WHITE PAPER
PR STRATEGY BEYOND THE SERIES A FUNDING ROUND
White Paper PR Strategy Beyond the Series A Funding Round
Introduction Clear and Controlled Messaging
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Continue the Momentum
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Utilize Your Venture Capital Partners and Other Stakeholders
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Create the Conversation – Participate in Industry Conferences
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Micronews Your Results 14 Consistency Is the Key 16
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INTRODUCTION
White Paper PR Strategy Beyond the Series A Funding Round
Announcing a Series A funding round is an exciting time for a startup. News of your funding will appear in media outlets like TechCrunch, VentureBeat and VentureWire and will make you feel like you’re taking over the world! The Series A announcement will be one of the best times to catch media attention, but the real goal is to turn your successful launch into a sustained voice. The attention generated from Series A news can be the launching pad for consistent media coverage if a plan is put into place to ensure your company lasts beyond the initial 15 minutes of fame. When executed correctly, funding buzz provides an opportunity for your company to establish thought leadership and get on the media’s radar for future opportunities.
Before diving into strategy, time for a quick reality check. Research from CBI Insights shows that “More than half of early-stage startups die before they raise $1 million, 70 percent die before raising $5 million. Most dead companies raised $11.3 million on average, with a median of $1.3 million. On average, startups will last 20 months after their last funding round,” via VentureBeat. Bottom-line, funding doesn’t guarantee success. While internal stakeholders may back a company’s vision and product, it’s important to get outsiders – industry peers, external influencers, potential customers – involved in your overall media strategy. You can’t expect the buzz generated from a Series A announcement to make you interesting to the media. Instead, focus on creating your voice and reaching the audiences that matter most.
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CLEAR AND CONTROLLED MESSAGING
White Paper PR Strategy Beyond the Series A Funding Round
Unfortunately, funding news is shallow. While your team likely has infinite differentiating messages, pick one overarching theme and drive it home. Pick a message that is broad enough to encapsulate the larger company vision while priming the media for more news to come, like a product launch or partnership. Funding news creates an opportunity to tease out interest for future announcements. Along with a singular message, it is important for all executives – and even all employees and stakeholders – to designate a company spokesperson and make it clear that they are the only ones allowed to speak with media, analysts, etc. This person will be the face of the company so it is important that the spokesperson be personable, knowledgeable and can be trusted to stick to the key message in interviews. Nevertheless, be sure to arm your employees with a quick snapshot of the company vision. You never know whom you might meet at a party or networking event, and it’s important that each person employed by the company knows how to talk about its mission and product offerings. One way to ensure consistent messaging is through an internal media frequently asked questions document (FAQ). The FAQ should help spokespeople prepare for hard and uncomfortable questions and allow them to navigate back to the key message. Anything said in an interview can end up as a quote, so be sure that anything quotable furthers the company’s overarching message. Be sure to take the time to identify your company’s vulnerabilities and the appropriate responses in the FAQ. For example, some companies have access to personal information (sometimes unbeknownst to the user), which leaves them open to privacy issues – any company with access to potentially sensitive customer information should have a strong response ready should the issue come up.
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CONTINUE THE MOMENTUM
White Paper PR Strategy Beyond the Series A Funding Round
It takes work and planning to keep the news momentum going after the Series A funding announcement. The worst thing a startup can do after the Series A is to go silent. Don’t waste the buzz stemming from the funding announcement! Keep conversations open with reporters and analysts to stay top of mind. First, identify the top media and analyst targets that you care most about. While you will definitely speak with those outside your targeted list, this will give you a good idea of how to position the company and the type of news you release in order to gain coverage. Second, be intentional in establishing a news pipeline. Whether it be customers, partners, research or product-related updates, establish a cadence of news. At the very least, this demonstrates validation to media, analysts and potential customers that the company is healthy and progressing as a maturing company should be. You will also need to develop a thought leadership approach to be carried out via rapid response, proactive pitching and contributed content. The funding announcement has done a lot to raise the profile of your primary spokesperson, and now it's time to build on that while at the same time filling out your bench with experts. Has the CEO primarily been the main voice for the company? Find a topic that the CTO can own or put a star engineer in the spotlight. Simply put, thought leadership is about proving your company’s expertise on subjects that relate to the solutions or services the company is providing or the industry(ies) it is serving. While thought leadership rarely beats the drum of the company or product directly, it often reaches a much greater audience and builds more of an interest in the company than a product or company announcement. At a high-level, consider this four-step process in identifying thought leadership topics:
1) Identify your spokesperson or company’s unique area of expertise. 2) Decide on your unique point of view within that subject - the more controversial or unconventional the better. 3) Decide what behaviors you want to change as a result of your thought leadership campaign. For example, what do you want people to think or do as a result of hearing your point of view? Here’s a tip – the action can’t be to go out and buy the company’s product or service! 4) Why does this point of view matter? Think about how the world will be a better place if people changed their behavior in the way you envision.
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UTILIZE YOUR VENTURE CAPITAL (VC) PARTNERS AND OTHER STAKEHOLDERS
White Paper PR Strategy Beyond the Series A Funding Round
Use your VC to your PR advantage. Work with them on a byline article to coincide with the funding launch (or soon thereafter) to pitch to either TechCrunch or VentureBeat. Those publications are more likely to accept general industry pieces from VCs (who have multiple investments across a number of technology segments) as they are perceived as more likely to be vendor-neutral and independent. In the early days of a company, customer references will be hard to come by, but an outspoken VC can provide the sort of validation that top-tier publications require to write stories.
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CREATE THE CONVERSATION– PARTICIPATE IN INDUSTRY CONFERENCES
White Paper PR Strategy Beyond the Series A Funding Round
Industry conferences not only introduce you to potential customers and partners, but can be well attended by media. Keynotes and speaking presentations set the news agenda for the week of the conference, and you’d be hard pressed to find a tech publication not covering the announcements coming out of a large industry event. Ensuring that your voice is not lost in the crowd can be tricky. With big conferences such as Dreamforce, Strata, RSA, and Black Hat, there are thousands of entrants every year, all touting their unique company vision and message. Oftentimes, the best approach to gaining traction is via creative collaboration with your VCs, partners, and / or customers. This can take the form of a panel discussing the emerging trends within your industry, or some of the unique technology powering your company’s vision or message. Invite key media to attend the session, and make sure you reiterate your speaking points in any briefings you’ve scheduled while at the show.
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MICRONEWS YOUR RESULTS
White Paper PR Strategy Beyond the Series A Funding Round
When you get a good piece of media coverage or post an insightful blog to the company website, micronews it to extend its shelf-life. Micronewsing is posting interesting, sharable content to news aggregation sites (like DZone, Reddit, Hacker News) as well as social media channels like Twitter and relevant LinkedIn groups. Word of caution – do not spam. Make sure the content that is micronewsed is useful to the reader and not just a self-serving company advertisement. If you do post promotional content, you‘re likely to be publicly chastised or even blacklisted from some outlets.
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CONSISTENCY IS KEY
White Paper PR Strategy Beyond the Series A Funding Round
The Series A announcement is just the beginning. Ensuring that the initial buzz is sustained takes consistency. The message should evolve, not change. That takes discipline. Only through strategic planning coupled with a strong executing team can you achieve a consistent share of voice in the media that continues to increase over time. Develop your messaging, equip your spokespeople, identify your targets, create your news pipeline, develop a strong thought leadership initiative and be credible, smart and human. Then hit it – hard.
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