Once you are ready with the product and you are all set to announce your brand's name in the market then you are left with two options either do it all on your own or work with a PR agency, because you are the one who is responsible to decide the best way to get the maximum value.
Observations have discovered that every 91 out of 100 startups fail to foster a strong public and media relation which eventually leads to the early downfall. Many startups rely on digital advertising and marketing campaign because they don’t really understand the importance of public relations. PR can have a significant impact on building image, awareness, and understanding of a company or a brand.
Al Reis, author of ‘The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding’, talks about the anomalous position in marketing that Public Relations hold for building a quintessential brand. He believes that earned publicity creates an honest brand image than advertising. What general public states about your brand and business is a big matter of concern than what you state about yourself through advertising.
Subsequently, what companies truly require now could be a solid brand presence along with the sale deals. For this, a lot of startups club, public relations and other marketing techniques altogether assist to earn status and generate great revenue.
You may opt for professional PR services or can take up the charge to manage public relations on your own. In the latter case, following tips will surely assist you for a great deal:
• Prepare content for coverage
Be it a press release, article or a startup story, it should convey the details and justify the purpose of business’s existence and the passion of its workforce. It is important to understand the pain of your customers and decipher how your products are going to help them. Write it all with passion, can also write content on the social media topics that they care about. And then, you may proceed to pitch the journalists for covering your story. Use tools and software to connect to the right journalists.
• Create a media list
When you are done with the content for release, it’s time to look for the right media influencers and journalists for earning the coverage. Get the contact details of the journalists, read their writing, identify their interest areas and proficiency and organize them comprehensively in a list. On the basis of the context, you can approach a journalist for coverage with a creative and appealing pitch.
• Pitch the right way
It is important to know who you are pitching. You need to put effort, but unfortunately, most pitches are done blindly, with zero research. So, read cautiously what your target recently wrote and make sure to include a little detail relating to that, as it helps to build a relationship immediately. It takes just a few minutes to get acquainted with your target’s earlier work, and it significantly increases the chance of them not only reading your pitch but also actually responding.
• Foster relations with public
It is crucial to start engaging and interacting with Media a little early and understand journalists’ needs, what they write about and should respect the deadlines but don’t waste their time. Don’t approach them suddenly saying, “I have a fresh story which will intrigue your audience or can you please cover my launch event because it was amazing?” Such poor approach will leave journalist with a not-so-good impression. Therefore, it’s important that you maintain rapport and not just be coverage-centric.
To get exposure and coverage, make sure that you work hard on all of the above strategies.