Effective public relations (PR) strategies are crucial for startups to gain exposure and drive sustainable growth, in an increasingly competitive market. As we look ahead to 2024, it is crucial to understand the unique challenges and opportunities that startups face in leveraging PR strategies to achieve their business objectives. To shed light on this important topic, we gathered insights from leading PR experts who specialize in working in tech or with startups.
In this roundtable discussion, they discuss — What PR Brings to Startups in 2024, key questions about the specific business outcomes that PR can help startups achieve, the differing goals between startups and established enterprises, the most effective PR channels and tactics for new businesses, and how startups can accurately measure the return on investment (ROI) of their PR efforts.
Our experts:
Line Aasen, Marketing & PR Associate at Dreamcraft Ventures.
Jana Garanko, Head of Public Relations at Semrush.
Mauro Battellini, Co-founder at Black Unicorn PR.
Alina Gegamova, Head of Communications at LETA Capital.
Anna Rasby-Safronova, Senior Public Relations Manager at Upwards
Line Aasen, Marketing & PR Associate at Dreamcraft Ventures
What specific business outcomes can PR help startups achieve in 2024?
When working with early-stage startups and their PR planning, I usually see three areas the focus is on.
- Visibility to investors: Media mentions put you on the map for investors and they contribute to set you up for success when raising your next funding round.
- Customer attention: Whether it’s media coverage or speaking at an event, with the right PR strategy, you get in front of your target audience and establish yourself as a credible player in the field.
- Employer branding: PR can be a great way of attracting talent to your startup. What is important is setting goals with your PR strategy and activities, crafting a good story and identifying the right timing.
How do PR goals differ for startups compared to enterprises?
For startups, and particularly early-stage startups, increasing brand awareness is often the key goal with PR; it’s about getting the name out there in front of people and also establishing the connection between the founders and the new company. Setting yourself up for a successful fundraising is another key goal for startups. I often advise startups to include their fundraising plans when planning PR campaigns as it can be a powerful tool to grab the interest of investors.
Also, synergies with the founder(s) personal brand can have a positive or negative influence on the startup’s PR, brand and reputation. This close connection between the founder(s) and the company is unavoidable for early-stage companies, which is something they can take advantage of.
Which PR channels or tactics are most effective for startups?
For startups, I often advise doing a two parted pitching strategy pitching 1) industry media to reach the customer target audience and 2) tech media to reach investors.
An important aspect of PR is to not think of one piece of news as an isolated PR campaign. PR is about establishing trust and credibility and increasing brand awareness, this takes time. That is why startups should focus on keeping the momentum once it has started; once you have the PR ball rolling, you got eyes on you, use that momentum to get more coverage.
How to do this: Timing of announcements - can you time it with a relevant conference? Share media coverage on LinkedIn both from the company page and founder(s) page. Identify relevant podcasts and Op-Eds. An example I see particularly among early-stage startups is getting listed as a top startup to watch within a particular industry or a geography. These mentions can be used to pitch speaking slots and speaking slots can easily be turned into content, content can be used to express opinions and opinions attract podcast guest opportunities and so on. With limited resources, startups should take full advantage of the opportunities they get to generate more PR coverage to build brand awareness.
This tactic is also effective when going into a new market. Establishing a presence takes time and customers and investors need to hear your name, product features and the challenges you're solving multiple times before buying or investing.
My top tip is having a conference and event calendar, and a news calendar to identify synergies and where you can be smart and generate long-lasting momentum.
How can startups measure PR ROI?
To me, there are three layers of measuring PR ROI.
- Coverage: The number of media mentions and the quality of the coverage. Sometimes it’s more beneficial to be mentioned in a larger article in a top-tier media and other times it’s preferable to get a full story in a niche media. Keep track of the coverage with a media list in a spreadsheet and create Google Alerts for your company.
- Instant effect: Measure your social media engagement on the channels your target audience uses. For the companies we work with, B2B software, LinkedIn metrics are most important, but for B2C companies this could be Instagram, TikTok, etc. This also includes inbound interest on your website and LinkedIn - are people reaching out to you and the team on LinkedIn?
