Can PR Drive Lead Gen for Tech Startups? – Contrary to popular belief, the field of public relations is not concerned only with getting stories of companies published in top magazines – it is way beyond that. PR encompasses promotional activities and outcomes concerned with brand awareness, solid internal and external relationships, positive image building, and management throughout the business lifecycle.
When it comes to technology startups, things take an even more specific turn. The speeding advancements in technology are impacting every walk of the customer’s personal and professional life, a sense of relevance that tech startups can leverage for lead generation.
How? The answer lies in effective public relations.
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Technology PR for Startups
Public relations refer to the art and science of creating and promoting favourable relationships with the public consistently. And yet, most startups delve into its efforts and benefits only during the launch periods or until they have found one mention in the publication of their choice.
The most important fact that they miss is that the importance and impact of PR lie in the customer’s reaction to their story, product, service, or brand, and not in the publication’s or investor’s. This also means that PR cannot be a one-day fiasco – it must be consistent, repetitive, yet fresh each time.
Our renowned public relations agency in New York tweaks the principles and goals of effective public relations to suit the tech start-up in question, favoured by their target audience. This involves disseminating a positive reputation for the emerging business among technology magazines, journalists, and social media circles.
Tech startups can rely on PR services to overcome specific challenges, such as communication innovation, attracting the best talents, or even securing investments and awards as a recognition of their work.
But the more important question is, can PR drive lead generation for them? Yes, they can.
Generating Leads with PR for Tech Startups
At its core, PR is all about influencing the audience. The umbrella term encompasses content marketing, influencer marketing, and other forms of digital communications today. This is what makes it a great tool for augmenting lead generation with external prospects while maintaining existing customer loyalties.
Getting Featured and Getting Seen
PR is much more than press releases and stories for newspapers and channels alone. Especially when it comes to a tech startup, nothing is more relevant than getting published in targeted vertical publications for your market.
You should pitch your stories to top tech magazines in your area of service. Remember that there is a niche publication for just about everything today – all you need is a little bit of digging. Once you have enlisted the publications you want to target, try working out PR strategies for your content.
From an attractive press release about recent business development to a pathbreaking idea that you are working on to a general topic of interest that the readers might find interesting, there are a plethora of options to choose from. The focus should be one – amplifying your brand’s message, strengths, and offerings without being too in the face.
Prolonging a Hit, Managing a Flop
A great media hit may only come occasionally for a tech startup, which is why you need to leverage PR for making the most of it. An effective PR and communications strategy can help amplify the editorial coverage and earn you more leads.
For instance, you could publicize the media placement through various social media channels – recycling the piece can sometimes make it resonate better. You could also repurpose news items across your marketing collaterals, sales materials, and newsletters for it to catch more eyes.
A creative way of using PR for more impact is by displaying media placements at conferences, tech exhibitions, and trade shows to boost reputable endorsements for your product, services, and brand. Such small but significant repetitive steps not just augment visibility but also make customers remember you, ultimately influencing them into interacting directly with your brand.
Blending Digital and Traditional
Gone are the days when PR was meant only for the newspaper and TV. Digital and PR teams need to work side by side today for the most promising outcomes because tech customers have gone (almost entirely) online. For a tech start-up with no dedicated resources for digital and PR separately, you can take help from an experienced agency well versed in public relations across the web.
A well-equipped PR agency will offer you comprehensive services including paid and organic search, email marketing campaigns, social media marketing, and so on, with dedicated experts for each vertical.
At the end of the day, for a tech startup to generate leads successfully your voice must resonate with the people who are most important to your business. This can happen only if you blend both digital and traditional means because a large portion of technology enthusiasts are spending their time online.
Tapping into Contacts
Building strong relationships is both the most significant outcome and ingredient for effective public relations. A PR firm can dive into your contacts and network and proliferate lead generation by deploying a variety of tactics.
This includes drawing down a mutually beneficial way to promote each other’s brand or call to action on social media, teaming up for an event, co-pitching stories that are relevant to both companies or individuals, and so on. You can find such partners in the media, partner agencies, industry friends, and beyond for enhancing lead generation in markets beyond your reach.
Technology PR has, in recent years, emerged as a key tool to disseminate positive stories about startups, companies, and individuals in the blossoming field of technology. The stream can get highly specific and yet rewardingly diverse, and strategic communications alone can successfully channel information around them among the masses.