• Startup Guide: How to Crush Your First Media Interview

    Startup Guide: How to Crush Your First Media Interview

    As a startup founder, you’ve poured blood, sweat, tears and capital into your company. You’ve invested in the right talent, built a differentiated product or service, acquired customers and maybe raised some funding, and it’s time to launch your startup into the public eye.

    Media coverage is one of the most cost-effective ways to generate brand awareness for your startup at launch. The right journalists can help validate your idea, build authority for you and your company, and attract the attention of new customers and investors.

    But getting visibility for your work isn’t easy. The number of U.S. startups has grown for the third year in a row, with 310 out of every 100,000 adults becoming new entrepreneurs in a given month, according to the 2017 Kauffman Index of Startup Activity.

    It’s a crowded market. So, when you do land a coveted media interview, you want to crush it.

    How should you prepare? What questions should you anticipate, and how do you maintain the relationship? Here’s your crash course.

    How Should You Prepare?

    When preparing for a media interview, always start with your messaging. Know your mission and vision statements, and be able to articulate what you do in brief, plain language.

    Working with the media for a living, we can’t emphasize enough how important it is to avoid jargon (see our “Startup Guide: How to Talk About Your Tech”). And if you can’t explain what you do in 10 to 30 seconds, go back to the press when you can.

    Once you have your elevator pitch down, turn to key messages. Every media interview is a chance to drive core messaging about your company, industry and view for the future. Identify two or three key points, and relevant stories to support them.

    Remember, plan a media interview. Never wing it.

    There are other simple dos and don’ts to be aware of before meeting with a journalist. The right PR firm can advise you of any reporter-specific prep, but generally:

    Dos

    • Turn off your cell phone or email
    • Speak slowly and clearly
    • Be concise and repeat key messages
    • Encourage a two-way conversation

    Don’ts

    • Don’t be late (five minutes early is best)
    • Don’t say “no comment” or go “off the record”
    • Don’t lie or mislead
    • Don’t talk negatively about competitors

    As a final step, create an internal FAQ to prepare for questions a journalist may ask. Here are a few ideas to get you started.

     

    What Questions Should You Anticipate?

    With both journalists and investors in our network, we see striking similarities between pitch decks and what startups present to the media. Media want to know about the problem you solve, your company and team, the market, and evidence of your traction:

    • What does your company do? (did we mention brief, plain language?)
    • Who are your competitors, and how are you different?
    • When was the company founded?
    • Where is your office(s), and how many employees do you have?
    • Can you name specific customers or partners?
    • How do you price your product or service?
    • Have you raised any funding, and can you disclose the amount or investors?
    • What are next steps for your company?

    Inherent in all of of this are statistics. The more numbers you can reveal, the better, including total revenue or revenue growth, funding, headcount, number of customers, etc.

    Add to the list tough questions about your brand. Are you in an exceptionally crowded space where a journalist will question your differentiation? Are there security and privacy issues surrounding your product or service? Anticipate and address these questions head on, and you’ll fare well with media.

     

    How Do You Maintain the Relationship?

    When all goes well, your first media interview is only the beginning. Send the journalist a thank you with links to relevant resources, and keep him or her apprised of future news.

    Of course, not everything is news. For more on that, check out, “What Really Counts As News” from Matter account manager and fellow startup advocate, Vanessa Boynton.

    When it comes to PR, the most important relationships you can develop are with media contacts. Think about them with just as much care as you would your customers.

    Need a PR firm that lives and breathes media relations? Give us a call.

    McKenzie Mayer’s ‘Startup Guide’ is an ongoing series on the Matter blog. Designed for those building a business or just building their brand, each post is a crash course in startup communications. Ready to get started?

    Matter

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  • Startup Guide: How To Create a Customer PR Program

    Startup Guide: How To Create a Customer PR Program

    The next time you pick up a copy of STORES or Entrepreneur Magazine, notice how many stories follow a case study format. A major retailer wants to improve customer experience and invests in a chatbot to help shoppers navigate their store. A small business wants to simplify transactions at the point of sale and invests in a tablet point-of-sale application for checkout.

    Joint PR projects, like case studies, are a great way to get press as a startup, because they demonstrate market demand for your product or service. Think about it. What’s more powerful: talking about how awesome you are, or having a customer do it for you?

    Better yet, joint PR projects benefit startups and their customers. Both win recognition for their technology and initiatives, promote their vision for the industry, improve the visibility of their executives, and increase their brand awareness. We’ve even seen these interactions lead to better customer retention, and more cross-sell and upsell opportunities.

    What makes a good PR candidate? What are the options for joint PR? And how do you “make the ask” to get customers involved? Here’s your crash course.

     

    What Makes a Good PR candidate?

