How to Be a PR Ninja for Your Startup

By Aditya Kshirsagar | Updated: 24 August 2016 22:56 IST

Highlights

Don't rely on mass mailing to paid 'lists'
Use tools like MailerLite to customise your messages
Set clear goals to measure RoI

One of the problems with the startup world that you learn once you've spent any time around early and mid-stage founders is that these companies see PR as an optional function in their businesses. They don’t look at it in terms of long-term investment and, instead, try to reach out to media only when they have an announcement to make, which leads to abysmal results.

And when startups engage in PR they often only ask one question - "When will TechCrunch (TC) cover us?" But is that really all that's needed for a startup? One of the recent products of NFN Labs, the startup I work with as Communication Manager, was recently covered by TC, and we saw a spike in users, which was great. But this is a one-off gain, and you need more than this.

Having worked with a dozen founders of early and mid-stage startups over the years, I've come to realise that startups need someone who can handle multiple roles including PR, but a lot more too. The founder’s vision has to inform the overall communication strategy and that means getting hands on with PR.

You need to get coverage, build a relationship with the media, and measure your return on investment. These three steps together can take your startup to the next level. This is how you make that happen:

1. Track journalists
Sending a mail blast to a "media list" will just earn you the ire of many. Mailing the right people is key. PR agencies will track journalists over years and build personal dossiers. In a startup, you don't have that much time, but there are some simple tools that can make you better at understanding the press, before you contact them.

Google Alerts are the best way to start - set alerts for your startup's name and the founders, and do the same for the competitors as well. Choose relevant language and regions, and you'll start to see stories related to your business. Next, create a Google Sheet and add any interesting stories you see, to get a sense of journalists you should pitch your product to.

Another tool is JustReachOut (JRO) an automated tool that lets you sift through journalists bases on keywords, such as Bitcoin or SaaS. It's effective and affordable, and has Indian and international leads, though it's limited in the listings for now.

If you've built a global product that you want to publicise in the US and other English speaking countries, then you should also check out Publicize - like JRO, Publicize is another database that is reasonably priced, taking out the grunt work of finding people. And if you want to track social influencers and not journalists, check out BuzzSumo – it used to be free and is now paid, but worth the investment.

Using these tools you can save a lot of money that would have otherwise been spent on an agency, though it still means spending time on communications - but that's something no startup should ignore, even if the money savings weren't there.

2. Start a conversation, don’t sell
If you're only looking to make your announcement, there is a chance you won't get heard, as journalists are always overloaded with calls, messages, and emails. But if a startup founder makes a little time to start a conversation first, it'll make them much more likely to be heard when it counts.

The best way to start a conversation is via Twitter. A simple tweet like, “Just read XYZ article by @JournalistTwitterHandle. (your opinion here) #GoodReads"

Or, once you've identified journalists whose work you like, email them - most sites these days make it easy to contact their writers, so don't fall into the trap of paying money for databases. Keep the email simple - just identify yourself, and say what article you liked. Introduce yourself, and offer to tell them more if they contact you. That's it.

The most important thing to remember though is - unless you know someone personally - don't call. It’s just a waste of your time, and usually makes a bad impression too. Instead, as a startup founder, you should look at ways in which to gain more visibility, and content syndication is a key to this. You are a new player in the market. Get into a leadership position by sharing useful information on established players blogs or media outlets. This also helps with SEO and page authority. Then, when you do send a pitch, people are more likely to know who you are, or can easily find out.

The only easy press that you’re going to get is funding news, and that too only if it’s from certain investors. So it’s up to you to make yourself relevant, and the first step to that is identifying the audience and what you can give that’s useful to a publication’s readers.

3. Get rid of boring press release
Okay, so you know whom to talk to, and you've built up a conversation so they will listen. Now you can sell your product. But a startup PR ninja - whether it's the founder or an employee - needs to make the product stand out by avoiding the boring press release.

Get the timing right, and send the information in a personalised manner. Based on feedback I've received, Tuesday and Wednesday mornings are the best time to send out a mail, but you can prepare it in advance and schedule the mail.

To do this, you can use emailing systems like MailerLite, MailChimp, CampaignMonitor etc., and more. This will also allow you to track open and click through rates for your mails. Thanks to its pricing and clean UX, along with great customer support, MailerLite works very well, though you can check out which works best for you.

First up, you need to create a list of journalists with the first name, publication name, and designation. Next, you need a good subject line.

At NFN Labs, we released 4 products over the period of 5 months. We found that keeping it simple, and to the point, while including emoji to stand out, worked best. Here’s an example of one of our products — Storm It.

Subject Line: Tweetstorm easily with StormIt (iOS App Review Request)

This subject line gives a clear message about what the app does and what we are looking for. The rest of the mail should include information on how to contact you, a call to action, and a simple explanation on how your product will benefit the publication's readers.

You can view Storm It email here: https://app.mailerlite.com/a6f9h8

4. Following up
With a client like MailerLite, you'll be able to see data on who has opened your email, and who clicked on the link inside it. If you've followed all the previous steps, there's a good chance that you don't even have to follow-up, which means that you can focus on your business instead.

But, if you do have to follow up, then start with the people who clicked the link - from experience, Twitter and even LinkedIn can be good places to follow up instead of sending another email.

Get feedback on why they didn't cover your company, and remember that no means no. For now, you should start a drip campaign like we do for pre-sales, and send two follow-up emails within the span of a week. If that doesn't work out - you're in for the long haul, and in a startup, you've got plenty of more things to do right now. And you'll have more products and updates when you can start the process over.

5. Return on Investment
The question that matters is whether - for a startup founder or a startup employee who has to juggle multiple roles - this much effort is worth it? The thing is that a PR agency will give you a docket of all the coverage you received, and compare it to ad rates to give you a perceived ROI. That works for traditional companies, but not really for startups.

You need to be able to encapsulate and measure all of your outbound communication. Today, social media plays an extremely important part in being able to acquire users. A good starting point to measure ROI is Noah Kagan’s Quant-based marketing technique. For example, NFN Labs launched BuySell Tickets in Chennai, and got a lot of press coverage at launch.

The number of users we acquired was lesser than expected, what it did was catapult us into the limelight. This limelight helped us broker partnerships that improved on the product experience. Then during the release of Kabali We chose to experiment with social and contacted Chennai Memes with our product. They agreed to feature us and that helped us acquire nearly 1,500 users in a span of 3 days. Over the course that one week, over 750 tickets were listed on our app with over 50,000 messages.

For startups, it's important to understand the company goals and the media landscape both - that's why it's usually helpful if the founders are hands-on with communications. You have to define the goal of your PR activity, and work towards that, instead of getting lost in the brouhaha of the moment.

To summarise: build human relations, not public relations. Remember that you're in this for the long haul, and be brief and clear. Startups don't have to waste a lot of time to get the benefits of PR, and don't have to spend a lot of money either.

Aditya is the Communication Manager at NFN Labs, a five-year-old services company based out of Chennai. He also advises early stage startups like TapChief.

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