Most founders view media coverage as if it were a vending machine; they think that you simply input cash, click a button, and out pops a front-page article. This is not how the process works at all.
Modern-day media is incredibly chaotic, and journalists are not interested in your latest announcement of product upgrades; they want human interest and compelling stories, robust statistics, and significant changes taking place within your industry.
If you want to truly establish your company in the eyes of the public, you can no longer think of yourself as simply pumping out product features; you must actively transition towards becoming a nimble and intelligent media outlet.
Too many early-stage businesses use poor preparation as their main strategy when dealing with their small budgets and spending the bulk of their limited funds on ineffective marketing strategies.
Many companies will send mass emails to overworked journalists in the hope that they will write an article about them (with no point-of-contact for the writer whatsoever), produce lengthy and tedious press releases, etc., only to be disappointed when they receive no responses.
It is imperative that companies develop smart ways of approaching their communications strategies, especially when navigating tech startup PR.
The Hard Truth About Early Press
The landscape for obtaining media exposure has changed dramatically from typical mass-press release competitions to executive-based visibility through artificial intelligence-driven indexing of information, supplemented with factual data-based storytelling through e-commerce applications.
The world of public relations has developed into a comprehensive communications and marketing channel, comprised of many different channels, not just a stand-alone communications tool at the corner of the workplace.
The metrics that most founders reference regarding their media exposure are simply 'vanity metrics.' They provide no real value to either the individual or the company for which they are representing. It does not matter how many articles you had published last year if those articles did not generate meaningful revenue for your company.
Your media strategy must be integrated with your sales pipeline – the goal should not only be to become a popular figure but also to grow your business as quickly as possible.
Establishing a path to create significant trust between your company, investors, early buyers and the overall market, should drive your strategy based on your funding stage, budget and constraints.
How to Build a Modern Tech Startup PR Engine
You need to build your media engine using an exact fitting media strategy to your business stage. A company just receiving a $1m dollar investment cannot operate the same media plays as a larger, later stage company that’s preparing to go public.
What to Do When You Have No Customers Yet
When you are at the seed stage, your company has, in general terms, one glaring problem: You have no true customer proof.
In fact, you may not even have a finished product. Therefore, how can you generate interest from the media when you have no customer references? The answer is to put your executives out front and centre. People connect to people, not code.
During the seed stage, you will need to rely heavily on thought leadership. Start to pitch your founder on niche-based podcasts that fit your product/solution.
Write provably insightful posts on LinkedIn that provide clarity on the fundamental dilemmas your target buyers encounter every day. During the seed stage, you must be the one providing the insight, not the media.
Using Tech Startup PR to Look Real After Raising Money
Things change very quickly once you raise a Series A or B. You now have access to real funding, have real pressure, and a rapidly growing sales team.
At this point in time, B2B SaaS startups must attain a level of market credibility before the success of outbound sales teams will materialise. A potential customer looking at your company for the first time will likely Google your company name after receiving an email from your sales representative. If they find nothing but your own website, you will quickly lose their trust.
To gain their trust and confidence in your company, you will have to completely revise your media strategy, targeting major trade publications for quotes in order to present yourself as a viable option for enterprise customers, while establishing yourself as an award-winning company within your industry and creating a continuous storyline demonstrating that you are a trustworthy, safe choice for enterprise buyers.
Do Not Make Vague Claims
There is one thing that you should never do when pitching your story to the press — make broad, generic claims regarding your product.
For example, never tell a journalist that your software has been "revolutionizing" your industry without providing solid evidence. Don't use complicated technical terminology or jargon. Instead, convert the complicated technical features of your product into straightforward business benefits.
If your data security tool employs advanced machine learning, then you should describe how much money it can save a company from having its data compromised during a weekend cyberattack — keep the focus on the human element and how it impacts the success of businesses.
How to Pitch Your Story to the Media
Having a great story about your software is just one part of the equation; how you tell the story to the media ultimately determines whether or not you are successful.
What is the Real News Hook?
Launching a new product is rarely newsworthy. Unless your company is a well-known brand name, no one cares about an update to your user interface.
If you want to garner media attention, you must develop and leverage proprietary data, surveys, and research. For instance, if you provide HR software solutions, then consider running a survey examining why thousands of people are leaving their current jobs.
When sending fresh information to a reporter, they will appreciate numbers to include in their column for that day. Provide them with an excellent, value-added story backed by your data, and they will be happy to reference your organization as their source.
A negative tech startup PR story is a self-promoting PR story. For example, "We're excited about releasing the latest version of our software, which we worked hard to create, and this version includes five new features."
A positive PR story highlights the outward impacts of your organization and links it to bigger issues. For example, "Local retailers are being devastated this winter because of disruptions in their supply chains. These are the precise metrics showing why this is happening, and here's how our new routing software will help these independent retailers through this crisis."
