| By Sabrina Horn of the Horn Group
CHICAGO – Public relations is one of the most powerful tools in the marketing mix particularly for young and emerging technology companies. More cost effective than advertising, PR helps create awareness and credibility for a new product, category or entity.
The primary medium through which PR communicates is the media (the business press, the trade and IT press, the vertical press as well as many of today’s online outlets and blogs). PR also communicates with industry research analysts, influencers, consultants and sometimes financial analysts.
There are other audiences to consider in your PR targets, too, including your prospects, customers, investors, business partners and employees. So where do you begin? You first have to know your “story”. Here are the key elements to consider:
Messaging, Positioning
At its core, messaging answers the “what’s your story?” question. Positioning illuminates your competitive position in your market. Who are you and what do you sell? What is your unique value proposition? Consider a positioning template that will help you develop your “elevator pitch,” which is a set of concise and defensible statements that identify who are and what you do.
Target Market
Make sure you know who you’re selling to. CIOs? CFOs? Business-line managers? Consumers? Each of these audiences reads different magazines and newspapers. Your PR program needs to focus on the publications and channels that best reach those individuals.
Competitive Differentiation
Be sure to think about your competitive differentiators. It’s not exactly about being better. It’s about how you offer value or performance in a different manner, in a different market or through different channels. You have to be prepared to identify your competitors. There is rarely a credible market of one.
Crafting Your Story
So how do you tell a great story? Yes, your company may have a great story, but that’s not enough.
To hit home with the media, your story has to be articulated well and it must stand out from the fray. News creates the bulk of media coverage. News is the timely reporting of new and important or interesting information that’s driven by change, urgency, currency or the need to educate. Follow these rules to get the coverage you want.
The Pitch
- Make it relevant. Tie your story to today’s media issues and interests.
- Identify the actors. Great journalism is about people.
- Back it up. Send data, statistics, numbers and proof.
- Bring it to life. Use anecdotes and customer examples.
- Ask yourself the “so what?” question. Empathy with the reader and the journalist is a must.
- Take calculated risks. Go off the record or give an exclusive.
- Be a maverick. Find two to three points on which to be bold.
The Relationship
- Become a reporter’s resource. It’s not all about you.
- Establish trust. Communicate in good times and bad.
- A controversial stance or personality is more important than being likable.
- The best story ideas often come from going off script.
- Make networking part of your media strategy. Lunch with a reporter can lead to a story.
- It can take many months to develop a story. Keep at it.
The Basics
- Know the audience. Do your homework on the publication, its reader and the reporter.
- Communicate company, market and product in sound bites.
- Talk business rather than code.
- Customers are willing to talk for the right opportunity.
- No competition equals no story. Without competition, a seasoned reporter will dismiss you.
Agency or In-House PR?
Who’s going to do your PR? You can hire a freelancer or contractor, you can hire someone to do it in house or you can hire an agency. Depending on your stage of growth, a very early start-up with minimal funding should probably opt for a freelancer to do a few tactics or just wait until you can afford an agency.
An agency will typically bill a monthly retainer and with that you will have a team of PR people working for you. They bring a third-party objectivity and a greater platform of relationships to the table.
When interviewing agencies, make sure you meet the people who will be on your team. Know their technical experience and relationships. Find out how long they have been working there. Make sure you “like” them because you’ll be working with them a lot. Get them to tell you what they think your story is in their words.
The Best Time to Engage PR
For young companies, the best time to engage a PR firm or any kind of PR activity is when the first version of the product is complete, working and installed at three customers. Those customers should be willing to serve as press references (there’s a big difference between a press and a sales reference). This company usually will have completed or is about to complete a C round of financing.
For larger companies, the need for PR is constant. Whether it’s to change a market perception, enter a new market, deal with a crisis or take the company in a new direction, PR should play a key advisory role to the C-suite.
Many companies feel they should go “dark” in bad times or hide from the media with “no comment”. In fact, nothing could be worse. It’s important – particularly as a public company – to continue communicating with the media and be honest about issues. If they detect you’re hiding something, they will come after you and find it. The result will be a much less pleasant experience.
PR also needs to be measured. Customer references sometimes don’t come through. Editors aren’t interested. Stories get written but don’t make it into print. This is an unfortunate but real aspect of the business.
To make sure your PR program is working for you, set up realistic objectives up front. Work to get coverage in specific magazines with a certain frequency per year, messages you want to see in print and a larger sales pipeline. Measure the progress you have made to those goals every three months and be prepared to change course frequently. Market dynamics and technology move fast. PR does as well and needs to map to the environment.
PR is not spin. This may seem novel to you. The best PR tells the truth to help a company achieve its objectives. When it works, PR is magic. It can create the perception of market and thought leadership. It helps people and companies understand the value of a new technology and embrace it, try it, buy it and use it.
Sabrina Horn is president and CEO of the Horn Group.
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