OFF-MUTE 🔈
✨ Most companies need third-party validation to establish credibility and raise awareness.
⛰️ But it’s one of the most challenging aspects of PR.
💬 You have to lean on people other than you—like customers and partners—to validate your space and to advocate for your leading position in it.
🙈🙉🙊 This is especially tricky for young startups that are building their community of evangelists or for companies that play in a market, like security, where customers don’t like to disclose what technologies they’re using.
The opportunity? Leverage your VCs for help on the PR front.
With 2022 planning in full swing, it’s a good time to re-engage with your investors. Here are some tips from our President Jason Morris:
☑️ Start early. Make PR a normal part of the relationship from the day you get a signed term sheet from each investor. The earlier the marketing team at the firm knows you’re an investment, the bigger help they can be. It needs to happen at a marketing and communications level because founders and investors are not going to focus on PR in the boardroom in the same way.
☑️ Keep them updated. Engage with the investors consistently so that you stay top-of-mind. They will support you how they can if time and resources allow. And for some of the larger firms resources are ample, consisting of multiple marketing or communications partners plus help from agencies.
☑️ Think beyond funding announcements. Asking your investors to contribute a quote to a release and doing interviews around funding is the bare minimum. Hopefully they will write a blog, amplify on social and maybe even have an owned media property too. It’s what you do in between funding announcements that will give you maximum leverage.
☑️ Proactively ask them what they are doing from a PR perspective. Is the partner who invested in you meeting with reporters? Are they speaking at TechCrunch Disrupt? Even if they can’t help with everything, some firms do regular events with press and provide partners a shortlist of companies to mention in interviews. By making the company and founder available to support your investor’s PR initiatives you get the benefit of the visibility and the association, and they’ll appreciate it.
☑️ Leverage their network. Your VCs know PR agencies, crisis firms and other vendors who do great work for their other portfolio companies. In addition to being a sounding board for you when you need it, they can connect you with resources and help you accelerate or narrow your search.