    In a perfect world, a startup could involve all of its customers in PR. But in reality, corporate policy and competitive issues often determine which customers are a fit – and which won’t touch PR with a 10-foot pole.

    First, look for these warning signs:

    • A corporate policy that prohibits mention of technology partners
    • Required review of copy before publication, which journalists typically cannot guarantee
    • Competitive issues that limit the topics of discussion
    • A technical problem with your product or service (like an open support ticket)
    • A signed non-disclosure agreement (NDA) with your company

    Then, look for the signs of a great PR candidate:

    • A happy customer
    • A champion who will help you secure internal approvals
    • Tangible, quantitative results from using your product or service
    • Permission to speak publicly about your partnership

     

    What are the Options?

    Once you have a list of candidates, it’s time to consider their options. Case studies are great, but they’re just one of many ways to involve customers in PR. The key is presenting options for every comfort level: from a simple logo on your website, to a joint speaking engagement at your industry’s largest tradeshow.

    Here are some of the options we present to clients when designing a customer program:

    • Logo on the website
    • Testimonial or case study on the website
    • Joint press release
    • Joint interview with the press
    • Joint speaking engagement or award

    You know your customer’s time is valuable, so when presenting these options, be clear about the process, time and effort involved. A testimonial may require a brief call and 20-30 minutes to review or approve a quote, while a press interview may require a longer prep call and 30-40 minutes with a reporter.


    How Do You “Make the Ask”?

    This is the number one question we get from clients implementing a customer program, and rightfully so. Sales and customer success teams are the gatekeepers. If they don’t feel supported in introducing PR to their customers, there is no customer program.

    To start, ask yourself, “what’s in it for the customer?” Free publicity is an easy sell for smaller customers and emerging brands, but not so much for Fortune 500 customers.

    For your larger customers, joint PR can be an opportunity to establish themselves as thought leaders in a specific industry. Do they want to be known for embracing digital transformation? Are they eager to show off a new research facility where your technology is being used?

    Incentives are also helpful in securing customer participation in PR. Consider offering a product or service discount, setting up an awards program for customers or even submitting customers for external awards, recognizing their progressive thinking.

    Once you’ve identified the benefit, you can “make the ask” in several ways:

    • Welcome letter. Create a letter welcoming new customers. Use this letter to introduce the customer program and build their interest in participating in the future.
    • Email template. Create email templates for sales and customer success teams. Use these templates to introduce the customer program or specific opportunities, like a video testimonial or speaking engagement.
    • Case study library. Collect customer case studies or testimonials on your website. Use this library to reassure customers who need an example before committing.
    • Email intro. To your PR team. We’ll take it from there.

     

    Want to learn more about customer programs? You know where to find us.

     

    Matter

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  • Startup Guide: How to Talk About Your Tech

    Startup Guide: How to Talk About Your Tech

    After months of iteration, you’ve built a new technology. Your voice assistant reads today’s headlines. Or your deep learning platform returns new techniques for disease management from thousands of medical journals. Or your disk storage hardware archives directly to Amazon’s public cloud.

    Now, how do you talk about it?

    Describing the mission and vision of a product or service is a challenge for all companies. But the task is particularly tall in the tech industry, where complex systems and specialized language make “About Us” pages look like collections of ones and zeros.

    Who is your audience? How do you translate your tech and present it in an impactful, relatable way? Here’s your crash course:

    Who is Your Audience?

    If I were writing for an audience in Berlin, würde Ich diesen Blog auf Deutsch schreiben (I would write this blog in German).

    The same goes for tech: define your audience, then translate your tech accordingly.

    Industry analysts report on specific vertical markets. Identify the right analyst for you and review their policy for confidential information, often a written or verbal Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA). Then, focus on the technical details of your product or service and how it compares to competitors. Examples: Gartner, Forrester, International Data Corporation (IDC).

    Industry trade press cover specific vertical markets with an emphasis on case studies. Identify the right trade editor for you and review their editorial guidelines, often posted on the website. Then, focus on the applications of your product or service, and how partners and customers use it in the real world. Examples: Adweek, IndustryWeek, Nation’s Restaurant News.

    National press cover the intersection of business, technology and society. Identify the right writer for you and review their column carefully. Then, focus on how your product or service speaks to a larger trend, and use data to show political, economic or socio-cultural impact. Examples: Business Insider, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal.

    No matter the audience, ditch the jargon. When in doubt, send the copy to someone outside your industry. We sell platform-agnostic retail CRM software is not as clear as you think.

    Also, if you haven’t discovered the Sideways Dictionary from Google’s Jigsaw incubator and the Washington Post, check it out. The site uses analogies and metaphors to decrypt tech terms.

    How Do You Present Your Tech?

