[Video] Startup Snacks: PR for Startups
We interviewed Brian Jones, Raken’s PR Lead and President/Founder of Vizabiliti, to learn about PR for startups. Is it right for your startup? How do you build credibility? Can you do it yourself?
Enjoy! And you can check out the full transcript of the video below.
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PR is creating visibility around something and that something could be a company, could be an individual, could be an event in order to highlight it create awareness to help with business development. All for the purpose to increase credibility as well. So it’s shining a light on whatever you’re doing, creating that credibility factor, creating that awareness, getting people comfortable with what you’re doing and credibility is probably the top for PR because when you promote your company in a certain way you’re really kind of putting that credibility factor out there and people want to be associated with somebody who’s credible. In business I think that’s one of the most important things. That’s going to facilitate actual sale or something that you’re doing. Credibility really speaks to the whole sale cycle of business right? Or if you’re an individual and you’re trying to be a thought leader in a certain area people aren’t going to listen to you if they don’t believe that you’re credible people aren’t gonna buy your product if they do not associate you with you know being a credible company. So really credibility facilitates a lot of the business development sales side. If you’re doing PR around one person you know nobody’s gonna listen to you if they don’t believe you’re credible or you are legitimate enough to talk or speak on the subject in which you’re talking about.
I think a lot of people are wary about PR because it’s hard to track. It’s an organic thing that kind of happens from you promoting yourself whereas with marketing you really you invest a certain amount of money in a you know, an ad that you can see how many conversions are coming in off that, uh, whereas PR it’s really hard to track, you know, uh, a news story that you got right so let’s say you were in one of your regional newspapers it’s really hard to see how many people that read that actually went to your web site and converted on what you’re selling that’s kind of the best way to explain it.
A lot of what you decide to talk about, whether again you’re doing PR from individual company or event you really have to uh break it down and what I like to do when I meet with people I say okay, give me three things that you feel differentiate you from your competitors or three things that you consider unique to what you do so it’s a process and you kind of have to drill down by doing those kind of exercises is to figure out what you want to promote about your company most of the time it doesn’t happen, you know, right off the bat it takes a lot of work it’s not something that just happens overnight.
I think PR is definitely different with a startup from say an enterprise established company uh, when you’re young, you really have to get the message out there and you’re still kind of struggling with who you are and telling your story. So you have to find those unique characteristics, those things that people are going to be interested in, things that could be considered newsworthy. So that’s where it’s really different with start ups whereas, you know, a company that’s been around for a long time, they already have their message down and they stick with with what they’ve been talking about for a year.
I want to see you in Forbes and the New York times as well, but, uh, let’s kind of crawl before we walk, so to speak on I like too say that PR is going like a snowball, right? You start small, you end big, so unless you figure out a way to maybe cure cancer or some sort of just amazing feat that you’ve come up with right off the bat you’re probably not going to get in those publications immediately it takes work to get there to build up to get to that point so I say absolutely we’re gonna get there but it might take a little bit more legwork than you think but you kind of have to start small uh get that snowball effect once it rolls down the hill just keeps gathering steam and before you know it you’re there at the Forbes you’re there at the New York Times specifically to uh bring it home right here for Raken just recently a couple weeks ago Raken was highlighted on the front page of the business section for the San Diego Union Tribune, a great article talking about how they are revamping construction reporting their software is leaps and bounds more than pen and paper all that good stuff. That news story got picked up by other regional newspapers around the country and actually facilitated with a sales opportunity to somebody say in Minnesota I think read the article that was in the union tribune and said shoot I’ve got to try this I have ah you know I have a construction company and I’m on a bunch of job sites so how about I give Raken a try, so it actually facilitated a sales opportunity which is huge.