- Long-term effect: Increase in brand awareness and brand reputation. This is more complex to measure, but word of mouth and opportunities coming from PR campaigns are ways of measuring the long-term ROI.
Jana Garanko, Head Of Public Relations at Semrush
What specific business outcomes can PR help startups achieve in 2024?
Brand visibility: This is one of the most crucial outcomes startups can achieve through PR. It's no longer about "no investment, no coverage" — that's outdated. Today, if you have an authentic story to tell, you can find your platform to share it. What makes it work is authenticity, human connection, and cutting through the noise with no gimmicks or pretense. As well, media exposure through PR creates third-party validation, building investor trust and excitement, which is crucial for startups seeking funding. This validation can also help startups stand out from competitors
How do PR goals differ for startups compared to enterprises?
According to PR Lab, 80% of decision-makers prefer learning about companies through articles rather than advertisements, making PR a more trusted medium for building credibility with investors, partners, and customers. For startups, there’s no immediate need to focus on getting into Tier 1 media. While it's cool, it’s not essential early on. The key is to find where your target audience truly is, focusing on niche, relevant platforms that matter to your business. Instead of chasing millions of stories, startups should aim for fewer but more impactful stories that resonate deeply with their audience. It's about showing the real people and authentic stories behind the company.
Which PR channels or tactics are most effective for startups?
- Events for Fintech: Attending or sponsoring fintech events helps fintech startups connect with investors and media.
- Media Coverage for Deeptech: Coverage in outlets like TechCrunch, Wired, etc. boosts credibility and attracts early adopters.
- Influencers for Consumer Tech: Collaborating with tech influencers on platforms like YouTube helps consumer tech startups gain visibility.
- Social Media for SaaS: Engaging LinkedIn and Twitter with thought leadership and case studies builds SaaS startups' presence.
- Partnerships for Healthtech: Partnering with healthcare organizations and sharing success stories can elevate healthtech startup.
How can startups measure PR ROI?
PR is all about potential reach, and the best way for startups to measure PR ROI is by monitoring organic traffic growth. When PR efforts lead to more media coverage, backlinks, and influencer mentions, your organic traffic should increase. This happens because strong PR placements improve SEO rankings, sending more qualified visitors to your site.
Mauro Battellini, Co-founder at Black Unicorn PR
What specific business outcomes can PR help startups achieve in 2024?
Mainly credibility at early stages. Fundraising, hiring, regulator and governmental relations, partnerships and selling to clients. Sustained over time, PR can bring decent awareness, but at first this remit should fall to performance marketing or sales teams. This is a bit more true for B2B, where stakeholders tend to have longer journeys and require more trust and validation.
Startups begin with everything founder-led. Fundraising, hiring, partnerships all begin with the founder pushing. Eventually, you delegate to other individuals and teams. And at some point, you also need your brand and story to do a lot of the influencing. Think of good PR as a way to influence those journeys and improve conversion to close deals.
In B2C, the awareness side can play a bigger role. Products with the potential to change lives, or impact the lives of millions, or high-tech and shiny gadgets, can be the focus of PR themselves with reviews, tests and more.
How do PR goals differ for startups compared to enterprises?
Startups need to introduce themselves to the world. Storytelling is usually only the beginning. It's more about building an identity and a narrative. Startups need to sell their concept to investors, talent and others, not (just) their benefits and features.
Enterprises are more likely to have an established identity, and while it's something to work on continuously, they may have much more specific goals with specific tactics. In addition, their size and therefore newsworthiness, their budgets and potential brand awareness, means they can (or need to) employ PR in more sophisticated ways, from expensive creative stunts to ESG items. Bigger companies are more likely to need specific PR sub-visions like investor relations or government relations. And they will need a much higher crisis comms preparedness. With size also come (sometimes unpreventable) issues. And while startups will find themselves pushing journalists for coverage, at enterprises it could also flip-journalists may want to cover the company beyond its appetite.
PR is conceptually similar across the board, but in terms of execution different depending on the reality of the company and its context. This goes for organizations of different sizes, industries, in different geographies.
Which PR channels or tactics are most effective for startups?
The reality is that it depends. Ideally, every startup needs to understand where they fit in the context, their internal strengths, and the opportunities resulting from analyzing the two. All startups should do basic hygiene in order to be prepared to do PR, and also understand the newsworthiness of what they are doing in the real world. The best tactics will be the ones that help exploit this.
If we want to look at tactics for startups, we tend to have news or announcements, profiling opportunities, thought leadership. Very important for a startup to start mapping is their timelines of news, i.e. what hard/significant news are coming up in the next 6-12 months? And then figure out the rest of PR from there.
Typically, fintech startups have a good trade media universe, deeptech and climate tech are sought after at events. Difficult sectors to raise in may present opportunities for thought leadership. And everyone wants to understand how AI is going to change different industries, job roles and life in general. But these change all the time, and might not be true in a couple of years.
How can startups measure PR ROI?
This is one of the hottest topics in PR, and even more so startup PR. Startup people are ROI-driven, and PR can often leave analytical minds disappointed. I would strongly suggest becoming educated in PR before asking about ROI. For larger companies with a functioning marketing machinery, a good PR campaign can boost leads, webinar registrations, footfall top-up and even sales. These very clear 'outcomes' linked to business goals are in an ideal world the best.
But in the early stages it's often about building image, creating a track record for trust and credibility in the middle of the funnel of journeys. This middle of the funnel impact will help journeys of stakeholders that probably performance marketing and sales should initiate, especially for B2B. How do you measure ROI on trust and credibility? No one has given a good answer on this, but eventually most companies will find limitations to their conversion or deals without any third party validation.
Finally, there's the numbers that will be supplied by most PR monitoring tools, and you can get them for any PR campaign regardless of size. I would recommend to take numbers like UVM (unique viewers monthly), AVE (advertising value equivalency) with a pinch of salt, they do not mean your article gets read by those numbers nor that the article has the same effect as an ad. However, they can be useful to understand the outlets and their reach.
This topic deserves an entire roundtable just for itself and there's a lot more that can be said, but I hope the above gives startup founders new to PR a good starting point.
Alina Gegamova, Head of Communications at LETA Capital
What specific business outcomes can PR help startups achieve in 2024?
PR can elevate a startup’s visibility with investors by highlighting milestones like funding rounds, which increases interest from VCs. It also builds credibility with partners and clients, showing stability and trustworthiness through media coverage and expert mentions. For consumer-facing startups, PR can boost brand awareness, driving customer acquisition through press features, influencer collaborations, or social proof. PR also helps position startup founders as thought leaders, opening doors to speaking engagements or partnership opportunities.
How do PR goals differ for startups compared to enterprises?
Startups focus on building awareness, credibility, and attracting early investment or partnerships. Their PR goals revolve around creating buzz, differentiating from competitors, and gaining market foothold. Enterprises, on the other hand, emphasize reputation management, maintaining market leadership, and shareholder communication. While startups need to generate momentum with limited resources, enterprises aim for long-term brand loyalty and sustained media presence. For example, a startup may prioritize getting into niche trade publications, while enterprises might focus on global media relations.
Which PR channels or tactics are most effective for startups?
Effective PR strategies for startups depend on their stage, industry, and business goals, making tailored tactics essential. For instance, early-stage fintech companies may gain more from securing speaking slots at industry-specific events like Money20/20 than from participating in larger ones like TechCrunch Disrupt. Establishing thought leadership is crucial across all industries, but it’s especially vital in B2B SaaS, where the professionalism, expertise, and experience of the founders significantly impact deal closure. In consumer tech, influencer marketing and product reviews are key for generating buzz, so a substantial portion of the PR and marketing budget is often allocated to these areas. The main takeaway is to view PR not as a platform for fulfilling the founder’s personal ambitions, but as a strategic tool focused on what truly benefits the business.
How can startups measure PR ROI?
Startups can measure PR ROI by tracking key metrics like media mentions, website traffic spikes after coverage, and increased social media engagement. Another indicator is the volume and quality of inbound inquiries from potential investors, partners, or clients following a PR campaign. PR impact can also be measured through brand recognition growth, improvements in SEO rankings from earned backlinks, and conversion rates from media-driven traffic. However, PR is a long-term investment, and its effects are often delayed. One of the most valuable aspects of PR is its ability to create lasting public perception. It’s about creating a cumulative effect over time. PR builds and nurtures long-term trust between a brand and its audience — whether clients, investors, potential employees, or future partners. In today’s more informed and skeptical environment, this trust-building is crucial.
Anna Rasby-Safronova, Senior Public Relations Manager at Upwards
What specific business outcomes can PR help startups achieve in 2024?
While PR might not immediately drive revenue, it plays an important role in creating a foundation for growth.
Firstly, PR enhances a startup's credibility and visibility in the investment landscape. Not everyone may know your company or the potential of the technology or solution you're building, but attaching a TechCrunch or even a trade media article to an email goes a long way in proving that it's something legitimate and something that people care about.
Another use case is recruiting. If you're a new startup that has raised pre-seed, seed, or even Series A round and you're hunting for exceptional talent to propel your company forward, press, once again, helps to create that credibility. It gives confidence to potential hires that those who join your company early on will benefit from its future growth because your solution is promising and is already validated by third-party experts.
Thirdly, there's a very clear impact on B2B sales. I’ve seen firsthand how press articles I helped secure were utilized by our sales team in follow-ups and sales decks to provide validation and remove barriers to trying the company’s product.
How do PR goals differ for startups compared to enterprises?
In startup PR, the focus is on building awareness and credibility, and in enterprise PR, it's about increasing brand visibility and enhancing brand reputation. For enterprises, PR goals focus on long-term growth, whereas for startups, everything moves faster, and PR goals often revolve around rapid growth and customer acquisition. In enterprise PR, the focus is on managing stakeholder and investor relationships, while in startups, depending on the stage, the focus is on attracting investors.
In startup PR, again, depending on the product, there might be less emphasis on crisis communications. It’s always good to have a plan in place and develop strategies to effectively respond to crises, but startups do not operate at the same scale as enterprises, so the virality of risks is lower.
Which PR channels or tactics are most effective for startups?
There is no one-size-fits-all approach. Start by asking: Who is your target audience? Which outlets do they trust? How will you leverage the media coverage you gain? If your goal is to get warm introductions to investors, focusing on partnerships and the right associations might be your first step.
A good PR professional or a team you are working with must understand the technology, and it’s in the company’s best interest to onboard them effectively ensuring that the have the information they need to develop the right story, find fresh angles, and push the limits of what is possible with the technology or product the company is building. While the “spray and pray” approach doesn’t work, the pitch that fits the current news landscape, and is crafted in a way that is easy for journalists to imagine the full story, is likely to speak to several reporters at once.
In media relations, one tactic or principle I live by is to always remember that you're building long-term relationships with reporters. Journalists are your customers as well, so treat them accordingly, whether you land a story or not. Do your research and due diligence, and make the right impression. When your story fits the beat, confidence and patience will eventually bring results — I've experienced many instances where reporters remembered and returned months after the initial pitch because the right opportunity arose.
How can startups measure PR ROI?
Measure against your realistic goals and your shared understanding of the target audiences that PR helps to reach and influence. You might not be able to add a UTM link to every article you land (though it is possible on rare occasions and there are creative ways to do it), but you can ask your customers — especially in the B2B space — how they learned about you. Do you see a spike in website traffic? Is there growth in inbound leads? Are leads moving faster through your pipeline because they come with higher confidence in your product, as it has been validated by the press? Are you seeing a higher number of booked investor meetings after you started attaching a press article to your intro email? Is the press helping you receive valuable industry awards and secure speaking engagements? Are more candidates responding to your open positions when you include a link to a reputable article in the job description? In my role, having visibility into various business metrics is crucial to establish links to our PR efforts and measure PR ROI.