PR can help tech companies increase visibility, promote brand values, strengthen community relations, and enhance their online presence. Good PR strengthens your company’s brand reputation by providing more opportunities to connect with your target audience in impactful ways.
Here are five tips to craft a public relations strategy that gets your tech company noticed:
Tip 1: Create an attention-grabbing pitch
First, you need to decide which publications to target. Analyze their past articles to understand the publications’ interest areas and how your pitch could add value to their audience. You have to think from the editor’s perspective— would your piece be of interest to their readers?
Pitch them a story, and not your company. Nine times out of 10, your product or brand alone is not newsworthy.
Try to provide as many reasons as you can for them to publish your piece. Emphasize the way your content can educate their readers and give them a new perspective. If the editor passes, which could happen, request in-product feedback. That way you can pitch them something they’ll be more interested in next time.
Tip 2: Identify Your Unique Selling Point or USP
Do you know what sells better than your brand or your product? Your USP.
If your product or service solves a problem in a way that no other product does, or if you approach something differently from others, use it to your advantage.
For example, take Stripe. Stripe is an easy-to-implement payments platform targeted at web software developers. Their unique selling point is that they make online payments easy. They remove financial complexity, offer industry-leading documentation and third-party integrations, and more.
The messaging is slick and different and clarifies why they’re the most flexible and customizable options for developers, changing the game for online payments.
Now that’s a unique attribute to write about.
Tip 3: Tailor your pitch
A site owner or editor reads hundreds of pitches just like yours every day. They can easily tell the difference between a generic pitch and one that’s tailored for their publication.
Even if you are pitching about the same thing to everyone, make sure you customize your pitch for every editor after researching them in detail.
The more they connect with your pitch, the higher your chances of getting them to publish about your company. It does require some extra effort, but to get PR coverage, you’ll need to go that extra mile.
Tip 4: Make Sure Your Brand is Ready for Wider Attention
You might create a great pitch with a great story and brilliant ideas. However, did you ask yourself is it right for the sites you’re pitching? Especially, to the sites that you are targeting.
If not, you need to improve your product and show it can solve a problem that the publication would like to talk about. However, if you feel that your work is newsworthy and is ready to be published, you need to make sure that you make them feel the same way about your product or service.
Build a great story around your company and your product, and tell them what differentiates you from the rest.
Tip 5: Set tangible goals
For any PR activity, you need to set reasonable, tangible goals to clearly identify exactly what it is you want to achieve when you reach your goal.
A goal could be something like:
- Increasing brand awareness by getting featured in renowned publications
- Building awareness about a new product through niche publications
- Portraying yourself as a thought leader to grab the attention of investors
When your goals are clearly defined, it’s easier to track and measure performance to determine whether your game plan is working or not.
By setting goals and actively working towards them, you can stay intellectually engaged, and organize your time and your resources so that you can make the most of your PR efforts.
Tech companies have a way of revolutionizing the world–if they can remain off the ground. Developing an amazing product or service is not enough to become the next multi-million-dollar tech company. A comprehensive public relations strategy that furthers a company’s mission and supports its core values, beliefs, or objectives is essential for a tech companies’ long-term success. Treat these 5 tips as an appetizer for all there is to know about public relations for tech companies.
