Here’s How to Know If Your Startup Is Ready for PR

At some point, every startup founder comes up with the idea of ​​integrating PR into their company’s proliferation strategy. Indeed, with the right approach, PR efforts can easily become a powerful tool for accelerating growth. The list of goals that can be achieved through a well thought out PR campaign includes the following:

• Attract investors to increase visibility for securing funding

• Providing information about a startup’s products or services

• Raising awareness among potential customers and partners

• Creating a positive image for a company

However, all entrepreneurs should remember that PR is not a miracle pill. It works best under certain conditions and with a deliberate approach. Before turning to this tool, you need to assess the need for your business and your company’s readiness to launch a PR campaign.

Related topics: Is your startup ready for professional PR?

This is how you can tell if your startup needs PR

Before you turn to PR, make sure your business needs it in the first place. Analyze the market and your product and look at the goals you want to achieve. PR will definitely be beneficial to your business when:

• Your startup operates in a highly competitive market;

• Reputation and trust are critical to your business;

• Your product is complex and expensive, and people don’t get to experience it before they buy it;

• You are looking for new partnerships;

• You are looking for investors;

• You want to expand your customer base.

But even if your company meets all of the above criteria, you need to think twice to be sure that PR and media relations are the best way to tackle these challenges for your startup. It is not uncommon for founders of public relations to expect a counterpart to advertising and a solution for direct sales. In reality, the first and most important purpose of PR is to make a name for yourself. Publicity management affects sales – but only indirectly and when it works in tandem with marketing.

See also: What startups should do differently when it comes to PR

How to make sure your startup is PR ready

Unfortunately, it is not uncommon for start-up founders to underestimate the effort involved in high-quality publicity management. As a result, they launch a PR campaign too soon and get disappointing results. There’s no point in being hasty. Take the time to assess whether your startup is ready to launch a PR campaign. Here is a checklist for that below:

• Your product or service is mature and working flawlessly: When you start introducing your company to the mass media, it’s important that people can try your offer and give positive feedback.

• You can clearly formulate the goals you want to achieve with PR: There are different PR tactics and strategies for different goals. Approaches may even vary for different funding phases. Doing PR without clear goals is a waste of time and money and doesn’t help anyone.

• You already have a short clear description of your product or service and can explain how your company differs from competitors: Journalists, potential clients and investors should immediately understand what they are seeing and why it is unique and worth their attention. Also, don’t forget to translate the description and other texts into the languages ​​of all markets where you plan to launch.

• You have formulated the mission, vision and key messages of your startup: Everyone loves a company with a mission and a visionary. It makes a startup more memorable.

• They found the right tone of voice and brought all text materials into a consistent format: This includes all of the text found on your website, social media accounts, and in newsletters. If a text is published, it should be consistent with your communication strategy.

• The company’s social media accounts and blogs are aligned with the current message, explaining who you are and what you do: Journalists, potential customers, existing customers and investors will surely find these and analyze them like any other media publication.

• The speakers representing your company have properly updated their social media profiles: Today, any person can research any aspect of your business that they can find online. So use every little chance to make a positive impression and explain the importance of it to the team.

• You have decided on the positioning of the individual loudspeakers: If you have a pool of media representatives for your startup (even if it’s just your CEO), you need to decide which topics to cover as experts and communicate them clearly to reporters and editors.

• The speakers have corresponding photos taken by a professional photographer and a brief biography: These things can be requested by journalists when preparing publications about your company. It always feels very satisfying when the people of your startup are properly introduced in an interview.

• They’re ready to share some exclusive data and analysis: It helps build credibility, especially in the eyes of journalists who typically don’t feel like copying and pasting information already published and are always striving to impress their audience with something new.

Related Topics: Is Your Brand Ready for Public Relations and Press?

Smaller startups may be reluctant to hire a PR agency as most agencies’ fees for such companies seem overwhelming. However, it is difficult for founders to control the crucial operations of a company while driving their PR efforts. In such circumstances, effective communication with the media cannot take place.

A well-suited option can be to look for a PR agency that focuses exclusively on startups, including those in the early stages. Usually, such agencies are very aware of the needs and pains of their clients and offer reasonable contract terms. You need to find a KPI-driven PR firm – because with them you have guaranteed results and can tailor your KPI requirements to your budget. An early-stage startup can agree to the minimum KPI and increase it later if it can afford it.

Perhaps the most important thing to remember is that PR, as an effective tool, takes time to achieve the desired result and does not bring instant success. However, with the right approach, it can be powerful and help early-stage startups achieve their key goals.