New Startup? Stop Obsessing Over Press
New Startup? Stop Obsessing Over Press
When Fishing For Press Mentions Is A Waste Of You Startup’s Time, Money & Efforts
Let me be completely honest with you, I don’t think fishing for press is a strategy worth spending any time on if you’re a small business.
If you’re currently in rapid build mode and you’re focused on wrangling press mentions for your small business, I recommend pumping the breaks.
And when I mean press, I’m talking about the type of press that you’d be excited to call your mom about — the mainstream magazines and news outlets.
My definition of press does not include blogs and podcasts — those are actually very useful platforms to leverage if you’re a small business and that you should pursue 1000%.
Before I dive in here, a disclaimer: I’m not a public relations professional. I’m just a startup founder who has gone down the press path multiple times throughout my career via my own efforts and by hiring public relations firms.
My startups have been featured in Forbes in the US and South Korea, ELLE Magazine, People Magazine, Mashable, Global Citizen, and much more.
Although I think there are cool bragging rights that you can gain when you do get a notable press mention, I can’t say that receiving press for my startups has ever drastically changed the trajectory of the business. It has actually been more of a blip, a small not very noticeable change.
The act of fishing for press is pretty laborious — you have to track down, contact, and engage journalists and then do that 50+ more times until you get even 1 solid yes. If you hire a PR firm, you’re looking at a high 4-figure or 5 figure retainer every month for their services.
For that amount of work, I’d expect that the ROI from that effort would far exceed the time or money I put into it in order to make it worth it. That hasn’t been the case for me.
During great press mentions, we received a lot of eyes and a spike in traffic, but we didn’t see a noticeable spike in sales, which is the more important metric.
A lot of attention doesn’t always translate into a lot of sales conversions.
When It Works
Here’s when engaging press does work — when you do it consistently.
Similar to any form of content marketing, press doesn’t do much unless you’re constantly popping up everywhere.
You have to have a string of press outlets talking about you during similar times, or you need to constantly inject yourself into general conversations related to your industry.
To accomplish this, you need to be continuously fostering relationships with journalists who want to write about you and craft really enticing press pitches for them. And sorry to burst your ego, but when you’re first starting out and in build mode, there really isn’t going to be much about your business that’s going to be interesting to write about yet.
If you’re a startup founder, attempting this all yourself is pretty exhausting on top of the other to do’s that you have. Therefore, accomplishing this usually requires you to hire a PR firm that has the time and existing relationships to execute on this.
What You’re Better Off Doing
If you don’t have the resources to consistently pursue press opportunities, I think that you have plenty of other great alternatives.
You’re much better off building your own audience and fortifying the effectiveness of your current marketing platforms.
When you focus on creating a brand and marketing plan that commands attention and engagement, you don’t really have a need to tap into the network of a press outlet.
For the times when you need an external injection to boost your marketing efforts now and then, leveraging guest blogging, guest podcasting, and influencer marketing are great, if not better alternatives because they’re super targeted and speak to your niche.
Even if you do have the resources to pursue press opportunities, I think that you should try it out for 3 months and gauge if it has any direct ROI for you.
Like any marketing experiment, drop it if it’s clear that it’s just a vanity play rather than one that directly feeds into your sales pipeline.
Are you selling to the max or leaving money at the table for your business? Take my 5 Day Sales Challenge to find out.