7) How to Use PR when Fundraising?
Public Relations or PR becomes important during your campaign once you want to reach people beyond your own network. Here’s how to do it.
By now, you’ll have a pretty good idea that fundraising is all about crafting a story and bringing your investors along on a journey with you, so what better way to promote your campaign and your business than through PR?
Equity fundraising is a growing industry. It also means that “we’ve launched a fundraising campaign” is not news and is unlikely to be picked up by journalists. You need to create something that is different and stands out from all of the other pitches. Journalists are looking for stories that are unique and that their audience will care about.
PR is not only useful for public fundraising campaigns but for private campaigns with just a few investors. Either way, you need to convince someone that your company is an exciting opportunity, and it will benefit you if your company is getting noticed by the press.
Craft a compelling hook to make your story stand out
We all love to read interesting stories and those are the ones we will most likely remember. Your story will likely not get much attention unless you make it interesting enough to catch a reader’s eye. You want to get the reader excited, make them interested enough to look you up and take action.
But what’s interesting enough to write about? Think about the following questions to get some inspiration:
- Is there a particularly shocking or interesting stat about your industry, business, or campaign that could serve as the cornerstone of your story?
- Could you write a how-to guide related to your industry and include a link to your campaign at the bottom? 😉
- Can you jump on the back of another trending topic such as a relevant news story?
- Can you write a guest post for a publication that will not only raise awareness of your campaign but also your business?
Don’t just write about the fact you are raising funds and what your company does, but include something extra. Make the story valuable for the reader or approach your story from a different angle.
For example, Oppo Ice Cream used a hook of having failed on the popular TV show, Dragon’s Den and that Tennis star Andy Murray has invested in their business to get their story featured.
Also, Glowee’s Sandra Rey, who raised €611 000 on WiSEED, related her business to a compelling industry statistic on the impact of commercial lighting systems and how her business provides a solution.
Make it easy for journalists to write about you.
As your campaign builds momentum, make sure that you are updating the press on your story, particularly if your campaign is breaking any records, raising funds quickly, or secures a high-profile backer.
Where should you be pitching?
Just like any other form of marketing you need to consider where your investors are hanging out. Think about which publications your potential investors are reading and how they are consuming their media.
We recommend trying to secure a matrix of features across high profile publications with an international audience, alongside smaller local press, trade publications, and online news outlets.
Pitch to a diverse set of publications.
A great place to search for press leads is Twitter. You can do this by searching the hashtags #journorequest and #prrequest to see what journalists are currently looking for. These can also be filtered by location so that you can target journalists both in your area and outside of it.
Twitter is a great tool for building a relationship with the media and understanding what they are looking for and what kind of stories they like to feature.
Get to know what kind of stories journalists are looking for.
Media databases are also useful for finding PR contacts as journalists will often publish specific story requests on global databases such as PR Newswire along with their contact details. However, these can be an expensive solution unless you are willing to invest long-term in a PR strategy to grow your business beyond your fundraising campaign.
Top tips for pitching to media outlets
- Do your research — get to know the publications and journalists you are pitching to. Is your story something that is likely to be featured and connect with their audience? You should also make sure that they haven’t already written something similar to the story you’re pitching before.
- Get straight to the point — keep your pitch email short, clear, and concise. Get straight to the point and either use the second part of your email to go into a little more detail or attach a press release for their reference. Use bullet points to keep things simple.
- Create a headline — journalists, like everyone, like things to be made easy for them. You can do this by suggesting headlines for them to use for the story and use the most powerful as your email subject headline. This should grab their attention, get them to open the email, and read it. This is the first test of how good your story is as this action is the exact action a journalist is looking for in a reader. Click > Open > Read > Share.
- Make it even easier — include all of the important facts that a journalist may need from you within your pitch. These are things like quotes, key facts, website links, and imagery.
- Highlight — highlight key points and facts in bold. This creates “speed bumps” in your copy and encourages people to keep reading. Text that is highlighted in bold also allows people to scan your email for the most important points.
- Follow up — if you don’t get a response from a journalist within a few days, follow up — but only once. They may have missed your email the first time or flagged it to respond at a later date, but if they don’t get back to you after you have followed up, assume they aren’t interested and focus elsewhere. To effectively track your outreach, we recommend using email tracking software such as Hubspot, which will let you know when someone has opened and read your email.
Pitch Templates
We want to make pitching to press nice and easy for you so we have written these templates for you to customise and get you started. Below are two templates, one is to get journalists to cover your story and the other one is for getting featured in a news outlet through a guest post.
Coverage Email:
Subject: Funderbeam builds blockchain-based stock exchange for start-ups
*actual headline that was featured in Techcrunch!
Hi [First Name],
I’m reaching out to share an insight into [insert relevant approach or study] from [Company Name]. We’re a new company that believes that fundraising should be easy for entrepreneurs and there should be a liquid market for shares. This new way of funding democratises and standardises the process for everyone — providing entrepreneurs with great investors and investors with a way to trade their shares through blockchain technology.
Our research shows that:
1.
2.
3.
This is relevant due to the recent news about [detail relevant industry trend].
If you’re interested in covering, let me know. I would be happy to provide you with more details. I can speak to you about why we decided to grow this business and how start-ups can utilise our technology to raise investment and trade shares. [name + link].
Below is a full press release, image and editor’s notes for your reference.
Thanks,
Guest Post Article:
Subject: {Title of Blog Post}
*Make sure your title makes people want to open the email and learn more!
Hi [First Name],
My name is [Full Name], CEO of [describe your company] [Company Name]. We believe companies need to change X,Y,Z.
In the past, I’ve written about X for Y [include link], and I recently published a piece on Z [include link] for A.
We’ve read your submission guidelines and would like to submit for your review a guest post: [Insert Blog Title]
In it, your readers will learn [list 2–3 key elements of the article]:
1.
2.
3.
Here’s a key point from the article:
“[Insert quote from the article]…”
Attached is the article, a short bio, headshot and supporting image.
Please let me know if you have any questions and I look forward to hearing your feedback.
Thanks,
Use the PR Pitch templates to get started on pitching your story to journalists.
We hope this has been useful! You can find more helpful guides for fundraising below.
The Funderbeam Guide for Raising Funds
In case you missed the previous chapters in our series and want to know more, check them out here:
About Funderbeam
Funderbeam is a platform that combines the three most important pillars of investing: Access to data, capital, and liquidity.
Raise money from local and global investors, without the usual hassle of cross-border deals. Only one new entry to your cap table.
Our vision is to provide everyone in the world with equal opportunities, whether you are building a company, or looking to fund the next big thing. What if the next Silicon Valley is not a place, but a platform?
> FIND OUT HOW TO RAISE FUNDS ON FUNDERBEAM.COM, OR WATCH THE VIDEO BELOW:
