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If you're like most budding business owners, when you first made the decision to start your own business, all you could see was the success that was soon to come. You saw profits, a loyal and growing customer base, and you just simply saw your brand becoming a household name. It's not until you get in the trenches of building a business that you see how much work is required before you can see your brand in bright lights.
Being a startup business, one of the biggest challenges you'll have to overcome is the challenge of building and establishing your initial reputation. The way you want people to see your brand may not always turn out the way you planned.
So what are you to do?
You have no customers, no brand awareness or recognition, and worst of all, your amount of funds to give your brand and image a boost are slim to none... You're thinking that maybe you should have reconsidered entrepreneurship... but there is a light at the end of your tunnel.
For one, it's perfectly normal and more common than you think to be in that predicament... Secondly, to get the press coverage you want and can afford, you just now have to get more creative with your press coverage tactics. But first, let's look at how your business can benefit from press coverage.
Major Benefits of Press Coverage
If your business can be covered, or at the very least, mentioned in various publications, it can do a world of good for your brand. Some of the major benefits include:
Investor Interest: With your business being in its early stages, press coverage can draw attention from potential investors that see your business as a great investment opportunity. The cool thing about this is that the investors will come looking for you, not you looking for them.
Customer Acquisition: Gaining new customers is the main ingredient of growing a business, right? Well, when press coverage is used for your business correctly, the simple mentioning of your brand can cause people to go directly to your site or seek your brand through social media channels.
Brand Recognition: Press coverage allows your brand to gain recognition among a wide audience. It even presents the potential for you to be recognized as a thought leader with consistent coverage.
Ways to Gain Press Coverage For Your Startup
1. Get Your Brand Involved in Local Events
You've heard people make mention that you have to crawl before you can walk... Well, that reference is very similar for brand recognition. From the perspective of brand recognition, you, of course, want to bring national and global attention to your brand but before you can reach that level, you need to first raise brand awareness in your local community.
Keep an eye out for local and community events that are sure to gain press coverage and get your startup involved. Whether you sign up to be a guest speaker at a convention or volunteer to be a vendor at a charity event, the point is to make your brand known locally. Once you've gained local attention, you can then work on national attention (this is your crawling before walking reference).
You can even host your own event to increase your brand's visibility. According to nh-hotels.com, in order for your brand to benefit from hosting an event, you first need to determine what your objective is and if it's actually worth the investment of your time and money. If you're inexperienced at hosting events, attending them is a safer option until you get more experience and gain more knowledge on how to properly host an event.
2. Devise a Strong Marketing Campaign on Social Media
If you hadn't noticed, we live in a digital world and much of today's journalists and various publications utilize social media as an outlet or resource to push information and materials. With a strong marketing campaign on social media, you're going to have a higher chance of getting some brand recognition.
Now, to have an effective marketing campaign, you're going to need a strong content marketing strategy, and this requires a whole new realm of understanding. Content marketing comes in the form of videos, podcasts, blogs, etc. The main point is to drive more traffic to your site.
You can either publish your own content or approach it from a strictly link building perspective and hire only the best link building companies to handle the content for you.
If you post your content regularly, you're giving your brand the opportunity to build relationships with potential influencers as well as other people in your niche industry... this is going to allow you to gain more exposure and visibility.
3. Share a Compelling Story About Your Brand to Journalists
Reaching out to journalists is actually a really great way to earn press coverage and exposure of your brand. The only thing with pitching your brand's story to journalists is that they are very busy people on the hunt for great stories but they have strict deadlines to meet so they don't have time to listen to a boring or generic story that's not worth reporting. To make a journalist want to give your startup exposure, you're going to have to share with them what makes your brand so unique, and it has to be really good.
In order for your brand to really benefit from press coverage from journalists, you're going to first need to make sure your story gets in touch with the right journalists. You want to pitch to journalists who report on topics that are related to your niche. Secondly, you'll want to utilize the right tools to find journalists that could potentially help you out. Just Reach Out is a great tool to use to pitch to journalists.
The Takeaway...
Tactics like guest posting and outreach link building, along with these strategies are great ways for your startup to gain exposure and be featured in press coverage, whether you've had exposure before or not. But remember, it's not going to happen overnight... it's going to require dedication and consistency on your end. But as you continue to gain more popularity, your hard work will pay off and it will become easier to get featured in higher-profile publications. The main thing is to keep your brand visible and in the minds of the public.
