PR for Startups Put an end to boring press relations!

Press relations - the word sounds dusty. And quite honestly, it is. Because PR is no longer "just" press relations. We see PR as a recommendation tool. While social media, for example, is communicated directly by the brand, with PR there is an independent third party who gives his assessment. In the past, this was primarily journalists who reported on the company or products for newspapers, magazines, TV stations and the like. Today, there are a variety of other opinion leaders in addition to journalists. These include influencers, bloggers or even well-known people from your target industry.

Depending on the industry and target group, there are many other measures to place you in the public eye.

Online marketing has a clear advantage: you can measure the results and the return on investment exactly. The problem with PR, however, is not the measurability, but the objective. You have to define them just as precisely for PR as you do for social media marketing, for example. You know how many leads and conversions you want to generate, because that's a goal that works for social media. Transferring this objective 1:1 to PR doesn't work, because the marketing tool has other functions. Here's a sampling of five goals startups set for their PR efforts that are measurable:

• Brand awareness: You can measure the goal by hiring a market research institute when you start your PR work and having them measure the current awareness level. Six to nine months later, you conduct another survey and have a comparative value. The same works for the goal of building trust. This is the best qualitative measurement you can make for your PR success.
• Search engine optimization: Online PR can support your SEO. As a metric, you can measure the value of generated links, for example, which works easily via free add-ons in the browser.
• Publications in the target media: The basis for successful PR is to address the right target group and to know which media they use. You can find this out, among other things, from the media data of the respective medium, which can usually be found online. Determine your top 10 target media in which you want to be placed with your startup to have a point of reference and direction.
• Number of publications: This is a purely quantitative goal, because just because your startup is mentioned in a post doesn't mean the media is reaching the right audience. Nevertheless, this goal is of course very measurable. Tip: Work with an average value that you want to achieve over the year.
• Speaker placement: The presence at trade fairs and industry events can generate a lot of attention and is very well suited for expert positioning. Set a goal for which and how many events you want to give a keynote or workshop at, or be on the panel discussion.

The importance of PR has shot up again in recent years. Because the online market is flooded with advertising and content - attention and also trust are declining. At the same time, new exciting formats have emerged - online and offline - that rely on good content. PR still has the advantage that it has a strong recommendation character and thus creates trust. That's why startups should use PR as an inexpensive and effective tool, but just of the creative variety. Think in videos, think in podcasts, think in stories - that's how you ignite the turbo for your startup.