esteem. And remember: keep following up. Most people are busy. If you tell them enough times, they will do it. And make it easy for them: That’s why you are giving them copy too, so they can post it quickly without thinking. Help them help you.
In 2011, when Freshworks raised its Series A from Accel, I wrote the first draft of that PR announcement in a different world. We could actually aim for a certain kind of coverage, and come close to getting it. There just weren’t as many stories from India then.
That’s not true now. Those who do weekly round-ups of funding news and product releases must be pulling their hair out. There’s just so much going on! This means that if you aren’t working hard to stand out and be seen, you just won’t.
I hope this post serves both as a checklist of sorts, or even a jumping-off point for more innovative strategies. All the best for your big announcement!
The next dispatch is about startup hiring, something a lot of startups are finding extremely difficult these days. You can subscribe below to get it directly in your inbox.