Some startups (and scale-ups) seem to be putting off their funding announcements lately, which isn’t ideal. If you’ve got good news, you want to get it out there. At the very least, chuck a press release at the heads of your top 10 reporters in your space. Why? Well, as a TechCrunch article put it:
"...the single-most important signal you can send to your investors, employees, customers and anyone else involved with your startup right now is that you are 1) open for business, 2) secure financially and 3) ready to continue to grow (or at least survive) despite the adverse events of the past few weeks.
"There is no greater tool you have to make that argument than showing the world that you have capital on the balance sheet."
This is so important for startups in particular. Apple and Microsoft don’t need to try so hard to get coverage -- the public and media are already trying to sniff the next release out. For a new name in the industry, don’t just tell them you’re deserving of a headline -- show them. There are thousands of startups in North America alone, and the media is an international game now.
Lucky for you, we know a thing or two about startup funding PR announcements
The most important part of a PR campaign? What's your story?
There are two aspects to consider: the news you want to tell, and the outcome you want to achieve. A campaign directed at coverage, and another directed at boosting reputation, will tell very different stories.
Here’s some of our advice on the fundamentals of a PR campaign for raising capital, recently featured on Frontfundr.
“If the story you want told isn’t clear to you, it’s not going to get traction with reporters and audiences either. Now, you’re going to position this story in different ways over the course of a campaign, but at heart it has to be memorable and simple.
““New cybersecurity solution saves IT departments millions” is a good, tell-me-more story (How will they save millions?); “New cybersecurity software stops hackers” is not (because, hey, don’t all cybersecurity solutions stop hackers? Keep it simple, with a lead-in that makes a reporter want to find out more.
"A word about press releases - the intro, or “lede” is key, and has to be as close to perfect as you can make it. Everything after the release’s first paragraph or so is just enrichment -- it should be useful to a potential story.”
You’ve got your announcement, you’ve got your story ready to go, but don’t forget -- you’re pitching to a journalist, someone who gets at least 100 emails just like yours, everyday. Worse, they spend less than a minute deciding if they want to use your story -- so you’ve got to hit them over the head with a perfect pitch.
Getting a pitch and a release written, opened, read and published, is no mean feat, and you’ll need to determine early on whether you have that kind of expertise in-house. You might not, but we certainly do.
If you need a PR agency to help you with your funding announcement, contact us.