Hiring a PR firm could be the game-changing move you need as a startup owner looking to grow your brand. In a competitive market, the right PR firm can accelerate your startup’s success and give you a significant edge over the competition. But why should you invest in a PR firm? In this article, we’ll explore seven compelling reasons. Hiring a PR firm is a strategic investment that can yield tremendous results for your startup. So don’t wait – accelerate your success with the expertise of a professional PR firm today.
1. Constant persistence and follow up
One huge aspect of PR is that it requires an extremely persistent person to do it. Journalists are not easy people to catch. Sometimes, in fact, a lot of times whether your idea is brilliant or not, they just won’t be pressed for your story because they likely have many other stories to break.
It therefore needs you to keep following up especially if the prospects are positive. Additionally, for the journalists that just never get back to you at all, you should let those go. However, you need to find others to pitch your story. You don’t stop just because two or three journalists refused to publish your story or just never got back to you.
Solution: PR experts and PR firms take this responsibility out of your table so that you can focus on building your business. They continuously follow up, get new journalists and keep pushing until they get a story out.
2. Believing too much of your own hype
Ego can kill a business very fast. At Pressfarm we have worked with hundreds of startups in the last 5 years and we see everyday how absorbed a founder can be in his own product or service that he will not take any advice.
When it comes to public relations, spending a lot of money on PR especially if you are utilising do-it-yourself (DIY) PR strategies can see you burning so much money because you are refusing to take another opinion about your company. Look, sometimes products/services suck. However, if you push PR so much on a product or service that sucks the joke is on you. The fact is your product is probably not so groundbreaking at all, but maybe with a few tweaks it could be.
Solution: PR experts will be honest with you. They will let you know that the groundbreaking product pitch to journalists won’t work because it is dishonest and borderline egotistic. Instead, they will propose the best story angle to follow if you would like to make your PR spending useful. A PR pro will help you see the difference between what your ego is saying a good story should be and what a good story actually is.
3. Time is limited
Startups face a huge challenge when it comes to time. From the founders to the team, no one really ever has time. When it comes to PR, founders usually want to go at it alone telling their stories and attempting to push the PR machine.
However, PR is structured in such a way that if you are not spending enough time doing it, you will see no fruits. Founders usually have the habit of stretching themselves too thin with many responsibilities; even those they are really bad at.
Solution: Let a PR firm take this responsibility away from you. They do it best, and they have all the time to fork out results and get your story published. Delegation is a tool that master entrepreneurs have used. They let go of things they are not good at, delegate, and focus on where they shine.
4. Thinking you are actually good at PR
It is so many people that think they are very good at PR and then end up failing and quitting fast in their execution of their own PR campaigns. Startup founders are really a big example in this.
Here is a fact; if you are just starting out in the PR field whether as a PR firm or as a startup hoping to do their own PR, it will take you several months to years for you to make mistakes, fail, unlearn, and relearn. You will need to slowly develop media relations. If you intend to get your launch featured then you might need to start working on the PR efforts way earlier. Sometimes months earlier.
Solution: To save your time and money, hire some PR specialists who have been in the game for several years and are ready with the contacts you need. They have worked in the industry for a while and will know what to do so you can avoid mistakes.
5. PR is not advertising
The confusion for most people is that they cannot differentiate between public relations and advertising. However, there is a huge difference.
Advertising is an effort to promote a product or service with the intentions of selling it. PR on the other hand is an effort towards building a brand’s credibility by sharing information about it within a story meant to raise awareness on the company’s visions and goals.
In summary, PR is focused on your brand while advertising is focused on the product. When combined together, an advertising campaign should be used to complement what has been achieved by the PR team.
Solution: PR experts will be able to know that advertising strategies are quite different from PR strategies. No journalist will publish a story geared towards selling a product. Journalists don’t publish marketing copies. They publish stories; and good stories can be told if guidance from a PR expert is present.
6. PR is not an occasional event
After working with hundreds of startups we have seen a huge number of them thinking that PR is that thing you do when launching your company, or a new product. This leads to them doing PR once every two years or only once when they launch.
However, PR gurus will have you know that PR campaigns and efforts have to be constant and consistent enough. Relationships with journalists are not built for a one-time event. If they were they would be pretty weak anyway.
Solution: Having a team of PR pros handling your PR campaigns will ensure you are a constant name in the news and online publications. The more your target market hears about you in credible publications, the more they get comfortable to trust you with their money. There are many stories in a year that startups can get in the news for. From sharing their research to new milestones, higher revenues, securing funding, new executive hires, new product features, etc. The stories could be endless. A PR expert will help you develop that healthy PR calendar.
7. Founders who don’t like the limelight
We are all different. While some founders like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg really like appearing in the papers and everywhere in the media, other founders like Larry Page of Google and Larry Ellison of Oracle are rarely seen speaking to journalists or the media unless they cannot avoid it.
If you are the kind of founder who avoids the media but would still like your brand to be in the news, you will need a PR team to help you out with that.
Solution: A PR team of experts will make sure your startup gets the press attention it deserves, tailoring your company’s message to the media as you would like it told.
These seems and feels like a lot of work. And yes, PR, like anything else, takes work, patience, persistence, and consistency to be successful. Luckily for startups, affordable PR firms like us at Pressfarm are there to help. We are a PR tool to help you find press contacts as well as a PR firm that affordably pitches stories to journalists to secure press coverage.