Blog courtesy of Bridge Global Strategies

Everyone knows startups have limited budgets and are leanly staffed.  I’ve started up two companies myself, and I know what’s it’s like to have someone tell you, “You really need to get this. You can’t afford not to.” When your resources are very limited, every dollar spent has to be carefully scrutinized.

There are some costs that are necessary for survival and growth, however, and expenditures that will foster growth are in that category. The question always boils down to, “Will this really help us grow?” While it’s easy to spot some unnecessary expenditures, there are times when you just don’t know whether you’re making the right investment. It’s easy to talk yourself into or out of all kinds of expenses. But being a successful entrepreneur requires tolerating risk. Nobody can guarantee in advance how much ROI you’ll see from various services. The only way you’ll know if they’re worthwhile is to give them a try. Public relations is one such service.

I’ve seen some articles written by entrepreneurs lately who pooh-pooh the importance of paying for PR. Their advice to other entrepreneurs is to stay away from public relations agencies and do PR themselves. But to get good public relations results requires not only experience and expertise but also many hours of labor. I’d like to explain what goes into a PR program to help launch a new company.

We read your watch and tell you what time it is

The caption above is an old, cynical description of what a consultant does. PR consultants may know a lot about your industry or product category in a general way, but they don’t know what your company is trying to accomplish, what your business goals are, who you perceive your target audiences to be, or what you see as the differentiation between your company and competitors. Startup PR consulting always starts by gathering information from the client on all of this. So it’s true that we start out by reading your watch.

I’m sure skeptical entrepreneurs reading this are now thinking, “If we have to spend time educating an outside PR team, we may as well do it ourselves, since we’re the closest to the company and products anyway.”

Here’s why that’s wrong:

• It’s common for entrepreneurs and their startup teams to lack experience with the marketing and communications process. That’s understandable, since their expertise may be in a very different area, such as IT, engineering or finance. We’re often faced with misperceptions about what PR is and how it’s done. Those who’ve had little contact with public relations also tend to have very narrow and/or inaccurate ideas about what PR is and how it works. Some think that PR is simply about sending out press releases. That’s actually a small part of a PR program. It’s not even the major tool used in getting media coverage. PR people consult on overall positioning, messaging, timing and communications planning, for example.

• Very frequently when we talk to a startup we find that the internal team at the company has lost objectivity and is making wrong assumptions, especially about differentiation between their company and others already in the market. It’s easy to understand why that happens. The company’s founder and staff are working so closely and intensely on building the company and its products or services, and are so enthusiastic, that they lose objectivity. What seems to them a major differentiation is not viewed that way by others. This is not only a problem for startups; big companies often focus inwardly and end up with a distorted sense of the company’s differentiation. Not understanding what’s an important differentiation and what’s not gets a company into trouble; it greatly affects conclusions about how to position the company and what the important messaging should be. PR consultants can help provide more objectivity to the strategic marketing and communications planning process.

So while we start out by reading your watch, we aren’t just telling you what time it is, we’re helping you plan communications outreach strategically, often in a different way than your company would approach communications on your own.

Next step: launch communications preparation

After the strategy and planning have been completed, the work on launch preparation begins. This includes developing a plan for what to focus attention on and a timetable for various activities. This requires insight about how different communications channels work and how they interact with each other (traditional media, social media, speaking engagements, direct marketing, website, etc.). A lack of knowledge in this area can greatly diminish the effectiveness of launch communications.

The next step of the PR process is to prepare materials – content – to use as communications tools. Left to their own devices, startup executives usually confuse promotion with the factual information that’s required in the PR process. Journalists want facts, not promotion. They lose respect for companies that send them sales hype. Social media is not the place for sales promotion, either. It’s ignored, or even worse, can end up being ridiculed. This is especially true for the large number of Millennials using social media, who look for honest, transparent social media discourse and sneer at material that smacks of overt promotion. The best way of promoting your ideas is to stay away from obvious promotion.

The next step is selecting the right media to approach, as well as the best social media channels to use. That requires understanding what styles and types of content are appropriate for each media outlet and channel, as well as knowing whom to approach in the media and which of the many social media channels will be most effective.

Proper handling of the launch itself

Good media relations results require one-on-one contact with journalists. This is a delicate task that calls for understanding the mind-set of various types of journalists. We ask ourselves, “What can this company offer that they’ll be interested in, and how can I frame the information I have in a way that will meet their needs?”

Many startups’ expectations for media coverage are unrealistic because they don’t understand that reporters aren’t interested in developing stories that just focus on their products or companies. Journalists write about actual news and trends. They’ll cover a new product when it’s really different from what’s already on the market. The importance of the differentiation has to be clear to them.Journalists receive hundreds of news releases and phone calls every day about companies that describe themselves and their products as innovative. But you can’t just tell someone that you’re innovative; innovation lies in the eyes of the beholder. The media want facts so they can decide for themselves whether something has enough news value to report on. Occasionally the media will focus in on one company, but they generally choose large ones that have a major influence on the market. They’ll consider covering a startup or small company only if it has demonstrated truly game idea-changing ideas and/or approaches to the market, or when the CEO’s story really stands out. It’s in the best interest of the company for us to view the media as our client, also, and approach them only with stories that meet their needs.

Startup executives who think they and/or untrained staff have a lot to gain by doing the media outreach themselves should think twice about what they will lose. PR is a lot harder than it looks. Anyone who thinks it’s just a matter of writing news releases, sending emails and making phone calls to the media vastly underestimates what’s involved.

Another important consideration: when your expertise lies in tech or finance or some other area, it’s inefficient to spend your time on something you have little or no expertise in. Even if startup executives do have some experience in communications, their time is probably much better spent developing products, overseeing the sales force, creating important business partnerships or doing a myriad of other things that require intimate knowledge of the core business.

If you’re in healthcare, insurance, technology or other professional services industries, and need help with a public relations, marketing or social media campaign, contact Scott Public Relations.

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