    “Show, don’t tell” is the mark of expert storyteller and the secret sauce for talking deep tech. While many entrepreneurs immediately think, “slide deck,” there are several other formats to consider.

    • Case Study. Often the best people to talk about your tech are the ones who use it. Enlist a customer or partner for a testimonial or media interview to describe their pain and present your solution.
    • Survey or Report. Matter Account Manager Vanessa Boynton recently shared on LinkedIn: “Your ideas, predictions and aspirations mean nothing without real experiences, facts and figures backing them up.” Original research is a powerful way to show, not tell, the need for your technology in the market.
    • Infographic. You’ve heard a picture is worth a thousand words, and it’s true for complex tech. Use an infographic to show the inner workings of your artificial intelligence engine. Then, consider turning it into a fully animated video, social media images and other shareable, visual content.
    • Video. Would you rather read about a technology or watch a video? Research by Cisco and others says the latter. Miles Bergstrom, Matter video production coordinator, has your crash course on creating a killer branded video.

     

    Ready to talk tech? Let’s nerd out.

    Matter

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  • Startup Guide: How to Create Quick, Killer Content

    Startup Guide: How to Create Quick, Killer Content

    Shrinking newsrooms and the rise of Medium, LinkedIn Pulse, and contributor networks are making content an essential part of a company’s visibility in the media. Backed by an SEO strategy, company blogs, op-eds, landing page content and downloadable assets are now powerful drivers of lead-gen and brand awareness.

    But where does content come from? This is an existential question for all organizations, but especially for early stage startups who may only have a founder or two, an engineering team and a salesperson fully dedicated to growth.

    Creating quick, killer content is not about hiring armies of journalism interns. It’s about using the resources you have in smart ways.

    What should you write about? Who should write it? And how do you speed up the process? Here’s your crash course:

    What Should You Write About?

    Ask yourself this, and you’ll be staring at a blinking cursor for six hours.

    Instead, ask yourself, “What questions do my customers have?” Every business exists to serve customers. Customer feedback guides the products you build, the services you offer and the brand you present to the market. Let customers guide your content, too.

    Next, brainstorm a list of headline ideas. Not 5 or 10, but 100 if you can. Consider the questions customers might have about your product or service, the underlying technology, your company culture, the market you serve and how you stack up against competitors.

    Time to pick your favorites, and there are two rules of thumb. Rule number one, think ‘blue ocean.’ I introduced this concept in my last blog about mission and vision statements as a topic or style, uniquely yours to claim and conquer.

    A great resource on blue ocean strategy is a blog by CoSchedule’s CEO, Garrett Moon. In his words, your customers ask questions, and you should be the best answer on the Internet.

    Rule number two, follow the 80/20 rule: 80 percent objective, thought-leadership content that answers key audience questions, and 20 percent focused on product offerings. Yes, your company is awesome. But yes, resist the urge to write only about how awesome you are.

    Finally, structure your favorite headlines into a content calendar. Plan at least 2-4 weeks ahead, and assign topics to various authors. Speaking of…

    Who Should Write It?

    The answer is everyone. No one person in a startup has the bandwidth to handle content.

    But your founder(s) could write a state-of-the-industry piece. Your engineering team could explore what makes a great developer in the retail tech space. And your sales team could identify frequent phrases or questions from prospects and address them in a Q&A.

    Creating quick, killer content as a startup is about assembling a strikeforce. Members have the opportunity to build not only the company brand, but to leverage content on channels like Medium and Linkedin to build their own personal brands as well.

    How to Speed Up the Process

    Lightning round: here’s how to turn your small, seed stage team into a content generation machine:

    • Create top 10 lists. Frequent customer questions, favorite Netflix shows, most inspiring CEOs and most hated salad places all work great here.
    • Expand on or react to recent news. Keep reactions positive, use proper attribution and don’t be afraid to share your post with the original author.
    • Leverage User Generated Content (UGC). Also lovingly referred to as ‘OPC’: other people’s content. Share content from your executives, employees, board members, investors and other stakeholders. Again, use proper attribution.
    • Repurpose content. Think of each piece of content as a campaign. Your long-form exploration of artificial intelligence could easily become a three-part blog series. Audio from a keynote presentation could find new life as a blog Q&A, a Slideshare deck, social posts, an email newsletter, a downloadable eBook or a webinar.

    And when you’re ready, turn existing content into engaging visuals with these tips from one of Matter’s designers, Matt Brown.

    Imagine the staggering amount of new sales and marketing collateral you’d have.

    Creating quick, killer content as a startup is possible. Let the customer drive your content vision. Innovate and iterate until you’ve created content that is uniquely our own. And give us a call to learn how content makes PR more powerful.

    Matter

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