Mr. Startup CEO, have you talked to the press before? Have you called a journalist and demanded they write a story about your company? Did panic grip your soul as you sputtered out your startup’s pitch?
What exactly about your tiring, thirty minute pitch makes your business (a) unequaled (b) unique or (c) a unicorn, in any meaningful sense?
Most newly minted CEOs are the type of people that hire public relations people to handle customer service, salespeople to run marketing and accountants to handle strategic financial decisions.
Later after failing, they invariably go through the formality of conducting a seemingly exhaustive research for the right public relations (PR) agency, then subsequently ignore their recommendations.
Then, after firing the PR agency whose advice they ignored, the CEO doubles down on their “gut” feeling and begins to handle PR themselves. As Ed Zitron, founder of EZPR told me, “Generally if you are a CEO who has time to do PR for your startup, and can afford it, you’re a crappy CEO.”
To dig in a little deeper, I asked Lara Mille founder of theMiller Group PR, Matt Villano a freelance writer with a lot of PR Experience, and Mr. Zitron for their opinions on how Startups should be using PR to build their businesses
- Matt Villano discusses the “Perfect Storm”
He felt that a “perfect storm” needs to occur. The first ingredient is that a company must have a great story that can be built upon. Second, is that it must be timely; the pitch has to be for the right product, to the right person, and at the right time for the market. Lastly, the company or product must stand out and be something special to really grab people’s attention. He also advised for startups to “go beyond the databases” when searching for folks to pitch to. These often have incorrect information and will only serve to alienate journalists if they can tell a company did not do their research.
- Ed Zitron commented on the importance of hiring a PR person and/or firm to help (big why)
He explained that ROI can be based upon click-through rates, SEO, and similar factors; he is not so fond of these metrics. Instead, Ed and his company base information off of the actual coverage that is expected versus what is achieved as well as other KPI’s.
- Lara Miller on picking a niche: “The fact is that 99% of the time startups will not be covered with a standard email blast. So you really need to pick your niches and focus on developing long term relationships with those journalists.”
It is incredibly important for startups to remain realistic when trying to get covered and to start small; begin to gain coverage within a niche, and if things go well, it can be expanded from there. Most major publications will not want to cover a startup because there simply isn’t enough of a story to tell.
Mark Fidelman is a Managing Partner for Digital Agency Evolve
Source: Forbes