Have you ever wondered how stories surrounding companies, leaders, or business topics get covered by the news media? No matter how it gets communicated to you – via TV, social media, or online news – it’s likely that whatever news you’re consuming was strategically placed there by a public relations professional.

PR can be a powerful tool in the communication toolbox to establish credibility, build trust with and engage your audience, create brand recognition, and position your company and its leadership as a thought leader. But it can be tough to know when news really is newsworthy. And even then, where do you start? Here you’ll learn how to tell if your news is newsworthy and how to create a strategic and research-backed approach to getting coverage for your company.

The question then becomes whether your news is valuable and compelling enough that a broader audience (i.e. people outside of your organization) would find it interesting. Here are a few things to keep in mind when evaluating if your news is indeed newsworthy:

• Timeliness: Does it impact or reflect current events? For example, COVID-19 is a topic that continues to dominate the news cycle for obvious reasons. Can your news somehow be tied to COVID-19? If so, look for reporters and news outlets that have previously covered similar news stories or written COVID-19 articles for your industry.
• Location: Does it impact your local community? People that live and work in a specific area want to know more about things in that area, as it affects their daily life. Can you tie your topic to a local community? If so, targeting media outlets that cover that specific region would be a great way to secure interest.
• Human interest: People like learning about people. Is there a leader in your organization that has a relevant or relatable story to tell? If so, this person should have a unique perspective, quality or angle that brings value in some way to the audience you’re targeting.
• Impact: Will your topic have an influence on the audience you’re reaching? Will this topic matter to them?

When evaluating whether or not your company news is news and trying to generate PR for your small business, remember to think of it from the point of view of the audience or stakeholders you’re trying to inform. Of course YOU think your news is news, but will anyone else be interested?

This can easily get overlooked, especially when timely news or an announcement arises and you need to act quickly. Start by establishing clear objectives for your PR activities. What are you trying to do? Build brand awareness? Position your product in the market? Demonstrate credibility as a thought leader? Amplify an announcement? Secure interest from VCs? The clearer your goals, the easier you’ll be able to measure the results.

Once you identify the goals you want to accomplish through spreading the word about your company’s news, it’s time to shift focus to the audiences that will help you accomplish these goals. Who are you trying to reach? What spaces do they hang out in, and where do they go for information? What voices and sources do they trust

Take the time to think about how you identify your target audience. Is it geographically, by age or gender, or maybe by interest or industry? PR for small businesses often succeeds because of a strong focus on the exact right audiences for that piece of news. It’s critical to spend time getting to know and understanding the audience you’re targeting, as this will help you identify 1) how to reach them and 2) how to develop strong messages that will get them to act.

So once you know who that ideal audience is, how can you reach them? If your goal is thought leadership, consider bylined articles or speaking engagements. If your goal is to build brand awareness or position your product in the marketplace, pitch reporters to get earned media hits in publications or podcasts. If you have a corporate announcement you’re making, consider developing a press release and pitching it under embargo to prospective reporters.

After you’ve established the audience you want to reach, this is when you’ll create a targeted media list with outlets and reporters to contact. Research the outlets and reporters who speak to your target audience and have covered topics similar to yours in the past. Check out the list of tools below that can help do the research by identifying outlets, reporters, and contact information!

While earned media is the more traditional approach to PR, there are also other ways to obtain coverage. The PESO model (paid, earned, shared, and owned media) is a widely used strategy for thinking about segmenting your approach. This graphic by Spin Sucks, a professional development and training organization, explains the model well.

Now you’ve got your goals, audience, and strategy lined up. It’s time to outline the actual meat of the news you want to share. Think about the top three points you want to make, focusing on the critical pieces of information your audience should walk away with. Develop a key message document that lays them out with supporting, data-driven facts. You yourself what the research is telling you. What is your customer’s problem and how are you solving it?

After you know the most important points of your story, develop a pitch note that you can use and customize in your media outreach. The note (which you’ll send via email) should be brief and highlight the most interesting and valuable information. It’s important to customize each pitch note to the specific reporter you’re reaching out to.

How do you customize? Check out the recent articles they’ve written, their social media accounts, blogs, etc., and refer to something timely in your email. Think about a way that they could uniquely cover your story based on their style or what they typically cover. Don’t forget to offer the opportunity for the reporter to interview and speak with your spokesperson!

