Tips for getting startup press

How to get journalists to talk about your company

It’s weird how much you pick up being married to someone. My wonderful wife Sarah has worked with hundreds of startups on PR and communications, and I now feel like it’s my  strength-by-proxy.

She helped me get an app I built, NightCapp, to get mentions from pretty much every UK national publication. It even got mentioned in the New York “Metro”, despite not being available in the US. 

Here are a bunch of tips that I see her giving to founders all the time:

1/ Deeply understand the media you want to be featured in 

Read it, understand it. What will interest the journalists and the audience? What do they write about all the time? Read it every day, read the comments section, talk to people that read it, make notes about what the journos like and dislike. What is their stand on certain topics? This will make everything else more likely to succeed.

2/ Don’t focus on startup press

Unless you’re building for investors, your target market doesn’t read TechCrunch. Focus on what your target market does read, where they get news from. Build relationships there, it’s far more impactful on growing your business. The more you grow, the more likely you are to get investors (and TechCrunch)’s attention anyway.

3/ Work out a story. You existing isn’t a story

Journalists need a reason to write about you, and unless you’re a newsworthy person then the company launching isn’t interesting. There’s a chance it may be novel enough to be newsworthy, but that’s very rare. Read what your target journos write, to understand angles that they care about. Company milestones, research, and real human stories are angles that can work.

4/ Use surveys where you can

Tools like Attest let you ask an audience what they think. For example, if you’re a mortgage platform, find out how many people are worried about their mortgage compared to last year. IT’S UP 86%? Share that data with journalists - it basically gives them a story. Which just so happens to be the story of your business.

5/ Make friends with journalists.

Most of a PR person’s job is building relationships. As a founder, you’re much more interesting to journalists as you’re more knowledgeable and can work without the middle person. If you want to be a press darling, make those relationships. This used to be really hard - in old-school PR days you didn’t know what journos look like, or their background. Now you can find out all about them - their whole ‘thing’ is building an online brand. So tailor your messaging to them, and make friends with them.

6/ Go for quality coverage over quantity. 

Strategically placed coverage is far better than a scattergun approach. The latter can feel better and is quicker, but it is far less impactful. Again - go to where your audience is, and where they trust. That is quality coverage.

7/ PR is really hard to measure

At least in terms of sales or immediately tangible outcomes. Exposing your target audience to your brand, with your messaging is powerful. “Earned media” like this is far, far more credible than a paid-for ad. You can’t tell exactly how powerful it is though, it’s just a bet you have to place. PR strengthens everything else that you do. Large brands can measure sentiment and top-of-mind awareness, startups can’t.

8/ This stuff is probabilistic, not deterministic.

All you can do is push the odds in your favour with solid tactics, and repeat those motions quickly. There aren’t a series of steps to follow and guarantee press mentions. Lining up a journo’s interest, with an editors approval, and no other breaking news stories does require some luck. All you can do is push those odds in your favour.