Edition 9: Effective PR for early stage-startups; Create your brand voice; Get on 100+ podcasts in six months;
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READS
Creating Your Brand Voice: A Complete Guide (HubSpot)
Logo, color palette, and font are all important aspects of branding.  But beyond that, a good brand starts with good content. And good content canât exist without a strong voice.
Tech Branding Playbook (Battery Ventures)
PR is more complicated todayâand relationships matter more than ever. Ongoing, sustainable communications programs often achieve the greatest success. You might be focused on traditional PR. But whatâs now known as âearned mediaââstories you âearnâ by enticing a real journalist to write about youâis only a subsegment of a modern, well-rounded communications program.
Guide to Public Relations for Startups: How To Hit a PR Home Run (by Crunchbase)
As a PR agency, one of the most common things we hear from early-stage startups is âwe want to get on TechCrunch.â Generally, this statement is faced with stoic resilience. The same resilience as when a 4-year-old tells you they want to be an astronaut or play for Barcelona FC. Rather than raining on anyoneâs parade, we advise clients to work hard and put themselves out there. They should make the right contacts. And there is no reason they wonât be able to get there eventually.
PR Hacks: how to build and implement your own strategy (by Seedcamp)
PR isnât just about getting your company name in an exciting title. Itâs anything public facing. It connects with your social strategy, how you speak about yourself, how you communicate to your community, as well as your customer. It isnât something fluffy that you think about last minute. Unfortunately, it also doesnât come with a guarantee. With all the best strategic planning in the world, sometimes it just doesnât work.
The Playbook This Startup Used to Get Their Founders on 100+ Podcasts in 6 Months (by First Round)
You donât need fancy tools or internet scrapers that pull 50,000 shows into a spreadsheet. Spend two hours looking at Apple Podcasts by category, as well as searching for founders in your space who have been on shows, and youâll generate a well-curated list of 100 shows to go after.Â
OPINION
đŁ Setting your B2B PR Strategy
Knowing the differences between potential buyers in B2B and B2C showcases how the tone of your PR, targeting, and style of each are quite different.
PR can help you:
Build credibility and
Land new customers
Think Ahead
Start thinking about PR as soon as you establish a brand. There is a lot of work to do, well before hiring a PR firm or speaking with journalists. Get advice early on from an external PR firm or freelancer, even if itâs just a small engagement. Remember to ask for referrals as many agencies donât know how to work well with early-stage start-ups.
Positioning
You must âknow who (investors, customers, both?) you are targeting and why, and what you want them to feel and remember about your brand. You donât want a dry âwe help automate your marketingâ spiel customers heard hundred times before?
Consider keeping a shared document of talking points that you can add to and refine over time, eventually, this will massively help drafting press releases down the line.
Budget
The budget will vary on stage, what the goal is and how much CAN you allocate to it. If you donât have a budget, network with journalists and build relationships with them yourself. Generally, they are happy to hear directly from founders, especially if itâs authentic and relevant. On average, at the pre-seed, seed stage most start-ups spend up to $5k per month.
Relevance
Find the intersection between what your brand is about and the things that your target audience is thinking, reading and caring about. Find out who is writing about your space, and what they are interested in at the moment, to see if there is an angle related to your positioning. TechCrunch may not be for you if you are building a manufacturing business, find the most relevant publications. Donât forget thought leaders and influencers with a solid reputation.
Results
There is undeniably an intangible aspect of PR, nonetheless, identifying and measuring what success looks like is key. You can measure the campaign by looking at:
Changes in the number of backlinks to your website or other digital assets;
Increases in sales or investor interest;
Notable brand mentions;
Rising branded search traffic;
Better rankings on SERPs.
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