You’ve offered outlets the chance to speak to someone at your company, so what happens once they say yes? Hopefully, before you pitch, you have identified the relevant subject matter experts that will tell your story and share your messages. Get that spokesperson ready for potential interviews through a media prep session. Focus on best practices for delivering key messages and speaking with reporters. Remember to go through your key messages, and don’t hesitate to request that the outlet send the questions over ahead of time if there will be an interview involved.

Congratulations! You’ve laid all of the groundwork to execute effective PR for small businesses. Now it’s time to execute, and in order to do that, you’ll need some key supporting materials:

• One-pager for spokespeople with key messages.
• Media list of targeted reporters (including both traditional media, podcasts, and blogs). Use this larger list to pull from for targeted outreach around specific topics.
• Prepped third-party spokespeople to help tell your story from an outsider’s perspective.
• An editorial calendar outlining pitch ideas for milestones or announcements you’re planning for, as well as “evergreen” topics. Align those with any special events or themes you see happening within the outlets you’re seeking to pitch.
• A social media and blog cadence for owned content on your website to serve as a channel that supports your news.

Once you begin pitching, how do you know your strategy is effective? In order to measure the success of your PR campaign, you have to identify some metrics and figure out how to score them. The first step is to establish KPIs (key performance indicators). These can include coverage, reach, sentiment, and social media engagement, to name a few. PR efforts are well-known for being tricky to quantify and measure, but setting goals up front and what will be used to measure them will help

1.To research outlets and reporters, build media lists, monitor coverage, try

• Cision
• Muck Rack
• Agility PR

2. For media monitoring services, test out:

• Critical Mention
• Meltwater

3. To connect reporters with subject matter experts and sources, sign up for HARO.

PR, and more specifically media relations, is a critical part of any business’s communication and marketing strategy. And while the thought of pitching the media might seem daunting, the above tips can help guide the process. Just remember, it’s important to evaluate your news to ensure it’s of interest to the people you’re trying to reach!

Having a coordinated marketing plan is critical as a foundation you can use to build on with a PR strategy. For help creating and executing your 2021 marketing strategy, download our workbook

As we learned in 2020, what worked before isn’t always going to be what continues to drive results. Modern marketing was flipped on its head when COVID-19 swept the world last year. As the months have gone on, we have learned to pivot where we need to, lean in where we can, and identify what strategies and tactics are still working, along with what needs a fresh approach. So now that a brand new year is here, what should you keep doing and what should you change?

We can’t predict the future, but we can use data, research, and lots of experience with our clients to tell you what marketing strategies to try in 2021.

Many businesses don’t take the time to understand their target audience’s true needs, and how their solution uniquely solves the problem their customers have. Competition is stiff, and digital messaging is flooding every channel. Break out of the echo chamber and get your audience to listen to you by narrowing your messaging to focus on exactly how you’re different. But be careful not to make it all about you. That uniqueness should be highlighted in a way that puts your customer in the spotlight, not your brand.

Some of you might be surprised to see this subject on a list of marketing strategies to try in 2021, but we assure you that email is not dead. Lots of businesses spent way too much of their time focusing on social media followers and not nearly enough on the people who have already said they want to receive content straight into their inbox.

Social media is great for generating brand awareness and connecting with people, but you will never own it. Mark Zuckerberg owns Facebook and can change the algorithm with a snap of his fingers, plummeting your organic reach. But email? That you own, and you can guarantee when you hit that send button, your message will go straight to a group of people who want to hear from you.

Content marketing is powerful when you do it right, and most growing businesses don’t. Without research, data, a concrete plan, solid copywriting, and a way to get your message to the right people, you’re just shouting into the abyss. Focus your efforts in the right places and you can establish yourself as a thought leader, build trust, and attract an audience who is ready to buy from you.

Search engine optimization (SEO) may seem intimidating, but it is worth the effort to build into your content strategy. There are many, many techniques to improve your SEO, and they can be pretty technical (we try to simplify it some here). However, the main thing to keep in mind is that you should be creating content for real humans with consideration for search engines, not the other way around.

Google is leaning harder than ever into highlighting local businesses when people are searching for something online. You need to claim your company listing on Google My Business and spend some time updating your profile, requesting, and responding to reviews. Your online brand reputation is critical and will be even more so in a post-COVID world. Plus, customer reviews can actually impact your local SEO, because Google likes when you leverage their platform.

