Deciphering what media is looking for in a startup storyline
In an earlier article, we questioned whether press really is best for a start-up storyline; arguing in favour of a balanced approach using social media and partner-led communications alongside press coverage to make a long-term impact in your target audience.
Yet we cannot deny that press can be singularly powerful in achieving your profile-raising goals, which is why every founder wants to see their start up named in an influential media title to celebrate major milestones.
So if you’re thinking about a PR plan for the next big announcement — for example your Seed fundraising round — then you need to first be clear on what GOOD PRESS means for you… Because a) yes, there is such a thing as bad press, and b) good press looks different for different start ups at different stages…
What does good look like to you?
Kick off your PR plan by asking yourselves these six questions:
- What is the impact you want to achieve with this news announcement?
Every announcement has an ultimate purpose or objective to help the company grow to the next stage. What’s most important for the business right now might be lead-generation, hiring talent or laying groundwork for the next fundraise, and the news announcement has the potential to get the right attention. Coverage for the sake of coverage will not lead to measurable impact. The answer to this question forms the overall direction for your PR plan — the media you’ll target with this story to get you closer to your immediate goals.
2. Who is your audience target … and what media are they reading?
It’s not always as simple as “get me into TechCrunch” if the people you need to target aren’t reading that! For your press announcement to be effective, you need it to land in the right place; somewhere where your target audience is vast, and where they will take notice of your release. You need to consider how similar stories have landed in your target media titles, and what angles seem to be favoured by the journalists.
3. Are there any difficult questions or no-go areas?
What are the most awkward, difficult, challenging questions you might be asked in the process? It’s always a good idea to keep note of the most frequently asked questions about your platform or business. You should get ahead and prepare for how you might answer them if a journalist were to probe.
4. What’s happening in the world (or sector) that makes your story interesting?
What is timely and current about your story — can you point to an emerging trend or economic landscape that makes this particularly noteworthy? Can you find reputable sources to link that to?
5. Who are your partners & stakeholders?
If it is a fundraising announcement, your stakeholders will include all your investors and the varying degrees to which they will be involved in the announcement. The lead investor(s) should contribute a quote, and others may be name checked. Do they want approval and to be part of the PR plan? Getting some clarity on this early on will be helpful. Other stakeholders might be governmental/grant givers or early users/customers who are happy to be named or quoted.
6. Who is going to lead the PR activity?
When a start-up doesn’t have in-house comms or a PR agency appointed, it tends to fall on the Founders themselves to run the press plan. (ps: the value of even early-stage startups having access to comms advice is the subject for another day’s blog post). Your investors will likely have their own PR teams to help you navigate this first announcement. Working together on a joint release does require some compromise, so best be clear on what good looks like for you.
Get your story together
The bare minimum of time spent thinking through the above will already put you in a better position to kickstart the PR plan. Next, you need to work on the story — often this takes the form of a press release — and to get ahead of this challenge, your press material needs to pre-empt the questions journalists are most likely to ask.
You can get into the journalist mindset by searching for similar stories and assessing how they’ve been covered in the media titles you are targeting — check out media newsletters and social media presence too, and you will quickly get an understanding of what individuals media platforms want.
Because, of course, ‘media’ is not a homogenous thing; different titles have different formats and newsrooms are looking for very specific information to fit their audiences’ needs. This is also where the insight and support of a PR agency will be very valuable to you in refining the angle and managing the media engagement plan carefully to maximise the potential and impact.
Broadly speaking, journalists are looking for key information about your start-up and the narrative or angles that makes this news … news(worthy).
Are you able to answer these questions:
> What is your product/service/platform? (and also… what is the user experience, if relevant)
> How does it meet the needs of, and benefit, customers?
> What is the problem you are trying to solve in the world?
> How big is the market you are addressing?
> What is the founders’ personal/unique experience of the problem? (and also… what are the credentials of the key members of the team?)
> What are your goals? (and also… what does this funding enable you to go on to do?)
> Who are your competitors? (and also… how are you better?)
> What’s been your growth journey to date? What traction can you prove?
> How are you making money / where is customer or revenue growth coming from?
> What is happening in the market that makes this particularly relevant?
[Remember, your investors will address some of these points in their quote — and will also elaborate on how and why your start up fits their investment thesis]
“Key messages” are the most important stories you want to share about your business so as to spark a reaction from your target audience; it’s about how you frame information and proof points in the best possible way, to reflect your point of difference, your competitive advantage and your mission, purpose or values. With so much raw information and data to pull together in a press release, you want to stay really true to your key messages and make sure they are reflected in the material — in the headline, the first few critical paragraphs, and in your quote. The trick is to keep it balanced and avoid overtly sales-driven or marketing/promotional language, which journalists will simply ignore.
Paint a picture
As well as the press release, you can think about additional ‘assets’ that may help to give an edge to your PR plan. This is about proving the facts of your story with impact using share-able visuals and imagery that appeal to today’s media titles — who have to produce content not just for websites and print newspapers, but for newsletters and multiple social channels. Content is king.
While there is no guarantee of a media title using more than one of the below in their story, having this material readily to hand will pay dividends in the long-run, and can be repurposed and reused in many other ways through your own social, marketing and customers communications.
- Pictures of the founders or team. Media titles have been known to favour the stories with the best images… Make sure the one they pick on a busy news day… is yours. If the story is a fundraise, you’re going to need well-lit, professional photography of the founders in a setting that reflects the culture of the company.
- Product/platform videos or photos. How can you bring the user experience of impact of the platform to life, using photography, videos, illustration or infographics — it needs to be eye-catching and simple enough to tell a story in a snapshot. Stock imagery of ‘typical users’ in a business setting are simply no longer good enough.
- Case studies. Think about how you can present use cases to showcase your market traction, using photography, interview clips, quotes, dashboards or graphs to demonstrate the impact for a real use case or customers. Third party endorsement is always a powerful tool.
Ultimately, a PR plan is a delicate balance between what you want to say and what media needs to hear. Thinking through the questions set out here will put you in the strongest position to maximise the opportunity.
If you’ve recently made your first big PR announcement, we’d love to hear about your experience and any tips you’d share with other start-ups who are planning their PR debut.
