How To Do Public Relations For A Startup?

Every year, millions of people take a stab at their dream venture. In fact, only 10% of startups succeed. Those 10% that got lucky aren’t lucky forever as everything can change in a blink of an eye. Out of many responsibilities that the startup owner takes up, marketing and PR are two tricky brothers that must be watched 24/7 to stay on top of your game. In this article, I am going to talk about PR opportunities and how to use your startup’s PR and marketing resources at 100%.

In general, PR opportunity is anything that can tell an engaging and positive story about your company and your products through mass media.

It may vary from events and philanthropy to launching a new product design or hiring a new CMO — creativity is a key. But remember: whatever you choose to do must be interesting, catchy, approachable. In a fast-paced era of social media and digital, journalists and PR professionals will prefer stories that create buzz.

In other words, your startup has to offer unique and relevant material that will make journalists excited. However, there are some golden rules to this:

• News is only news when it is timely: do not postpone sending your press release or an event invitation to PR agencies or journalists, they simply won’t look at it if it’s late or happened 5 months ago
• News should involve money, investments, donations, profits, losses — anything that revolves around these themes
• News agencies prioritize events that can generate views: word your proposals accordingly, try to look for a secret hook in your story, something outstanding

Now, let’s compare. What is more likely to become a great PR opportunity: a mere existence of your business or a ground-breaking research the company had done for the industry?

All in all, quality marketing requires quality planning. Especially if you are running a startup, planning part will most likely be your prime responsibility.

When searching for role-models in planning and generating PR opportunities, I recommend looking at big FMCG brands. Specifics of their industry create a crazy combo when products must renew, change and improve at a very fast pace while prior R&D and production takes a while. As a result, good planning is inevitable. Recently, I had a chance to speak with a few professionals in the FMCG sector, below is what they recommended for startups.

Come prepared

Bring a ready-to-use list of what your business have done, changed, launched or achieved to your first meeting with a PR specialist. An exterior PR specialist can only enhance what already exists and works well within your company. If you have any upcoming events, product launches or any type of consumer/industry research with interesting results — all that is a great PR opportunity to put yourself out there.

Chances are that right stories will make it to the right publications.

It’s important to understand that if you have nothing to talk about — a PR specialist has no information to work with. Then your story becomes boring and carries little to no value to both publications and your potential customers/partners/investors. Stories lacking engaging and valuable content often end up in less respected publications or in media that won’t reach your desired public.

It’s important to understand that if you have nothing to talk about — a PR specialist has no information to work with.

Plan ahead

Another tip that your startup can learn from FMCG brands is planning ahead. Given the dynamics of FMCG brands that involve extensive R&D, production and distribution, it might take as long as three years from a product’s initial idea to its full implementation. For example, many makeup brands have annual plans of new products’ launching or existing products’ remake/improvement (new packaging, recipe formula, etc.). The managers say that it does not only help them feel more confident about their success, but it also communicates a smart message to various stakeholders. New launches and upgrades tell that the brand has money and, therefore, is demanded by consumers.

Planning ahead is effective because it creates an action plan and makes every step of the process rather expected. It can also give you just enough time to come up with a tentative schedule of associated PR opportunities: promos, events, featured articles. This way, you will be able to contact journalists and PR agencies in a timely manner and create valuable and impacting content.

Collaborate

Projects done with PR and news agencies may lead you to collaborations with bloggers and other local or national celebrities. Logic here is simple: if your potential consumers like celebrity X and the celebrity likes your brand, your products have high chances of being noticed and purchased. Do not hesitate to advertise your product through such channels yet be aware they can be quite fragile. To keep bloggers on your side, make sure their interactions with your product are consistent. Otherwise, you will be soon forgotten. Big clothing, car or makeup brands are particularly good with that.

Wrapping up, here’s my final advice. If a three-year plan seems undoable, start with a 6-month strategy. Try to establish consistent long-term relationships with PR and news agencies that will go beyond just one-time publication. Also, take care of your business and your external PR specialist by drafting your five PR opportunities right now. It can be any event or a fact that will exemplify your startups’ worth and achievements. Ask yourself: can I see an article about this and that in a newspaper, in someone’s blog?

Also, take care of your business and your external PR specialist by drafting your five PR opportunities right now.

You are in top 10% survived startups for a reason, take ownership of your chance to succeed.

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