Ready For Take-Off: How To Use PR As A Growthhacking Tool

The booming creator economy and startup industry is showing the way: Through viral content, community building and Build-in-public Strategies attract attention to their business. Or, as Zack Teperman, the author of “Cut The Bull$hit,” describes it: “To attract attention, you must first generate some noise.”

At a time when it is easier than ever to become self-employed and start a business, it is necessary to look for innovative ways to stand out from the crowd and take full advantage of growth potential.

One strategy has proven to be particularly effective: growth hacking. It's about finding creative ideas and clever niches that lead to backlinks, traffic, lead generation, and conversions. Because: When you process the standardized marketing suite, in the end, only the business that puts the most budget in the sand gains traffic. Just think of Google Ads or Social Media Ads.

PR as a silver bullet for reach

Public relations (PR) is a very efficient tool for achieving wide reach with a minimum budget. Established companies have known for a long time that they can achieve great success with little financial outlay. SEO experts also love using PR because of its high effectiveness in generating organic traffic.

But while creators in particular are absolute experts in developing high-quality content, they still don't always know how PR plays a role in this or can even increase their reach.

For startups and creators, I have therefore put together a PR guide here as a first orientation. I've been a PR consultant for 15 years and have been with Numarics right from the start. I also have the do-it-yourself PR platform Pronthego.com founded - there you can find more growth hacks according to this guide.

Getting started with PR

I like to summarize PR as follows: It's all measures aimed at using the reach of third parties. This is done primarily through cooperation. However, the most well-known PR tactic is public relations. The aim is to achieve rankings in magazines, radio, TV, podcasts and daily newspapers, as these often have a very high reach. For example, you benefit from the reach of a magazine when your own products or yourself are presented there.

But how do you start getting press releases? It's easier than you might think, but there are a few things to consider along the way. PR success is only as good as preparation as an overall strategy.

1) Perfect your value proposition

The value proposition describes the added value that you bring to your users or customers. Public relations is derived as a freestyle of communication and psychology of the masses, which means we think of the person we address. We respond to other people's needs or awaken them.

If we take Numarics as an example, we in the Numarics team know that we are fiduciary in the fast lane, with an AI-supported accounting system developed by trustees, auditors and experts in technological process automation. We are a fintech company that focuses on increasing efficiency in the trust sector through the optimized collaboration of trust experts and the digital ecosystem.

However, the value-added promise to small to medium-sized companies (SMEs) in Switzerland, Numarics users, is not this breakthrough technology behind our trustees. The value proposition is the added value of time and freedom of mind that our ecosystem and the paperless processing of bookkeeping and all administrative activities offer. In addition, there is premium consulting by the trustees, who simply have more time for valuable business consulting through the use of highly efficient technology. It is precisely this added value that journalists also want to convey to their readers, instead of sounding like advertising space for “groundbreaking technology.”

The value proposition forms the basis of your PR. Because if you can't tell people why your company exists, you won't be able to have a conversation with them.

What's In It For Me?

When considering your value proposition, it helps if you simply remember that every potential user, journalist or other potential cooperation partner asks themselves the question “What's in it for me?” A journalist wants to publish articles that not only match his or her readership, but also receive as many clicks and reads as possible. Founders who understand this provide content for these journalists.

However, this often results in a mistake. With your input and expertise, you can be placed on many topics. However, being placed on everything from veganism to artificial intelligence to fashion just because you can talk about it doesn't get you anywhere. Then you're everywhere and nowhere. You need an agenda that is based on specific keywords and topics and that you want to fill because your business brings added value to these topics.

2) The PR plan

The most important part of PR work is strategically identifying your niche topics and keywords. Once you've identified them, you should focus exclusively on them.

Let's take the example of Numarics again. Numarics was founded as a fintech company and offers the classic services of a trustee — except that there is still a high-performance machine behind the person trustee. Of course, the founders of Numarics answer all press topics relating to trust and financial technology (FinTech). But Numarics is also bringing its own agenda to journalists' tables: We are opening up an area that was previously quite difficult for SMEs to access, the financial sector. Finance has traditionally been closed. Even trusts had not yet found a way to promptly make their insights from analyses such as cash flow statements and cash flow statements available to the founders and present them in such a way that they are self-explanatory and allow insights and forecasts for the founder. Startups have often continued to hire an additional Chief Financial Officer, the CFO, just to evaluate the statements from the trustee. This is therefore about the topic and keywords “technologization in trusteeship” resulting topics such as democratization and access to financial knowledge and the resulting mission of Numarics: to provide small and medium-sized companies with access to success.

3) PR in action

Many roads lead to success and there is no one right path. Here I'll show you an efficient step-by-step strategy that has proven effective for many startups I've worked with, and that you can easily apply yourself.

Step 1: List your business in directories

First, it's about developing relevance. In today's digital world, that means generating Google results. Interested customers, cooperation partners or journalists can find out more about you and your company.

First, find a tag line for your value proposition, which you add to your business and that is catchy. For example, the tagline for Numarics is “We speak numbers.” For my DIY PR platform PronTheGo, it's “The Entrepreneur's Source For Global Prime PR Hacks.”

Then place your business in relevant directories in your industry along with your tag line. For example, you can start with a Google Business listing. There are local and global directories for all business models and industries. Popular for startups 10words and Product Huntto present your startup to early adopters.

Step 2: Create your founder profile

Your founder profile is more relevant to journalists than your business itself. This is because you are the potential interviewee and therefore the voice of your company. Therefore, create a short profile that lists your qualification and the “Why?” answered for starting your business.

that Why In the profile of Numaric's co-founder Dominique Rey, for example, is answered as follows:

Dominique Olivier Rey is co-founder and CEO of Numarics, an intelligent, AI-powered accounting system that enables Swiss companies to easily manage their accounting and finances 100% digitally.

Rey is a federally certified accountant, banking specialist and business economist. He is also recognized as an audit expert by the Federal Audit Supervisory Authority (RAB) and is secretary of the EXPERTsuisse Banking Audit Commission.

Rey left the secure corporate environment to create something meaningful, something new, something that would last and add value to society and leave a legacy.

You can write your profile first-person or in the third person, depending on where you use it. LinkedIn is, of course, the first choice for professional placement. Then I recommend that you create a profile on Qwoted.com to create. Journalists can find you here for their planned articles and under the topic tags you have listed. Your founder profile also serves as an introduction to journalists and networks, i.e. for actual PR work.

Step 3: Pitching and guest articles

Use your catchy tag line for your startup and founder profile now to present yourself to journalists and networks. In Switzerland, for example, there is the Swiss Startup Association, where members are also presented in interviews with entrepreneurs. The platforms, for example, offer further opportunities for entrepreneur interviews Ideamensch.com And that Authority Magazine.

Research podcasts, magazines, newspapers, radio stations, and blogs whose readers might be interested in your business. The best first press pitch is an email presentation with your founder profile and the topics you'd like to talk about. The contact details can usually be found on the media portal website.

Many media outlets then also offer the opportunity to place guest contributions. In the start-up sector, this is the case, for example, with HackerNoon or BuiltIn the case. But for every industry, there is the option to conclude collaborations for guest posts. Always keep an eye on the media's readership to create relevant contributions to your topics.

When you take these first steps, you'll find that you're right in the thick of PR and that there are endless opportunities to tap into the reach of others. For example, via news hijacking, in which you, as the founder, provide expert comments for media outlets on current world events. Customer satisfaction and activating your customers as testimonials and brand ambassadors is also an important topic.

I wish you every success with this first guide for getting started in PR. We at Numarics will of course continue to provide you with growth hacks.

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