Basic Guide to PR for Startups

by The Yellow Coin PR Agency in Delhi

A startup firm sets in the market with new brand name, varying products and services only to bear belligerent competition at first. Observations revealed that every 91 out of 100 startups fail to foster a strong public and media relation which leads to the early downfall. Many startups rely on digital advertising and marketing campaign only to earn the leads while neglecting the power of public relations.

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 says about your brand and business is a big matter of concern than what you say about yourself through advertising.

Therefore, what businesses really need today is a strong brand presence along with the increasing number of sales. For this, a lot of startups club public relations and other marketing techniques altogether to earn reputation and generate great revenue.

You may opt for professional PR services or can take up the charge to manage public relations yourself. In the latter case, following tips will surely help you a great deal:

• Prepare content for coverage

Whether it is a press release, article or a startup story, it should convey the information of your products & services, justify the purpose of business’s existence and the passion of its workforce. Identify the pain of your customers, and decipher how your products or services provide relief to the customers. Do not forget to write it all with passion. You may also write content on the social media topics that your customers care about. And then, you may proceed to pitch the journalists for covering your story. Use tools and software to find and connect to the right journalists.

• Create a media list

A media list is one of the cornerstones of any PR campaign. Once you have prepared content for release, it’s time to look for the right media influencers and journalists for earning the coverage. Find the contact details of the various journalists, read their writing, identify their interest areas and proficiency and organize them comprehensively in a list. Based on the context of your story, you can approach a journalist for coverage with a creative and appealing pitch.

• Pitch the right way

Avoid writing cold pitches that do not interest anyone. Do some newsjacking with your story and write it impressively while maintaining a professional tone. Through your pitch, inform the journalist why your company is worth writing on. What is distinctive about your products, services, and company? If you have news, make it ground-breaking. If you are launching a new array of products and service, discuss how the public will be a direct beneficiary. Also, do not send same pitch to hundreds of journalists. Instead, try to pitch fewer, and pitch smarter. Your story should be relevant, novel, and fresh. It should not be anachronistic.

• Foster relations with public early

Many a time, people start engaging with media and audience all in a sudden when they require coverage. Therefore, you should start engaging and interacting with them a little early. Do not approach a journalist all in a sudden saying, “I have a brand new story which will interest your audience or can you please cover my launch event because it was amazing?” Such are the examples of poor approach which will leave journalist with a not-so-good impression. Therefore, it’s important that you stay relationship-focused and not coverage-centric.

PR converts more because people trust earned media more than the traditional earned media. To get enough exposure and coverage, you must work hard on all above strategies.