We love working with startups! But why might a startup need press?
Before we get into the ‘startup’ portion of the question, let’s define PR for the purposes of this blog post, so we have a good frame of reference to move forward.
PR, or public relations, is the relationship an entity (public figure, business, etc.) has with their or its target audience. Let’s say you are a talented skier, but you live in Florida. Nobody would know you were a great skier unless someone told them, because there is nowhere to ski in Florida.
So your options are to either go around telling everyone, “I am a fantastic skier,” or to have your friends brag about your skiing abilities.
For the sake of keeping this hypothetical simple, we don’t need to worry about why it is so important to you that everyone knows you can ski. But let’s keep going.
If you go around telling everyone and their mom that you are a great skier, they will either believe you but think you are full of yourself, or they will not believe you, and still think you are full of yourself.
Now imagine instead that your friends tell everyone that you are a phenomenal skier and, “Oh my gosh you just have to see them on those slopes, it is like an art!” Those same people will be much more inclined to believe, want to know more about, and even come ask you about your powder skills.
The first scenario is marketing: Talking about yourself. The second scenario is PR: Others talking about you.
Back to the issue at hand: Why does a startup need PR?
The Six Kinds of Startups and Why Each Need PR
Between scalable, small business, lifestyle, buyable, big business, and social startups, there are dozens of reasons why each needs publicity.
For the sake of this explanation, we will assume that all businesses we are talking about are well-run businesses with high profits and good company missions and values.
If you want to scale your business, you need your potential investors to believe in you. If they read about you on Forbes or Entrepreneur, or hear you speaking on a podcast about how you lead your team or deliver the best ROI, they will be more likely to believe in and trust your numbers.
If you run a small business, such as a hair salon, travel agency, or other service-based one-man or one-woman show, getting yourself some publicity around your business would do you huge favors. Hairdressers, for example, have lots of competition…
If you are a master of your craft but everyone knows about your equally-talented competitor because he or she has been featured in LA Weekly multiple times, he or she is going to get way more clients than you. That’s just the way it is, because PR builds visibility (clients can find them) and trust (clients believe the photos they see of that hairdresser’s work.)
A lifestyle startup, which can be based around any hobby from baking to sewing to dance to watercolor painting, works in much the same way as the small business. PR for you is about putting credibility behind your talent and backing it up.
Buyable startups are one of the biggest contenders for PR. If you build a startup with the intent to sell it for a high price as soon as it is up and running, PR will get it sold much sooner than hitting the pavement and trying to meet people organically — although there is something to be said for that tactic, too.
Let’s say you meet someone who might be a potential buyer. You show them your website; they think it’s great, and say they will reach out. That person then goes home, goes to sleep, maybe forgets all about you. A week or a month later, they remember just half of your company name and what you do.
So they Google: “Brown Consulting media and marketing in Chicago.” Nothing comes up. Not even a whisper of your full business name, Smithson Brown Media Consulting. What does come up is other companies with similar search terms. If you had PR, articles about you would cover the first page of Google when that term was searched. PR keeps your networking endeavors clean and efficient.
Big business startups are in the business of getting so big that they become facets of the national community (think Amazon and Target.) They are constantly innovating, and what better way to teach the public about their latest advancements than PR? Don’t forget, PR is an educational tool that can be used to give advice and tell experiences.
Finally, we have social startups which, due to their inherent nature of needing to be supported by the community at large, live and breathe off the back of PR.
If you would like to learn how you can use PR to bolster the growth and success of your startup, book a call with us today!
We love working with clients who are on the road to success and we want to be part of that success journey! Victorious PR is a team of go-to publicists and branding specialists that primarily works with entrepreneurs, real estate professionals, cryptocurrency projects, and, of course, startups of all kinds.
We are the top PR agency and are proud members of the Rolling Stone Cultural Council and the Forbes Agency Council. We have also won multiple accolades, including Best PR Firms in Las Vegas by Expertise, Top Las Vegas Public Relations Firms by Clutch, and Top PR Companies by Mirror Review.
We help business owners get featured in the industry-specific press, local media, podcasts, and top publications, allowing their audience to see them as the #1 industry leader in their sectors. Our clients have become TEDx speakers and built lasting authority, credibility, and visibility by maintaining their messaging with our verified PR framework.