Yes, we did just tell you to pay more attention to your email list than to social media, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a strong social plan in place when nailing down your marketing strategies for 2021. The key here is to work smarter, not harder. Embed your social media strategy into your overall content strategy. Repurpose blogs and email content by pulling out quotes, breaking down the content, and turning your articles into video or graphic series. In 2021 your social media content is going to work even harder for you because Google is starting to index social content —so get to work on those SEO keywords when writing both website blogs and posting on LinkedIn.

A fresh marketing strategy can re-energize your business for a new year. With a little bit of work, you can reach new audiences, draw in more customers, and grow your company. These 5 marketing strategies to try in 2021 should be the foundation of your plan, but foundation alone isn’t enough — you have to consistently execute. Our Marketing Planning Like a Pro workbook will help you do just that.

Need a more comprehensive marketing course to help you get a more complete grasp on your 2021 marketing strategy? Enroll in &Marketing U to get all of the tools, education, and accountability you need to grow your business this year.

Investors seek viable businesses that have traction in a well-defined core market, or at least a strong beachhead. They are looking for loyal customers, a low customer churn, and a high rate of repeat purchase. These can be good indicators of a viable product or service. According to Entrepreneur magazine, a common factor among successful startups is that they are constantly seeking to satisfy their customers and the whole organization is aligned to this goal. So, the product or service needs to be designed with the customer’s satisfaction in mind.

Further, it is essential that investors see proof that there is a large enough potential market for the product or service. Very niche products will not meet most VC company screens unless the market has a clear and significant gap. Remember that given the inherent risks and the low success rates, investors are unlikely to take a huge risk and will only focus on opportunities with a high return – a goal of a 10x return is not uncommon.

The team, with a strong leader, is another top factor for investors and is a leading indicator that a business can succeed. The bottom line is that investors invest in businesses and the team.

Investors are looking for teams that are passionate and knowledgeable about their product, service and industry. They will be asking themselves the following types of questions of the leadership team and the CEO or Founder:

• Are they experienced, either as entrepreneurs or within the industries they aim to serve?
• Is the team fully committed?
• Are they willing to listen and take advice?
• Will they be able to find solutions or pivot if there are headwinds or roadblocks?
• Do they seem calm and competent under pressure?

23% of start-ups fail because they did not have the right team in place so as a startup, the people you surround yourself with are critical.

Developing a reasonably detailed business plan, at a minimum of three years, is an essential part of what investors evaluate. This plan should include:

• An overview of the product or service with clearly articulated key differentiators as well as the major target prospect groups. Identify the target’s pain points and articulate how the business solves them.
• The plan to expand the organization, add marketing and selling capability, and improve the product or service (development, engineering, etc).
• A clear outline of the market, competitors and the potential opportunity (both short term and long term).
• An organization overview with key employees and any key relationships & partners, including both existing and future possibilities.
• A financial forecast which uses existing trends and educated predictions and clear assumptions to show the projections of revenues, operating costs, cash flow, and the bottom line.
• A summary identifying four to six main reasons why this business is an attractive investment.

Investors, particularly venture capitalists (VCs), are looking for companies that fit their investment philosophy and focus on areas where they have expertise. This means they’re looking for businesses where they can add strategic value. This benefits the companies they back as investors since they can concentrate their mentorship and advice to industries where they have deep experience. Many investor groups build up their know-how and expertise in certain market verticals by engaging people with senior level experience in those verticals.

A final key element of the investment is the terms. Startups need to clearly communicate the following:

• Overall valuation of the company, and on what basis that valuation was established.
• The amount of funding being raised and, if applicable, the sources of those funds.
• The type of funding (equity, debt, convertible debt, etc) and any associated dynamics (timelines, future expected rounds, etc)
• Use of funds, which would likely include expanding the organization, adding marketing and selling capability, furthering product development, or similar examples.

Many startups fail in at least one of these areas, or don’t present their investment terms clearly.

Based on decades of experience meeting entrepreneurs and reviewing investor presentations, these six areas continue to be what startups need most. In almost every initial meeting, a startup fails to meet at least one of these criteria, and almost immediately disqualify themselves. Entrepreneurs seeking funds should remember one key factor summarized well by Paul Graham, Founder of Y Combinator: “Investors are pinched between two fears: fear of investing in startups that fizzle, and fear of missing out on startups that take off.”

If you are in the process of raising capital or seeking an exit in the future, fill out the form below and one of us will be happy to assist you through a complimentary consultation

Additionally, if your startup is in need of a freshly enhanced website before you begin seeking investors, download our go live checklist to find out exactly what you need to put in place.