Use the features of your software to create empathy-building stories about people.
Be cognizant of journalists' timelines. Simple and clear email pitches will do well. Make the subject line very concise and specific.
If you want to announce funding, then you need to learn how to properly execute embargoes. Provide an exclusive first-look opportunity to one journalist that you have developed a trusting relationship with. Present this journalist with your pitch a minimum of a couple of days before the announcement is due.
Provide the details to the journalist on the understanding that they will hold the story until a certain time and date, with no intention of sending the same exclusive to ten different journalists at the same time, as you will lose the relationship immediately.
Follow-up on any pitch only once. If the journalist ignores you on two separate occasions then consider that journalist finished as a potential media pipeline.
How to Measure Your Success
The days of blindly trusting PR companies are gone. You cannot grow what you cannot quantify.
Stop Counting Meaningless Numbers
Avoid including your cumulative number of press mentions as a measurement of success for your marketing or tech startup PR efforts. This is a meaningless figure. A small mention on a poorly-trafficked blog has no benefit to your company, nor does it represent value.
When establishing metrics, they should relate to how your business earns revenue or profits. Focus on identifying the quality of traffic coming into your website from the respective outlet. Conversely, focus on how many demo requests you receive within a week after a notable media achievement.
Analyze how many people searched directly for you by searching for your company name following a large piece of thought leadership you wrote and published. If there were no searches done on your company name after the thought leadership piece was published, the piece had no effect.
Tracking How Much People Talk About You
Share of voice, message pull-through, and sentiment are more accurate measures to evaluate your public relations efforts.
Share of voice allows you to measure the extent of ownership you have in the marketplace compared to your competitors. If there were ten stories covering your industry this month, how many mentioned your company?
Message pull-through allows you to analyze whether or not the media are utilizing your message or angle on you. If an article discusses your company, for example, but incorrectly describes your product, your efforts were unsuccessful. You want the story to follow your narrative, not simply be part of a word count on the page.
How AI Search Changes Tech Startup PR
The way that potential customers are acquiring information on technology has changed dramatically over the last few years. AI search and Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) are transforming the discovery process.
Now, buyers are asking AI tools to recommend software products. If your brand is not appearing on high-trust and authoritative media websites, then your product will not be recommended through the AI search algorithm to users. You are no longer able to rely on traditional blog postings on your own website for outreach.
To maximise your AI search visibility, you must be referenced within third-party articles, such as being mentioned in industry review websites and on industry-related podcasts. The AI is aggregating all of this information located throughout the Internet. Your third party presence in external media directly impacts future inbound sales growth.
Choosing the Right PR Partners
As a founder, eventually you will have to decide how you want to handle media and PR; you can perform all media-related functions internal to your organisation, or hire a boutique freelance PR consultant, or hire a PR agency.
What PR Costs and Who to Hire
The market is full of options for you to consider when selecting a media and PR partner; depending on where you stand financially, you may want to hire a higher-level PR agency with in-house media capability.
When price shopping for an agency, they will list prices for what they consider various levels of engagement for clients on their website.
For example, BMV provides full-service tech startup PR and generates a large volume of PR revenue from large publications such as the Wall Street Journal and Forbes for about $15,000-$30,000/month for their services. If you need a more affordable option than that, then Salient PR has a mid-tier price point of $8,000/month.
Other agencies such as PRLab are well-established and have supported hundreds of technology businesses over the years. There are also other well-respected and known agencies in the industry such as Inkhouse, BLASTmedia, Walker Sands, Fourth Day PR, and Highwire, among others that provide varying degrees of specialised support to their clients.
You should choose a partner that matches the current funding level of your company for an optimal partnership.
Planning for When Things Go Wrong
You need to plan ahead and prepare for any negative events that might occur in your organisation.
Startups tend to develop quickly, and there is a likelihood of something going wrong. For instance, you may have a major failure with one of your products, have a data security breach, or you may have to make painful decisions of laying off employees to preserve cash.
It is essential that you have a detailed, practical plan for how to handle any potential negative media events before they occur. You should have clear lines of communication with media contacts, as well as pre-approved statements available for your investors in the event of a crisis.
The absence of a crisis response destroys trust more rapidly than a poor product release. Therefore, you will want to prepare to take control of the narrative as soon as possible should a crisis occur.
How to Build Real Trust in the Market
The road to trust in the technology industry is long and filled with challenges; therefore, building credible trust in this sector will take time, discipline, and an understanding of how people interact with each other and their environment.
One press release cannot build long-term credibility in tech startup PR.
True visibility is an integrated system comprising your media relationships through the various channels that you employ to demonstrate your company, whether via social media, your podcast(s), or your overall search engine optimization strategy.