5 Things You Should Know About PR In The Startup World
Here are the lessons I learned while working with brand new companies. Use this information to prepare for your next PR position.
When I joined the startup world back in 2017, I was looking forward to applying the amazing skills that I had learned during my years at PR Agencies. Working with clients like Heineken and The Coca-Cola Company provided first-hand exposure to cutting-edge global campaigns and extensive experience learning what’s next in the marketing and comms industry. I can still recall my excitement every time we were discussing Coca-Cola’s yearly plans.
After a few months of being part of a real estate tech startup called Blueground, I realized that there were fundamental differences in this arena. From available budgets to work processes, handling PR for a startup (versus a large-scale company) has its own unique set of challenges and rewards. Anyone can seek inspiration from how established companies are handlingPR, but take note of what startups are doing to put themselves on the map. When it comes to PR at startups, you will need to re-invent everything you thought you knew.
Here are a few things that describe PR at startups as I have experienced them during the last 4+ years:
1)PR isn’t just one thing: When you join a startup, especially one that’s at an early stage, you cannot expect to do what you were required at an established company. For instance, writing press releases, and speaking to journalists, among other things. It goes without saying that press releases and media pitchings would be among your top priorities, just be ready to wear many different hats. You may be involved in your company’s blogs and social media channels, writing and sending newsletters, developing client pitches, etc. Your role will become more of a ‘PR Generalist’.
2)You have to set the ROI aka let’s talk about Performance PR: My biggest challenge was accepting that every single dollar matters when you are working in the startup world. We can all agree that PR needs a long-term approach. It’s not something to use as a “quick fix” or a “one-off initiative”. It’s about building credibility, reputation, and relationships for the company. What do all of these have in common? Time. Successful PR takes time, meaning you typically don’t see the results of your work right away. Fortunately, there are some tools that can help showcase results and put PR’s success into numbers that the company’s founders will understand (and appreciate).
- My favorite tool is Search Console; a free service offered by Google that helps you monitor your site’s presence in Google Search results. Basically, it measures how many people are searching for your brand online. It’s an easy way to see the change in people’s search behavior month over month. This is especially significant when you implement large campaigns that will impact people’s searches. At Blueground, there was a huge increase in Google searches immediately after we had announced the two funding rounds.
- Another metric to leverage is the traffic to your website. Especially the referral traffic (meaning, the people who come to your website from other sites). Ask for access to your company’s website analytics and check the referral traffic. There you will find out how many people came to your website from press and publications you’ve been featured in. Obviously, these featured articles you’re putting out should include links to the company website). Depending on the size of the startup, you will see PR’s impact on the number of calls, clicks, emails received, etc. (I will devote a whole blog post to measuring PR success. Stay tuned!)
3)Agility & Speed are “the name of the game”: In the era of “move fast and break things” (Mark Zuckerberg’s famous motto), PR — as with every other team- needs to keep pace. Joining a startup means that you may need to change your plans and priorities every month or even every week. Sounds frustrating, right? I totally agree. However, the reason for this is that when it comes to startups, yesterday’s decisions may not apply to tomorrow’s strategy. Startups are agile and they value speed and efficiency. Here is a piece of advice:
Save time when developing proposals and plans by using Google Docs or even Excel. It may not be as sexy as a Powerpoint deck filled with images and nice colors but in the name of speed & agility, this works best.
4)Re-evaluation of all Comms tools (i.e. Press release VS SoMe announcement): In the digital age, there are many discussions around the role of a press release. Haters say that it’s dead while others say they are just as essential as before. Personally, I don’t agree with either opinion. Press releases can add a lot of value in certain circumstances (for example, when you don’t have time to proceed with many pitches, when the news is not so urgent and important, or when you would simply like to support the company’s SEO efforts. However, since startups are about innovation, we can all agree that press releases aren’t very innovative. Nowadays, many tech companies prefer using their corporate blogs or their social media channels for disseminating news. A product video could be a good alternative as well. So, next time before sending out a press release, take a moment to ask yourself — is this really the best tool I can use right now?
5)Collaborating with PR firms doesn’t always work: Finding the right firm to tell your story can be a very time consuming and challenging activity. Over the last four years, I have selected and worked with roughly 10 PR firms and/or reps. The amount that I have gotten in touch with or spoken to, however, has been at least triple that. Some of these collaborations were very successful while others were significant learning experiences (I don’t like the word failure). In this case, my number one piece of advice is to look for like-minded PR firms. You don’t need to find the most famous firm in the region — actually most of the times the big PR agencies will not care about your startup. You need a team that is as agile and innovative as your startup. Small teams work much better, especially when you don’t have a big budget.
Joining a startup can be an exciting career experience. Yes, there are many challenges, but believe me, they are worth it. This type of PR work gives you the unique opportunity to create — almost every day — something that wasn’t there before. Also, to see the impact of your work, as well as collaborate with passionate and talented people from all over the world.
Have you experienced any other things while in charge of PR efforts at a startup? If so, comment below 😀
This blog post is the first in a series of posts about PR, Marketing, and Branding within startups and international environments. In each blog post, we’ll be diving into specific topics or tech ecosystems with the help of local experts. My goal is to create a place for discussion and knowledge-sharing with professionals from all over the world. Hopefully, this blog sparks new ideas and topics you could discuss with your colleagues.
I would love to hear your thoughts, feedback, and topic ideas. Feel free to reach out to me at hello@eleniaktypi.com
