When to Get PR for Your Startup

Speaker 0: speaking of brand awareness, many publicists feel you should be using pr early on. when is a good time for startups to invest in public relations? should you have some traction first, or can b r pr help build traction or brand awareness?

Speaker 1: can i jump in this?

Speaker 2: sure.

Speaker 1: so one of the comp early companies that i worked with was, solaris inspection. a, it was actually, initially, a family cleaning company that was a family based company. this is before covid. and, one of the things that they struggled with was they're already in commercial. their family company was already in all the commercial companies, but they wanted to get in hospitals, specifically hospitals in us. because what had happened was in canada, because we're a public health care system, no one was really ready to invest in uv disinfection. now uv disinfection is very hot, but this is before covid. keep that in mind. and at that time, the only thing that really helped was actually doing pr and then pulling some articles and then sharing that with these, companies in us and saying, hey. look. we got featured in this. we got featured in that. that was the only way that we could get their attention to get a meeting in the first place with the distributors. so i think it really depends on, like, which market you're trying to enter and if you want, you know it not just for because before people used to do pr for, like, oh, you know, as featured in forbes or something like that. but for a company like this where they're trying to get into a very, like, you know, much more barriers and, like, how to do it and all that. like, for them, that was a great way to do it. and we did it just by, like, going on doing it very grunt work. like, you know, we had the vas go in, get the edit like, different, different article writers and just, you know, people who wrote about cleaning, who wrote about hospital cleaning, environmental cleaning, and then literally just outreach to them and pitch them an idea and, you know, shared a little video and all that. it's very much a ground grunt work. so it can be done without investing, like, in a whole agency, but i thought that's something that i just wanted to quickly share because it just popped up in my head. and it's very related to a canadian company trying to get into us. daniel?

Speaker 3: yeah. i think we need to be careful when it comes to spending money on pr early on because it is a slow build. right? there's that time of pitching and preparing. and even if you do spend time pitching to the right people and they do check out your current website, your current social, your current traction, if they don't see something there that's quote, unquote newsworthy, you've wasted that time, you know, and money reaching out to them. so, i would recommend, of course, keeping pr, something that you wanna consider, especially if it's a consumer, consumer friendly product, right, where you need to reach the masses. but pr isn't gonna help you if you have a very niche product, right, a very niche service. you're better off getting featured or contributing an article to some niche industry publication, let's say, than, you know, being on, i don't know, toronto star or a global mail or

Speaker 2: something. yeah. i mean, i think to daniel's point, you know, pr is a very hard game to play and it can be very expensive if you hire an agency and it's not something i would recommend for early stage companies and it's hard to break through. the media landscape has shrunk. the number of companies battling for attention has grown. so there's a there's a supply and demand issue here, and you've gotta have a good story to tell. now the easiest story for startups to tell is when they raise money. because it's a benchmark, they can wave the flag. but, like, i'm working with a client right now and their sales are super hot. they are selling like hotcakes. it's an amazing they have an ai product that just meets a pinpoint, but i'm hesitant about doing pr right now because they don't have a story to tell. simply saying our product is really popular and people wanna buy it is not a story. because the media reporters are looking for stories whether they're the stories are really positive or different or bad. but unless you got a good story to tell, and you got a budget, i would stay away from hiring an agency, at least at least until you've got more momentum.

Speaker 4: so my perspective on that is actually slightly different in the fact that there's many there's many different ways to do pr. it's not always just about dealing with the media. that is one part of it, but there's a whole world of pr opportunities within the influencer marketplace that a lot of people tend to sleep on, especially when it comes to b two c products. b two b, not so much because the it's not too many businesses buy something because an influencer suggested it. but for the consumer products, that actually can be very, very lucrative for you when you're talking about influencers and and aligning yourself with the right influencer. i mean, you think about just the fact of, you know, you guys don't i'm probably all old enough to remember oprah winfrey and her favorite things. you get your product on her favorite things list, and you are pretty much set. right? and she's not necessarily a media outlet. i mean, well, actually, she maybe is, but, i mean but you understand the point that i'm trying to make here, though. like, sometimes getting with the right influences and the right opportunities, that could be part of your whole pr, strategy as well. so it's not just about trying to get into the news articles.

Speaker 0: and i take a step back and say, when you say invest in public relations, there's two things you can invest, time and money. and as an early stage startup, you can invest time more readily than you can invest money. and if you wanna take a look at some of the things you can do to get pr for yourself by investing time, go take a look at emily o'brien and come back snacks and everything that she does. donating at holiday season. go at the hospitals or homeless shelters, and the media just shows up. right? you do the things where they're writing stories about you. it has nothing to do with your product or service or whatever, and it's just your time and getting out there and being public about what you're doing. but she does amazing things and gets on the paper and the news and the podcast and on interviews everywhere. just follow her and you'll see all the stuff, and you'll get all sorts of ideas.