STARTUP MARKETING IS A COMPLEX SCIENCE
Two fundamental truths exist when marketing a startup. One is that a great product alone is not enough to succeed. The other is that no amount of marketing will make a crap product or service gain a mass audience.
Some great ideas have failed due to a lack of media attention and customer awareness. Others have gone under thanks to a poor strategy. Still, other great ideas have spiraled to billion dollar fame! Well, founders everywhere can stop searching for that elusive secret to startup marketing success. It’s simply the sweet spot between content marketing and Public Relations (PR).
So let’s talk about startup PR that, for some reason, remains a mystery in many startup circles.
When’s the right time to tell people about your startup? Is there value in getting early coverage on industry blogs? What message is going to resonate with journalists? How can you maximize the press coverage you do get and translate it into sales? Should I hire a PR firm to help me out?
The good news is it doesn’t need to be such a mystery. Fundamentally, it all boils down to this:
What to say. When to say it. Who to say it to.
Here are the steps you should take while answering the above questions:
Craft your positioning statements While constructing two sentences may seem easy, crafting effective statements is quite a big challenge. Your positioning statements need to combine the following three key factors: What is your product? How will it affect others? Who will care? Your positioning sentences will be used to market your product or service and pitching it to the media.
Identify your competition By identifying your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses, you will be able to better understand how to market your product as better. Be creative here. Harness all of the information available on the product and its competitors, and study it.
Target the right media outlets and journalists Any media outlet employs a number of qualified journalists capable of telling the story, but you should be careful to pitch only journalists who will be the best fit for your product. Target key media outlets of interest then search for stories with similar themes or relevance to your own. Look at the journalists who’ve covered those stories and always pitch the right one for your story. Once you have identified the journalists to connect with, start building a relationship with them. Make friends with them! Relationships with journalists are not always easy to build, but the effort to achieve them can mean great story coverage and the opportunity to be covered again in the future. Even if you are not in a position to leverage journalists or writers, you should still be connecting and making those relationships. In due time, they will always benefit you and your startup.
Create a killer media kit Your kit should include the following items:
Media Advisory - your positioning sentences and all other information available about your product or service
Logo, branding materials and screenshots of your product or service so it will be easy for the media to pull out and use
Founder Bios & Photos - it is enough to offer a taste of the team behind the product, including a brief biography of each founder and respective photos
5. Reach out to the journalists Engagement with journalists prior to reaching out is a key. When interacting with journalists beforehand, you should request to send information on a story that may interest them. By building a relationship first, this request doesn’t come off as insincere. Journalists may still decline, but by continuing to build on the relationship created, you could potentially convince them to accept in the future.
