“It’s not about what you want to say, it’s about what they need to hear.”
- Ayelet Noff, Founder and Co-CEO of PR firm Blonde 2.0, explains what’s really important when start-ups explain their story to the world.
- “PR is not about what you want to say about your own company, but rather what the media needs to hear in order to decide if you’re worthy enough to write about.”
- What do people really think about your company? What do the media really want to talk about? How can you bridge this gap?
In any industry, products live or die by their public perception — but in the tech industry, where margins are razored away to tiny fractions, and competition emerges every day, a highly-visible and understandable image is essential to success.
So how do you connect your startup — one among tens of thousands — with the person on the street? People dream about connecting via “natural virality” — but while this can happen, more often than not, it’s the influence of careful PR that plays a huge part in spreading a startup’s message.
Ayelet Noff knows what it’s like to both work at a startup (as marketing manager for ICQ) and to be a harassed tech writer (as a writer for Mashable, TechCrunch and The Next Web).
She’s the Founder and Co-CEO of leading, award-winning, PR firm Blonde 2.0, who represent a bunch of exciting tech businesses like Waze and Viber— as well as cool startups like Yoyo Wallet and Splash, both of whom took part in TOA 2016.
We wanted to know more about this slightly mysterious world, and eke out some valuable advice for nascent startups from an expert — so we spoke to Ayelet, and she revealed exactly how important good relationships with the media are…
The instinct of people doing PR for the first time is to tell a story that simply promotes their product — yet this is all wrong.
TOA.life: Your job is to manage the swirl of hype that surrounds tech businesses. Creating PR that has a positive influence is a slightly mysterious role — how do you describe what you do to someone for the first time?
Ayelet Noff: In essence, I am a storyteller. I tell the stories of the brands that I work with. The instinct of people doing PR for the first time is to tell a story that simply promotes their product.
Yet this is all wrong. Your story should revolve around how your product or company fits in with the larger narrative of the industry in which it operates. How do you change the landscape around you? That’s what you need to explain to the media.
There is a simple phrase I often turn to that explains PR in blunt terms: “It’s not about what you want to say, it’s about what they need to hear.” When I first meet with people who have no PR experience, they often assume that PR is just another way to sell a product or service. But it’s far from that.
PR is not about what you want to say about your own company, but rather what the media needs to hear in order to decide if you’re worthy enough to write about.
So, how do you understand what that story is? You need to find a way to make your company or product relevant to the media conversation that’s happening right now, in a natural and timely fashion.
If you aren’t saying or doing something new, you will have to find a way to make your story more valuable.
TOA.life: What is your PR advice to a low-budget, bootstrapping startup? What are the simplest things they can do to spread a positive message about their project that will boost them above their peers?
AN: The most important thing startups need to understand is that the way to get coverage is by giving value to the writers they approach. By giving a writer something valuable, you take the first step in building a relationship with them.
You will make them remember you, trust you, and be willing to hear more from you in the future. What is valuable to writers? Something new, something exclusive, and timely.
Writers are interested in a unique story. They want to hear how what you’re doing is different than anyone else out there. If you aren’t saying or doing something new, you will have to find a way to make your story more valuable. Exclusivity is another way to do that.
But whatever you offer to writers, you need to do it in a way that accounts for their most valuable and limited resource: Time. That means you need to pitch them the way they like to be pitched (usually email), send them short, concise information, and give them sufficient time to do their job.
What is valuable to writers? Something new, something exclusive, and timely.
TOA.life: We’re in an age when — allegedly — anyone, anywhere, can use technology to grab the attention of millions. So, perversely, is getting coverage in tech publications more important than ever?
AN: In short, yes, getting coverage is more important than ever before — but oddly enough this is true not in spite of the rise of social media, but because of it. The current leading marketing paradigm is the PESO model.
This stands for Media that is Paid (ads), Earned (media coverage), Shared (social), and Owned (a company website or blog). It’s critical that any marketing strategy has a plan for each pillar, and that the all of the pillars are ready to work together.
However, I think the starting point needs to be Earned media. Earned media is the hardest to attain and purest form of media. It drives the other pillars in a way that doesn’t work in the other direction, and that’s why coverage is so important.
Your ads will be far more effective if potential customers can read a trusted review after seeing the ad; social sharing is much more valuable when users share content from their favourite site; and while a website and blog are great, they are far more valuable when they can highlight the content from a source that users implicitly trust.
TOA.life: What is a common mistake you’ve seen companies make in telling their story?
AN: One problem that I’ve encountered is starting to work with a startup or company that it put its product out there without any kind of plan in place for PR or media outreach.
Sometimes companies are simply so focused on launching, that they don’t have the time — or simply don’t understand — that they need to have a strategy in place to deal with media.
So what happens is they launch their product and don’t receive any media attention, or they receive coverage in a way that isn’t optimised, or isn’t targeted towards the right verticals. It can be quite challenging to come into a situation like that and create coverage when the story is already out there, or the product has been live for sometime.
I would say to startups that they should seriously consider working with a professional to create a media strategy, or at the very least consult with friends or other entrepreneurs about ways they have tackled the challenge of media outreach.
Not everyone is ready for a big PR push right at launch, but there are steps you can take that will lay the groundwork for a PR campaign down the road that will preserve the best elements of your story.
Writers get literally thousands of emails a day from startups and others looking for coverage.
TOA.life: Startups are often asked what the “secret sauce” is— the unique thing that they do — in their product. What do you think the “secret sauce” is for getting attention in the fast-moving digital media landscape?
AN: The pace of media coverage is such that writers are constantly stressed for time — while at the same time being overwhelmed by pitches from startups. I often hear from writers that they get literally thousands of emails a day from startups and others looking for coverage.
The key, in my experience, is making things easier for the writer and helping them rather than coming to them asking for favours.
This means respecting their time and being concise with the information you send — but above all, understanding that they don’t work for you. This is an attitude I’ve encountered on a number of occasions. People think that writers owe them something.
You need to understand that getting coverage is more about what you can do for writers and asking yourself how you can make their lives more convenient. If you go in with that mindset, you will be halfway to getting the coverage you want.
This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
If you enjoyed this article, please consider hitting the ♥︎ button below to help share it to other people who’d be interested.
I want it all, I want it now: how to deliver everything, immediately — David Saenz, COO of last-mile delivery service Stuart, explains how everything we want will come straight to us — instantly.
Don’t sell out. Fuck Monoculture. — Yancey Strickler, co-founder of Kickstarter, makes a powerful case for building an alternative reality where business helps the many, not the few.
